and any score will weave in and out of that. I don’t know at this point what I’ll do at the end of the play when things start to get abstract. I don’t know how I’ll handle that because it is stylistically very separate from the rest of the play.


TS: You are also directing Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes this year—do you think these two plays are in conversation with one another?


DS: The Little Foxes is black and white. Regina is the most complicated and interesting character. But Hellman’s play is a melodrama and If I Forget isn’t. There is a certain mild queasiness that the two plays share, but I think that we still need to admire virtually all the characters in If I Forget, and that’s certainly not true with The Little Foxes.


TS: Do you have any advice for young people who want to direct?


TS: And I imagine your work together will be continuing until you open.


DS: Our main focus right now is what is the cost of writing this book to the character of Michael. Does it have a cost to him? What is the decision at the end of the play costing him if anything? I keep going back to The Cherry Orchard and what does the sale of the cherry orchard cost the people in that play? I know the cost in The Cherry Orchard; I’m not clear yet what the cost of it is to Michael.


TS: The play takes place approximately 16 years ago. Did you have to do any research regarding the world events mentioned in this play?


DS: I am trying to get as much information as I can about the weeks surrounding the Oslo Accord and what was actually going on and to read as much as I can during that time period—but it is very déjà vu. The rhetoric of the time hasn’t changed at all except that everybody has gotten more dug in.


TS: What did you look for in casting the actors? What traits did you need?


DS: It was an interesting casting process. There were some actors I think who were avoiding the subject matter. It does need actors who are bright, smart people and who understand the issues at hand. That’s extremely important. It needs the most realistic ease of playing that you can possibly imagine. I want the acting to be completely naturalistic and detailed.


TS: How important will the use of sound or music be to the storytelling?


DS: I believe that the television will be on most of the time and it will provide the necessary sound, and I don’t want to underscore dramatically. I feel like that would be false. Sometimes music will help us escape something and I would rather keep the sounds environmental


IF I FORGET UPSTAGE GUIDE 9 DS: Just relax and observe. Directors have


to be empathizers and they have to study behavior. All we can do is to bring that into the theatre, but we can’t do it if we don’t empathize with everything we see and understand it in some way. That’s what I try to do. Most directors think the job is to talk people into doing stuff and I certainly think that’s true, but the arsenal that we have as directors is the fact that we don’t forget. We keep behavioral observations with us forever and that’s what we bring into a rehearsal hall. We must be able to see both sides of every argument. If I Forget is a play that tries to present both sides.•


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