Directly to you, from Ken Russell

I’ve directed before. Eighty-one films and counting. Women in Love, Tommy, Altered States, The Devils, Lair of the White Worm… but never a play. A dozen operas, yes, from Faust to Madama Butterfly, but no plays. Don’t let that worry you. Anyone who has seen my films knows that fearlessness is my strong suit.

Even so, the first time I read Anthony Horowitz’s Mindgame, I was quaking. By the end of the first act, I was ready for a large Scotch. By the last page, I had finished the bottle. It was the scariest script I’d ever read—a drama where nothing is as it seems. Strains of violence, intrigue, questionable identity, serial killers, shape shifting and sexually loaded psychodrama, all set in a madhouse.

With Keith Carradine in place for the lead, and Lee Godart and Kathleen McNenny as his costars, we began the monthlong rehearsal process at SoHo Playhouse, down on Sixth Avenue. I invite you to look over my shoulder at my personal diaries.

Sunday, September 28
Arrive in NYC at midnight to set up quarters on Bleecker Street, a few blocks from the theater. Forgot to pack my teapot. I’m British, after all. Never mind. Everything is available, all night long, in Greenwich Village. I can enter the nightly absinthe-drinking contest at the nightclub next door, pop over to Kenny’s Castaways for head-banging rock, soothe my nerves with acoustic at the Bitter End, overdose on caffeine at Caffe Reggio, browse the sculptured chess sets lining Thompson Street or listen to the 4:30am apocalyptic grind of the garbage collector below my window. This is going to be fun.

Monday, September 29
Dinner with producers Darren Lee Cole and Monica Tidwell and the actors at the fish restaurant at the corner of MacDougal and Spring. Hilarity and good vibes.

Tuesday, September 30
First rehearsal. Meet and greet over bagels and coffee with the 20-odd participants. It takes a lot of elves to make magic: the fantastic production designer Beowulf Boritt, costume designer, hair and makeup artists, sound designer, lighting designer, stage manager, stunt coordinator, props master, understudies, investors, house crew, publicists, etc. After a photo shoot in the basement, we start by reading through the play with Keith, Lee and Kathleen working around the table. Who are these characters they play named Farquhar, Styler and Plimpton? Easier asked than answered. The characters are complex and spooky professionals with dark secrets: superficially a psychiatrist, a crime journalist, a nurse. That’s who they say they are. Behind the mask, who are they—friend or fiend?

Wednesday, October 1
I can’t resist getting the cast up on their feet, working in such a way that the body supports their investigation into the characters. I want to introduce a gun into the proceedings, maybe two. Not in the script? Even better. Let’s really play a mind game with the audience. Without shooting anyone, of course.

Friday October 3
Plimpton [played by McNenny] is going to need edible stage blood. Styler [Godart] requires knee pads for Act II. Farquhar [Carradine] needs a sketch pad. The beauty of directing a play, as opposed to a movie, is in the discovery process, which can cater to the needs of the characters in a way that filming doesn’t. Theater is a high art, one taken seriously by all involved. You can rehearse from start to finish in service of the characters, or from beat to beat. This allows them to develop their inner life and interactions organically. Each dramatic incident and the rhythm of the play pushes them to grow and deepen. In a movie, for logistical reasons, scenes are shot completely out of sequence: very tough on actors, who can’t ride the arc of the script in the same way, but must deliver moments detached from what precedes or follows them.

Saturday, October 4
That chair is taking a beating. Glenda Jackson, who won the Oscar for Women in Love, claims my directing style is to operate from my third eye while deliberately unnerving the actors—in order to inspire a more emotionally driven performance—by focusing on the furniture. “What’s that chair doing there?” she says I’d holler, sending all into that core, existential place in themselves from which great acting emerges. I’d never contradict Glenda, whom I adore. But I really am worried about that chair. We’re going to have to get a more durable one to stand up to the knocks it takes. Just hope the actors don’t get equally bruised in their fight scenes.

Sunday, October 5
Oh dear. Keith left his briefcase on the subway platform. There it sat, while he watched it in growing horror through the window as his subway car pulled out. Next train back, and it’s gone. Everything missing: license, keys, money, cell phone. And yet, what a pro: He still knows his lines, though no one is required to be off book yet. There are some things no one can steal from an actor! An actor would be good to have around in an earthquake or tornado. Resilient types, all of them, including my wife (an actor), who survived with me the loss of our home and all our possessions two years ago by fire. Just don’t let ’em ride the subway alone. They’re dreamers.

Mondays are days off in the theater. I cram my leisure activities into the one day, going to the movies (of course): Blindness, Appaloosa, What Just Happened?, W. Kmart for teacups, sheets and CD players; Virgin for CDs—things to enhance my humble abode. New socks and Halloween decorations. I’m mad about the rubber skulls in the chocolate shop’s window on Sullivan Street. I buy as many as I can, having the proprietor haul them out of the window display. I think they’re white chocolate, but am just as happy when I’m told that, no, they’re made of rubber. The proprietor is terrified I’m planning to take them home and eat them. He mistakes the wild glint in my eye for the intention to do something seriously disturbing and possibly suicidal. I just like Halloween. We don’t have it in England. I’m going trick-or-treating as the Grim Reaper.

Wednesday, October 8
A kind stranger has found and returned Keith’s lost briefcase with all its contents. I love New York! Only here do people return things lost! As Kathleen (Plimpton) says, in New York you learn to coexist empathetically with your neighbor in a way you never would need to in the wide spaces of Nebraska, where she’s from. Continue with further development of characters and some fight choreography, as led by our gentle giant of a fight choreographer [J. David Brimmer].

Thursday, October 9
An “escapologist” shows up to share some of his trade secrets. We’re working with the straitjacket now. Lee (Styler) is accepting this development for his character with all the zeal such an impediment requires. It can’t be easy, rehearsing emotional material for long stretches when you’re bound up like that.

Friday, October 10
We’re starting to mix in sound effects with the general rumpus on stage. Baying hounds, rifle fire, galloping horses, a hunting horn. Farquhar will use a pop-up book with a gothic theme, like castles. The tug-of-war with the sandwich onstage will have to be worked carefully; the food is ending up all over the place. To exert the most control and have it seem the least controlled, contrived, or clichéd: There’s the challenge. Control in the service of spontaneity.

Saturday, October 11
Occurs to me Keith should enter in a golf suit. He’s a doctor, isn’t he? I amend this idea eventually, given that the script states he’s just been in dreaded B Ward. But the clubs will stay. He could have been using his clubs to maintain discipline in B Ward. It always worked with my five kids. All you had to do was rattle the driver in its bag in a menacing way—they’d stop screaming and turn good as gold.

Sunday, October 12
Our first run-through of Act I and Act II. It’s called a “stumble-through,” to take the pressure off anxious actors who are still juggling lines, actions and props, let alone the intricate personalities of their characters as they bounce off one another. Even so, we’re on the way. There’s a lot of physicality in this play: roughhousing, teasing, bondage, bloodshed.…I don’t want to give too much away. Let’s just say it’s a danse macabre.

Wednesday, October 15
We’re bringing in elements of the set now: the rug, the wastepaper bin, the desk. The stage scalpel won’t cut through the adhesive tape used in a pivotal moment. All that fake danger is a challenge to the technicians, as well as to the actors.

Thursday, October 16
I want a pink file folder for Farquhar’s papers. And orange teacups and saucers. The blue doesn’t read from the audience. Arrgh! The armchairs creak. Oilcan, anyone?

Friday, October 17
Have added a World War II song, “Run, Rabbit, Run,” whose surreal music-hall quality makes the hair rise on the back of my neck. I want Styler to have a watch, a toy one that looks real. Our current waste bin is too light. It’s going to end up knocked over if we don’t replace it. Farquhar and Plimpton dancing off is looking good, as sexily malevolent as a heartless tango. Styler is as mercurially appealing as was Alan Bates. These sweet actors are taking to their monstrous characterizations like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. Hope they’re not taking their characters home with them.

Sunday, October 19
Run-through, makeup and hair consults.

Monday, October 20
Melissa Bruning, costume designer, flies in to meet with me and get the wardrobe together. I take her to my favorite trashy clothing shop on Bleecker Street to fire her imagination and soothe her jet lag. The load-in of the set begins. Beowulf and his beavers have been very busy making a masterpiece. He’s like one of those magic medieval carvers who can sculpt a scene in miniature out of one block of hardwood that folds together and fits exactly when closed shut on itself. Except that he works in life-size replicas.

Tuesday, October 21
With the set loading in upstairs, we’re having a line-through in the Huron Club, a 1920s hot spot for power brokers, speakeasy gangsters, flappers and molls, in the basement of the theater. The same place serves as a café-bar during intermission. A welcome relief for the theatergoers, no doubt, who will be halfway through the most harrowing entertainment of their lives, if I have anything to say about it.

Wednesday, October 22
While the load-in of the ambitious set continues onstage, everyone else gets a well-deserved and unexpected day off. Movies for me. I have now made my way through the entire oeuvre of Tennessee Williams DVDs in two weeks. Ah’m starting to talk in an antebellum Southern accent, but at least Ah’m conversant with his work, now. Brando is god. I’m getting into this play-directing thing. May have found my calling.

Thursday, October 23
Stage lighting coming together. Sound cues, including Stravinsky and Delius, refined under Bernard Fox’s capable hands. Hmm, I prefer the dinosaur pop-up book to the castle one. Styler is suffering in that bulky straitjacket. We’re going to have to redesign it. It’s as thick as a crocodile’s hide, and bound to suffocate him under the lights. We want to keep the drama in the realm of illusion. How about pince-nez glasses for Farquhar? Nurse Plimpton looks powerful in her pink Lulu wig and rock-star boots. This young grande dame of the stage (grande damsel?) is going to tear the house down. Though I’m not sure she entirely trusts me.

Friday, October 24
Tech rehearsal. Schedule has moved from mornings to afternoons and night. Erik Parillo, understudy, is doubling as winch-mover backstage for our ingenious set. An enormous hand-operated clockwork gear and wheel is precision-timed to the action onstage. As massive as something out of Metropolis. Eric has his aerie: a nest with stopwatch, backstage light, gloves that grip. One-quarter crank every 60 seconds. Now, that’s dedication.

Saturday, October 25
Keith and Lee get haircuts appropriate to their characters. They’re in the Army now: no turning back, no AWOL. The show must go on. Art for heart’s sake. I’m as proud of a group of people as ever I’ve been. The craft of theater has a magic that is based on intimacy, skill, grace, willingness, endeavor, investigation, trust, doggedness, inspiration and surprise—to create a massive and baroque illusion, larger than life yet brimming with tiny, impeccable nuances of relationship and mood. Mindgame will pull people into its emotional spell, spin them and deliver them safely again, changed by the tumble. I certainly have been. Thank you, New York.

Mindgame is playing at the SoHo Playhouse