This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module engages with a diversity of approaches to theatre directing through a series of workshops, lectures, seminars, videos, and practical experiments. The module opens with a programme of lectures and exercises that explore the relations between directing and performance, design, writing and composition. This culminates in an assessed group project to be performed in which students will engage with and interrogate directing as practice. The module continues with a series of theme-based workshops on such topics as 'interrogating the classics', ‘directing vs devising’ and ‘directing with new technologies’. Practitioners studied will vary each year but an indicative list might include Robert Lepage, Katie Mitchell, Simon McBurney, Ariane Mnouchkine, Frank Castorf, Thomas Ostermeier, Romeo Castelluci and Robert Wilson. The module will consider directing in relations to live art and new performance and will explore issues of gender, race, culture and sexuality within the practice of directing. In terms of its content, delivery and assessment, this module is designed to be innovative, collaborative and student-centred.
6 Hours Per Week (3 Hour Practical Session (Whole Module) / 3 Hour Practical Session (Seminar Groups)), plus 228 hours of independent study across the 12 week term
100% Coursework: Written Assessment 2500 Words (40%); Group Performance and Written Summary (60%)
• M. Delgado and D. Rebellato (2010) Contemporary European Theatre Directors, New York: Routledge
• J. Harvie and Andy Lavender eds. (2010) Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• K. Mitchell (2008) The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre, New York: Routledge
• S. Mitter and M. Shevtsova (2005 ) Fifty Key Theatre Directors, New York: Routledge
• M. Shevtsova and C. Innes (2009) Directors/Directing: Conversations in the Theatre: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• A. Sidiropoulou (2011) Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
By taking this module, students will be able to:
-Understand the relationship between the work of the director and the processes of theatrical production within a range of performance contexts;
-Interrogate, question and re-evaluate the practice of theatre directing;
-Understand the processes of production in contemporary performance practice and to encourage their creative and intellectual abilities in this area;
-Explore the connections between performance theory and theatrical practice;
-Demonstrate knowledge of the processes and conventions of theatre directing;
-Demonstrate an understanding of the theatrical forms and conventions within which selected performance texts are operating;
-Demonstrate their knowledge of contemporary approaches to directing and performance;
-Demonstrate their skills in performance practice.
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