Every playscript comes with a set of challenges for the director. Some challenges are generic to theatre, some are specific to this text in this particular production. I tend to operate as a director who tries to meet these challenges – or, if you will, to solve these problems – pragmatically.

The recent Andak Stage Company production of Don Juan, The Trickster of Seville was no exception, and in this essay I would like to detail what I thought were the challenges, generic and specific, and my attempted solutions. I will not necessarily limit myself to those challenges that are particular to Comedia production, however, because in many cases the generic and the specific challenges are so intertwined that solving one is often the key to solving the other. Or, as is sometimes the case, solving one creates problems in the other. In any event, I have divided these directing challenges into two categories: pre-production considerations and the rehearsal process.

Pre-production begins with research, especially in the case of a period work. For a director, an acquaintance with the play's historical context is important not only for an appreciation of the play's thematic concerns, but for an understanding of the psychology of its characters as well; and thereby, I would argue, hangs the success or failure of any production in any period – but more about that later. Such research would include some information about seventeenth-century Spanish literary and language conventions, religious and philosophical concerns and beliefs, superstitions, and the author's biography, to the extent it is perceived to bear on his work. The fact that Tirso de Molina was a Roman Catholic friar – during the period of the Inquisition, no less – is not entirely unconnected to one of the play's primary themes: You play, you pay.

Knowledge of Golden Age theatrical conventions, such as stage configuration and devices, is also important, particularly when it comes to envisioning how a scene may be staged in a less than ideal space. For example, you are going to need something that functions as an “above,” and you are going to need a trap, or something that can suggest the action of a trap.