Kerry Cole, sipping a health drink, could pass for the accountant she contemplated becoming one college semester.
But her thoughts are far from a world filled with numbers and comfortable offices. At the time of this interview, she was on her way to Theatre Three in the Quadrangle to direct opening night of David Mamet’s “An Interview.”
“I’m really tired of it,” she said after shaping the performance through 90 hours of rehearsals.
“Actually, it’s how I deal with separation anxiety; it’s a way of leaving the play. The (director’s) job ends when (the actors’) begins.”
Moving on is nothing new to Cole. Like others in her profession, the neighborhood resident – who teaches at Richland College – lives project to project, never certain she’ll work again but with a faith that “something always turns up.”
From Garland to Collin County to Fort Worth, she has directed mysteries, comedies and plays about human relationships. Musicals she considers too organized, and plays that make political statements are not her style.
As an instructor at Richland and at UT-Dallas this fall, Cole educates students about the realities of the theater, from economics (they want to know why tickets are so expensive) to the experience.
Many of her students think movies are better than the stage because they have such limited exposure to the latter.
“Actually, they’re completely separate,” Cole says. “Film is the director’s medium. The director tells the actor where to look and what to do.”
In contrast, “theater is much more organic. The director tries more to get the point of the scene across.”
Acting on the belief that the only way to experience theater is in person, Cole abandoned the use of a text in her introductory class and took the students to see various productions.
“It was a sterling season I picked,” she says with a smile, and the experience provided the basis for wide-ranging discussions on everything from the mechanics of the productions to theories about the purpose of theater.
Cole’s desire – other than to nurture a love of the stage – is to instill in her students a sense of fun. Most have no background in drama and no desire to pursue acting seriously.
Cole also takes her sense that the stage should be fun to the actors she directs as well.
“Actors are used to being told what to do. I want them to play, to find ways of expressing the scene,” she says. “I don’t have everything set in my mind.”
