Campion filmed Friends largely in long, static shots, in which her actors are continually moving around and out of frame, re-arranging the drama in front of the audience, and suggesting the life bustling around the edges of the screen.
In her shows, actors do not declaim: if they are anxious or frightened, they stumble anxiously or fearfully over their words, to the detriment, sometimes, of audibility.
Less sweet: Ms. Elias-Reyes also had full-volume barkers selling their water and icy mush right in front of her actors.
The scenes are staged haphazardly by Ms. Capellaro, who arranges her actors in straight lines or tucks them away in a corner of the stage.
Dana Nechustan, the film's director, bathes her actors in a pale blue light that deepens the sad tone.
Unfortunately Ms. Wasserberg pushes her actors in the extreme opposite direction: to strident Stepford-children pantomime and choreographic fussiness, sabotaging the play from the start.
The hope comes across in the giddiness of her actors, who take to the material with welcoming arms.
Every morning she lights candles for her actors in Brompton Oratory, and every night prays to St. Anthony of Padua for the success of her productions.
Decker's first feature, "Butter on the Latch," was born of a conspicuously documentary impulse: Decker placed her actors in an actual and functioning "Balkan camp," a residential workshop for music and dance in the deep countryside.
Unlike most directors working in Germany, Mitchell expects her actors to research or imagine the biographies of their characters – another aspect closer to the realist rather than the Brechtian tradition.
