Just like beauty, the message of a work of art lays in the eyes of the beholder. Each audience member can interpret a play according to their own experiences or visions. This creates a wide range of different interpretations that may vary from what the director meant to show. Thus sending the right message across becomes the director's most difficult task. Aspects that make this duty so complex are found in the necessary research and arrangement of ideas; and versatility of a single person. Before starting to work on a play, which is a fantastic but very complicated process, a director has to ensure the play will be worthwhile and appropriate.
First, the director is responsible for finding out the interests of the people that are most likely to attend this play. It is extremely hard to come up with the perfect script that accommodates to what the audience, which is in terms the client. Once the decision is made as of the script that will be used, the focus of the inquiry turns into how this play will be accomplished and most importantly why. That is definitely the hardest question a director has to answer before starting the play. A phenomenal play comes from people with ambition and a purpose that successfully show that through their masterpiece. Not only is it difficult to find out the message that the play will attempt to get across, but the challenge lays on ensuring this message gets across to many different minds.
In theater or film, it is not as easy to make a point as on a paper. A script that told the audience the point of the whole movie straight out would resemble tedious studying rather than entertainment. That is why the director cannot simply tell the audience what the main theme, mood, moral and point of the work are. Hence the dispute of ideas over how to effectively make most people understand the context and main idea sets off in the director's mind. Although a crowd of audience members is thought to develop “a collective mind” it is very hard to make one play fit all the styles of people that will witness it. (Edwin Wilson.) That is the greatest challenge faced by the director.
When audience members walk out discussing the main ideas or modern characteristics revealed in the play in an agreeable way, the director can then conclude that the hardest part of the job is done. Since humans are fortunately all different, gathering enough information and directing the public towards the most relevant and important points is the most difficult of all jobs. There is nothing people like more than to “understand” a play; and that, to us, means reaching a consensus with other spectators about the message the play displayed. Therefore, to express, teach and entertain an audience, which is what theater is all about, the director must make sure that one very complex task is accomplished. This task is equalizing the message and getting it across.
