An Interview with Jaclynn Jutting
How did you begin to pursue theater as a career?
I first got my undergraduate degrees in Theater and Creative Writing, and then I was deciding to go back to pursue my graduate degree in directing. I think it was because I was working at an environmental nonprofit organization running public policy campaigns, and I was working with rock stars! And they were all so brilliant. In many ways for that to be one of my first jobs was solidifying because they were all so smart, passionate and worked so hard at what they did, and I loved being surrounded with the ideas and having access to what’s happening in the world of politics. However, I felt like I was best at something else. And even though it was in a field that was hard to be successful in and competitive, after nine years of being second best, I thought, “Why not just try to do what I think I’m best at?” Then I got into a pretty prestigious program at Northwestern University in Chicago and decided to try to do it full time, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Did you know you wanted to go into theater right out of high school?
No, I thought I was going to be a doctor. I had a writing scholarship, and I knew I loved theater and wrote two plays my freshman year. I was writing and directing, but I thought I was just doing it for fun. I didn’t add theater as a second major until my second year as I was studying abroad.
I know you’ve had some great, unique experiences as a theater director. Can you walk me through some of the highlights?
Mother Courage and Her Children, a play I did with Kevin O’Donnell, who’s now at MTSU. It was our first project working together, and that was 15 years ago. And there was a tremendous amount of talent and it won us a bunch of awards, so that was artistically a very satisfying. But still, that was more of my mentor’s project. Two years ago, I did a production of Annie Baker’s The Flick, with a small company called Verge theater, which I’m on the board of, and I loved that play; it was just so easy. I had worked with all of the designers before. They were so smart, so excited, and everyone was so well cast. Sometimes, things just click, in a way. That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges and hard work, but it was just a lovely experience working with all those artists. This last fall, I was freelancing and I got to work on a new Lucy Kirkwood play, and she’s kind of famous, and we even traded e-mails. It was also with a theater company in Chicago that I’ve always wanted to work with, so that was a dream. It was a benchmark, like, “Wow, I’m here.” I’ve had a few “pinch me, I can’t believe this is real” moments.
What did you think when you won your first awards?
I feel so silly talking about it. For me specifically, I was fortunate in the last two years to win some local awards, the “First Night Awards,” and in 2017, with The Amish Project, I won a Best Direction award. I also received a KC/ACTF award for directing. The next year, in 2019, I won for both The Flick and The Wolves, the two plays I had directed that year. It also means a lot to me when, for instance, I work on a play like The Seagull, and one of my actors in Chicago got nominated for a Jeff award for acting. What I learned last fall is generally, if I put their work before mine, their reviews will be stronger than mine, which I feel is important because people tend to care about the actors first.
When you first went into theater, did you think you would perform or write more?
I started acting first, which is common; I had a seventh-grade teacher who would invite me to act in stuff. Honestly, I thought I would be a playwright. That’s how the double major happened: I was interested in playwriting, and I was taking a lot of those theater classes. I’ve been directing since I was 15, though. I think that directing and writing can be similar in that you are both storytellers. But I like people, and as a director, I get to design and play and paint with people and with everyone else’s good ideas too. In playwriting, it’s you in a room by yourself, and I find that soul-crushing. I can’t make art that way.
How important is it to connect with the actors of the play versus just connecting with the play and story itself?
My initial reaction is that you’re not someone’s therapist. As a director, what’s important is doing the play well; your goal isn’t to be best friends with everyone. That said, actors are amazing, they have to focus on truthfully portraying something the way they experience it and then be vulnerable with it. You have to create an environment where everyone feels valued and seen. Sometimes that’s why I want to know my designers’ opinions, and sometimes they are surprised by that initially, and it’s not because I don’t value my own opinions; it’s because I want to know theirs. Even if someone comes in for a three-minute audition, I want them to feel seen and that I thought what they gave me that day was special, because it was.
What’s your worst experience with an actor in theater?
The hardest was when I heard from a member of the cast who had come to the stage manager about an actor being disrespectful to a stagehand, someone who worked backstage. That was the hardest moment, though they weren’t being disrespectful to me, because of course, they’re smarter than that. Like I said, no one person is more valued than anyone else. The fact that you’re backstage, you’re making the magic happen is as valuable as someone on stage. We handled it appropriately, but it was disappointing.
The second hard time happened when I was in graduate school when a very talented actor disagreed on a note I gave. What I learned in that moment was that it isn’t always about being right. It was a matter of being a strong leader, which means letting them be heard or even wrong. As a more reserved person, I’ve had to find how to use that as a strength when directing and incorporate it in my leadership style.
There are very sensory elements to the sounds in the play, Captain Aurora. How is your role different in that from directing acting and dialogue?
It’s all about making some judicious choices, so that there is enough for the audience to get the rest of it. It’s about how you can give them enough music or projection that they can turn it into whatever they need to in their heads. I know a couple of things I want to do in the end, and I know a strategy I can tackle, then I’m going to play with it a little bit. I’ll research for a couple hours for what I can pull off in a reading, then I get into a rehearsal room with actors and say “What sounds can you make?” or “What can we do with flashlights?”
How much of the method tends to be more spur of the moment, and how much is before you get to rehearsals?
I’m a very visual director. Sometimes I’m going after what I see in my head. For readings, that’s going to be different. This may sound strange, but I think I now have enough experience that I know what the process needs to be. So there are a couple things I know we’re going to do, and some pieces I’ll bring in the room that I suspect will be important, and then we’re going to shift from there. It’s like there’s a story, and then there’s things that are adding up like on a level above the story. What I like about directing is the Jedi maneuvers you make: Where do you start? Which moments do you love? Then you see and listen to how they reverberate like a note on another plane, and then you line those notes up into a melody.
Best advice you’ve received in the industry?
Kimberly Senior, who’s a famous Chicago director, said to me once as I was getting out of grad school, “I would go to a lot of theater, then stick around afterwards and talk about other people’s work.” Because in this industry, as with many others, there’s three degrees or six degrees of separation. The people who stick around will be the type of people you want to stick around. You feel like the world would be lost if they weren’t able to do what they do. And it’s not easy doing this, and you can make a lot more money doing something else. So, the best advice is to kind of lean into the ideas and community. I think it’s important to understand the importance of that community and culture. I think that’s why in this moment, people are missing things like theater. It’s like with practicing faith: Over Zoom, it sucks. There is something to be gained, but it’s not the same. Ditto with theater. If anything, people are realizing what they’re losing by not being able to see a musician or a play live.
Jaclynn Jutting is an award-winning freelance director and scholar, working out of Nashville and Chicago. Her work as director focuses on the contemporary play and contemporary adaptations of classics. She most recently directed the U.S. premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes with Chicago’s Steep Theatre and was an Artist in Residence at Vanderbilt University. She has directed with Steppenwolf, Raven, Nashville Repertory Theater, Actors Bridge Ensemble, Verge Theater and Oz Arts Nashville. From 2014–2019, she was the Director of the BFA-Directing program at Belmont University. In addition to her work in the theater, she spent seven years working on public health and environmental campaigns for the Environmental Law & Policy Center of the Midwest. She received her BA (a double major in Theater and English-Creative Writing) from Knox College and an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University. She is currently a Lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University.
Gloria Newton is an Animation major with minors in Art, Computer Science, and Writing. She enjoys the stories of other people and telling her own.
