This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The role and function of theatre direction is a hotly contested field. What is its relation to the playtext? Is the director the playwright's best friend or worst enemy? And why did theatre directing only emerge at a specific point in theatre history, in the course of the nineteenth century? The module will introduce key theatre directors, their work, and their writings, and thereby develop an understanding of the idea of 'directors’ theatre’, and of the relation between a playtext and its production on stage. Students will apply and test the ideas and positions of various directors studying exemplary productions through recordings, archival sources, as well as watching live performance and developing their own approach towards staging a given playtext. We will therefore be able to explore, through the lens of these directors, some very fundamental questions: What is theatre, and what is it there for?
10 lectures and screenings of 2 hours
10 seminar sessions of 2 hours
(approx.) 3 theatre visits of approx. 3 hours each
1 personal one-to-one progress tutorial (compulsory)
Other individual tutorial advice during the tutor's weekly office hour
21 weekly hours of private study, research, reading, writing, and group work over the 12 week term
This module is assessed by 100% coursework submission:
- 25% Structured Bibliography (2 A4 pages; 1,000 words equivalent),
- 25% Essay 1 (Research Summary), 1,500 words
- 50% Essay 2 (Research Essay on a selected question on one specific director), 2,500 words
Bradby, David, and David Williams (1988), Directors' Theatre, Basingstoke: Macmillan
Boenisch, Peter M. (2015), Directing Scenes and Senses: The Thinking of Regie. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Delgado, Maria M, and Dan Rebellato, eds (2010), Contemporary European Theatre Directors, Abingdon and New York: Routledge
Innes, Christopher, and Maria Shevtsova (2013), Introduction to Theatre Directing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pavis, Patrice (2012), Contemporary Mise en Scène: Staging Theatre Today, Abingdon and New York: Routledge
Shepherd, Simon (2012), Direction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (Readings in Theatre Practice)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
1 demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the historical emergence and the development of theatre direction, mise en scène and Regie from the late nineteenth century to the present,
2 understand the approaches and innovations of major theatre directors, such as Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, Robert Wilson, Katie Mitchell and others,
3 develop their critical understanding of different directorial approaches to a play or other textual source, including a familiarity with fundamental specialist terminology,
4 engage critically with primary historical sources and documents on the practice of theatre direction,
5 acquire an understanding of fundamental steps, processes and strategies of 'staging a play' (or another source),
6 apply academic research skills in the retrieval, study, and evaluation of primary and secondary source material.
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