Directing for the Stage E-Book

Richard Williams

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 356

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

What is the role of a Director? Tyrannical dictator or creative persuader? Why does the audience matter when interpreting a play? How do you get the best out of actors and what do they expect from you? Directing for the Stage addresses the key questions surrounding this venerable and yet often invisible craft, offering practical guidance on the crucial moments of creating a stage production, including budgeting, auditions, rehearsals, opening night and beyond. From knotty discussions on Shakespeare, to when to call a coffee break, all aspects of the Director's art are examined, including the history and development of the stage Director; how to commission and original play or obtain rights for an existing work; how to timetable the production process - from concept to last night and an hour-by-hour guide to rehearsals and all major approaches. Fully illustrated with 31 colour and 19 black & white photographs.

Leseprobe

Directing for

the Stage

Richard Williams

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2018 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

© Richard Williams 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 380 6

DEDICATION

The book is dedicated to the memory of Alan Dossor, an inspiring and committed theatre director, who touched the lives of all who worked with him.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following for their help in preparing this book. My wife Joanna MacGregor for patiently reading and correcting the text; Geraldine Cooke for suggestions with the text; designers Janey Gardner and Jane Wheeler, lighting and projection designer Arnim Freiss, and computer designer Bart Fiut for their superb technical and photographic help; photographers Carol Baugh, Mike Eddows, Tricia de Courcy Ling, Alastair Muir, Huset Mydtskov and Nick White for their generous help with photographs.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE DIRECTOR

2THE ROLE OF THE DIRECTOR

3PRE-PRODUCTION – SELECTING THE PLAY

4PRE-PRODUCTION – GETTING READY

5WORKING WITH ACTORS AND THE CREATIVE TEAM

6REHEARSALS – GETTING STARTED

7LATER REHEARSALS

8FINAL REHEARSALS AND OPENING NIGHT

9DIRECTING OTHER TYPES OF PRODUCTION

10TOURING, REVIVALS AND REPLACEMENT REHEARSALS

11TRAINING TO BECOME A DIRECTOR

APPENDIX: TWENTY THINGS FOR A DIRECTOR TO DO

GLOSSARY

RECOMMENDED READING

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

MY OWN EXPERIENCE

I have had a career as a director that has now lasted for over forty years. Like everyone in theatre I’ve had a mixed bag of achievements and disappointments. I’ve directed over 200 productions and hope that my story and my observations can be of value to any younger persons embarking on this career. This book is intended to be a very practical guide into the profession but, more than many other jobs, directing is about personality and there are very many paths by which directors realize their productions. Some directors are highly practical in their approach, treating the process of rehearsal almost like a military operation; others are dictatorial in the Hollywood stereotype of the director. Some can be inspiring, although personally they are dreamy and vague characters; and others might treat the job as if it were a therapy session: sometimes for whom is unclear – whether the director him/herself or the cast. All I can do is tell it as experience has taught me.

Liverpool Playhouse. Originally built as The Star Music Hall. It was the first repertory theatre to own its own building. BART FIUT

From a very early age I was interested in performing, and when I left school I got a junior position at The Liverpool Playhouse as a student assistant stage manager at £1 per week, then under the directorship of David Scase, who had been a member of Joan Littlewood’s company. Among the actors were Colin Welland (who later wrote the film Chariots of Fire), Lynda Marchal (later writing as Lynda La Plante) and Warren Clark. From David Scase I learnt about discipline and the wider social implications of theatre; from Colin Welland I learnt about story telling because he had a wonderful store of stories, mainly about working-class life; and Warren Clark just exuded joy at being in the theatre at all.

After graduating from Manchester University with an English and Drama degree, followed by a postgraduate course at Oxford, I carried on acting with great enthusiasm, until I was faced with the dilemma of whether to accept a lecturer post at Lund University, Sweden, or whether to pursue a new role that had become available at the newly established Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. I applied for the position of publicity manager and, to my surprise, was offered the job, which secured my future in theatre. At the time, I didn’t realize that The Everyman was soon to become the most adventurous and admired theatre company in the country. This was because the board of the theatre had just appointed a new artistic director called Alan Dossor. Over the three years I was there, I was able to combine my publicity role with acting in small roles on the stage, which gradually grew with the success of the company.

THE EVERYMAN THEATRE

The Everyman at this time (the early to mid-1970s) became a landmark company. After a disastrous opening season where the company delivered thirteen plays, twelve of which were premieres, and which attracted 19 per cent audiences, the emphasis changed and the company got into its stride. Actually the formula for what would be the company’s subsequent success was already embedded in the second play of the first season. The play was called The Braddocks’ Time by Stephen Fagan, and told the story of the radical Liverpool MP Bessie Braddock and her husband Jack, who through the thirties to the sixties fought for social justice in the city. The play contained songs (generally rather plaintive in tone), was about a local topic and had an unashamed left-wing political perspective. These elements continued to be the strong ingredients that, in following productions, like John McGrath’s two hits Soft, or a Girl and The Fish in the Sea, transformed the theatre’s fortunes from a disaster to a national success story. This path led to the company’s most commercially successful production, Willy Russell’s play John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert, which transferred to the West End.

In terms of stage directing and play selection, the clear lesson to be taken from that period is that a director with a clear and consistent policy will identify and mature the audience. People generally like to know what they are going to get for their money, and what they most enjoy is variation in detail. So, for example, in buying a ticket for a football match many things are predictable – the number of players on the pitch, the rules of the game, the length of the match and so on. However, the situation is very different in theatre. A ticket for, let us say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream leaves very many unknowns. It could be a joyous comedy romp with fifteen actors, or four actors giving the play a dark interpretation without joy. The Everyman Theatre found that establishing the likely parameters of a show – local, musical, comical, political – identified and drew in a loyal and lively audience.

Richard III at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Jonathan Pryce, right, as King Richard; Anthony Sher, third from right, as Buckingham. CAROL BAUGH

The phrase ‘house style’ isn’t used much any more but it still very much exists. At Richmond’s Orange Tree and The Finborough in Earl’s Court you’re likely to see a forgotten classic, which has been dusted down and given a new lease of life. The Lyric Theatre and The Young Vic in London tend to present plays for young adult audiences, often with younger performers. The theatres outside London are having a more difficult time because financial constraints have resulted in fewer home-produced plays and, consequently, it has become more difficult to sustain a clear-cut policy.

Alan Dossor at The Everyman in the 1970s stood for the strong socialism of the time. This chimed well with the audiences in Liverpool, with its history of radicalism, which was at that time fuelled by the struggle against de-industrialization. Dosser’s imagination in planning a season of plays, his rigour in rehearsals in demanding precision and high-definition performances, and his recognition that serious intentions can often be best served through humour made him a constantly inspiring – though often intimidating – leader. He made very great demands, but left plenty of space for actors to find their own solutions. There were guest directors, but not many, because Alan was keen to make his mark and use the opportunity to both establish his style of theatre and to establish himself as an influential director. Here is another lesson: a director should always be busy, that way you can improve your own skills and avoid dwelling on either the triumph or disaster of the last production.

I enjoyed being busy doing both stage work and publicity, but I realized that acting involved quite a lot of waiting around. I don’t mean between jobs because I was only working at the one theatre, but even in that context there was still a lot of hanging about. It didn’t sit well with me to be called for rehearsal, arrive on time and be told that it was running late so come back in an hour. Another lesson for a director: try not to keep the actors waiting in rehearsal or at auditions.

NOTTINGHAM PLAYHOUSE

Poster for Trumpets and Drums at the Nottingham Playhouse. BART FIUT

One of the guest directors at The Everyman was Richard Eyre, who took over as artistic director at Nottingham Playhouse. He invited a group of the Everyman people to join him in Nottingham, myself included. I was doing the same combination of acting and selling the shows when I was invited to apply for a job at The Arts Council of Great Britain, as it then was. This involved visiting two, three or more productions a week, and talking to the directors and attending board meetings. After a year I realized what I wanted to do was to direct. I arrogantly thought I could do it as well as many of the people I had seen doing the job through my Arts Council visits. I met with Richard Eyre and asked him to consider my returning to Nottingham, but as his assistant director. Amazingly, and to my lifelong gratitude, he agreed. From him I learnt about directing.

I learnt very many things during the following three years. In no particular order:

• Directing takes time. Be patient.

• High-definition acting.

• Dealing with awkward actors.

• Pre-planning and organization.

• A light touch in rehearsal and trusting actors.

• A cinematic view of the stage picture.

From Nottingham I realized my ambition and subsequently got the job of artistic director, in succession, of Manchester’s Contact Theatre, then to The Oxford Stage Company (now Headlong), The Unicorn Arts Theatre in London and then Liverpool Playhouse. I had a long spell working in the commercial theatre and the West End. Along the way I’ve worked in New York, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Canada, the London fringe, opera in this country and abroad, commercial and subsidized companies and so on. The usual mix for most directors, I guess.

From this amalgamation of experiences I have written what I hope will be useful to others wanting to follow this interesting, sometimes frustrating, sometimes amusing, but highly creative path.

This book is intended for people at the start or in the early stages of directing. It is laid out very simply in chronological order – from a history of the director in drama, to gathering ideas for a play, through preparations with the creative team, auditioning, rehearsing, technical and dress rehearsals, giving notes to the cast, opening and closing nights. There are sections on other areas where a theatre director might work and, finally, a roundup of the options for formal training as a director. Where it seems useful I have given an hour-by-hour description of the director’s responsibilities. I have based the descriptions of rehearsals on a three- or four-week full-time period. The reader will have to make adjustments depending on his or her timescale.

It is written with a view to helping a wide variety of people coming to directing – a student without professional experience, a professional actor who is directing for the first time, a director of an amateur theatre group, a teacher daunted by a school or college play, a directing student at a drama school, or a university student who is trying their hand at directing – and anyone else who wants to know about the role and responsibilities of this unusual, but rewarding, career.

I suggest you read it straight through to get an overall idea of the scope of the book, and then double back to specific sections as you need. Enjoy the book and enjoy directing!

1

THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE DIRECTOR

Where did the stage director come from? Has there always been such a figure? How has the role developed? Who are the key individuals? What are the key developments?

Mike Roberts as Scrooge, Tom Silburn as Spirit of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol at the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke. ARNIM FRIESS

A stage director should have, like a classical musician, a good understanding of the history of their craft. The director should know the history and the applied theatrical conventions of every period of drama, and the names and achievements of the main personalities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The following list is by no means exhaustive, and a suggested reading list of plays is appended at the end of the book.

ANCIENT GREECE

In Ancient Greece, the birthplace of Western drama, the director, writer and actor were originally all the same person. The drama derived from dithyrambic rituals, which were the hymns sung and danced to in honour of a god. Drama began as the dithyrambic rituals surrounding the celebration of the god Dionysius – the god of wine, fertility and ecstasy.

Developing from religious ritual, tradition has it that the first actor/writer/director was called Thespis. Little is known about him, and there is no surviving play from him. However, he is considered to be the first actor and the English word for an actor, ‘thespian’ (not used seriously now, but applied jokingly to an actor behaving in a ‘grand manner’), is derived from his name. He is also credited with linking the chorus with the plot, establishing the idea of a leading character (the protagonist) and refining the masks worn by the actor to define the different characters he played.

Greek amphitheatre, built fourth century BC. Seating capacity an astonishing 14,000 and possessing near-perfect acoustics.

The solo, male actor took on several different roles and made each one clearly identifiable by changing the mask of the character. Thespis revolutionized the scope of the drama by acting individual roles, in contrast to the singing and dancing of the chorus. Thespis is known because he won the drama competition in 534BC, and because Aristotle, and the statesman Solon, recorded their impressions of him. Solon asked Thespis if he wasn’t ashamed of telling lies as an actor, saying such behaviour would one day infect everyday conversation!

The actors wore built-up shoes called kotherni, masks and body padding for playing female roles. The performances were in huge, outdoor amphitheatres with near perfect acoustics. Attendance at the drama festivals was the duty of all citizens.

The writer was also the director (‘didaskalos’ meaning ‘teacher’). The writer Aeschylus later added a second actor, and Sophocles added a third. There are thirty texts of Ancient Greek tragedies, of which Oedipus Rex is the best known, and about twelve texts of comedies. There is no record of modern-day productions trying to recreate the single, double or triple actor system of the original, although the chorus is always presented in a variety of guises. In the production of Oedipus Rex at The National Theatre, the chorus were dressed as businessmen. The comedies are often too topical to be judged worth regular revival (although Sondheim wrote a version of Aristophanes’ The Frogs), but the tragedies still form an important part of the Western theatre repertoire. Any director should investigate the plays for their contemporary psychological insight, powerful impact and economically direct plotting.

ANCIENT ROME

The Romans, as in many things, adopted and rather coarsened the basic principles of Greek theatre. One of the differences was that as the Empire became Christianized, tension grew between church and the stage. The writer Plautus created the notion of the comic stock character, such as the Boastful Soldier (miles gloriosus) or the Lustful Old Man (senex amator). These stock characters later developed into Commedia dell’Arte. The tragedies of Greek drama became coarser and bloodier in the plays of Seneca, though it was these plays, not the more sophisticated Greek equivalents, that appealed to the early Elizabethan writers in works such as The Spanish Tragedy (Kyd) and Gorboduc (Norton and Sackville). In terms of the role of the director, there is nothing to add from the Roman experience!

Following the fall of the Roman Empire (AD476) there followed a period of about 500 years during which there was no drama in a form we would recognize.

While references are found to actors (histriones), jugglers, rope dances in nomadic tribes, remnants of Roman mimes, popular pagan festivals and rites, there is no formal drama.

Epic poems, like Beowulf, were recited and sung by troubadours (called scops), but these are the equivalent of our contemporary singer/ songwriters (for example Bob Dylan) rather than dramatists or playwrights. And there is certainly no indication of a directorial influence.

MIDDLE AGES

The church had been in opposition to the recitation of pagan epics, but became itself the birthplace of the next stage of dramatic history – in churches. In the second-half of the tenth century small pieces of liturgical drama were introduced into church services as a teaching aid. The first was based on the Christian Easter story of the encounter by the three Mary’s with the resurrected Christ, when He asks them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’ or in Latin ‘Quem queritas?’. The choir originally sang this antiphonally. The Medieval Mystery Play developed from a simple dramatization of key moments in the Christian calendar. At first these were performed inside the church but, in 1210, Pope Innocent III banned performance inside the church, and responsibility for these, by now very popular, dramas was taken on by the city guilds (unions or confraternities of tradesmen).

Once the guilds were involved it is certain that there was some sort of director. The staging was on a mobile pageant wagon or in a static formation of multiple stages. The staging was surprisingly elaborate. In charge of the operations were The Keeper of the Register, which was an important position and had extensive directorial control, and The Master of Secrets, who was in charge of the machines (secrets) – the special effects. The special effects included flying (angels), trapdoors (devils) and the Hellmouth (a monster through whose mouth the damned entered Hell). There is a rather wonderful illustration of a Mystery Play in rehearsal, with a director figure who has a long pointer, perhaps to indicate who speaks next or to prompt the performer into action! The cycle of Mystery Plays would begin at dawn with the first wagon touring the town stopping at chosen places and performing the creation story. A procession of wagons would follow the same route, while the audience remained in the same place. When it was dark, the final story, The Last Judgement, would be performed with flaming torches and the Hellsmouth. When I directed a much shortened version of the play cycle, I and the cast were struck by how very powerfully the plays spoke – even to a predominantly secular audience, especially the division of people at the end into the Blest and the Damned.

ELIZABETHAN STAGE

The theatre of the second-half of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century was, perhaps, less like that of our own time than is generally thought. There is a temptation to make associations in Shakespeare with our contemporary events. As Jonathan Miller points out in his book Subsequent Performances, the semiotics, sociopolitical circumstances, theatrical conventions and questions of fashion would almost certainly, if we could time travel, make the original performance of Twelfth Night not only strange for us, but in many ways incomprehensible. Just because we can find so much to recognize in Shakespeare’s plays, and by extension in the plays of his contemporaries, doesn’t mean that everything about them is similar to our own conventions or ways of thinking.

As far as the role of a directorial figure is concerned the following observations can be made.

Diagrammatic image of the Elizabethan theatre. Note the large thrust stage with the canopy over it. GREG FIUT

The companies of actors in Elizabethan theatre were semi-permanent and, as such, the actors would have established a strong sense of understanding and ensemble performing. Experienced actors working together would hardly need a director to arrange the positions on the stage (blocking). We know from those companies who now work together over a long period of time that stage positioning becomes a matter of generous common sense. In other words, the actors who are speaking take a more central position on the stage and give way to other actors on the stage, as necessary. Each actor would have a copy only of the lines the character spoke, and the cue line to each speech. So the actors would be listening and receiving as if they had never heard them before, and actually they only just had! To a modern actor, expecting three, four or more weeks of rehearsal, this sounds simply hair-raising.

Given the intensity of the performance schedule and very short rehearsal times, and the local competition from the bear-baiting and cock-fighting, it seems likely there was less time and maybe less interest in details. The King’s Men (of which Shakespeare was a member) presented eighteen different plays in twenty-two days at Hampton Court during Christmas 1603. Typically, the rehearsal period for a play would be under seven days, and that would include the daytime performances of other plays in the repertoire. It seems that sometimes the only rehearsal would be on the morning of the first performance. Because of the lack of reference to rehearsals, as we might know them, scholars have concluded that, in some cases, there would be no group rehearsal other than a run through on the day of the first performance. The actors, having just their own lines and the cue, would be expected to learn their part in isolation, whenever they could.

The theatre of this period would not have been weighed down with the demands of ‘naturalism’. This requires close textual analysis and, generally, in contemporary theatre, involves an extensive exchange of ideas between the actor and the director. The Shakespearean drama is epic and poetic, and while it was acute in representing the observable behaviour of people, there was no Freudian or Jungian psychoanalysis, which is brought to bear (either consciously or unconsciously) in today’s rehearsal room.

It is worth making a connection between the pageant wagons of the medieval mystery plays and the Elizabethan theatre of the Globe or the Rose, and suggesting that the Elizabethan theatre is basically an extension of a wagon parked in a balconied inn yard.

The Elizabethan theatre worked within certain conventions. Patrick Tucker’s company, The Original Shakespeare Company, put on some very interesting performances in the 1990s using only ‘cue-scripts’. This resulted in highly charged, concentrated performances. Tucker is convinced that the lines contain very many signals and indications to the actors as to the requirements of performance. In fact some actors would insist that ‘actioning’ (seeChapter 6) is redundant in Shakespeare plays because the writing tells the actor how to analyse the line and how to act the line.

Whether the author or the leading actor took a directorial role is uncertain. The process of preparing a play at this time is described in detail in Tiffany Stern’s book Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan.

RESTORATION THEATRE AND BEYOND

During the second fertile period of dramatic writing, in the seventeenth century, the period of the Restoration (1660–1688), it is more certain that the author and/or theatre manager acted as the director of the play. Very important developments took place in the design of theatres and the presentation of plays. For a start, the two original Restoration theatres were housed in indoor tennis courts. These were rectangular and the stage took up nearly half the floor space. On stage, the bare Elizabethan platform was replaced by an acting stage backed by a scenic stage with sliding flats and a vista stage beyond. With only a few changes, this is the basic proscenium arch layout of the majority of Western theatres today.

As for directing, we can proceed through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and see the same sort of arrangements: either a leading actor or theatre manager (and in many cases this was one and the same person) took on the responsibility of organizing the stage presentation of the play.

THE TERRIBLE EFFECT OF THE THEATRES ACT

The history of the English theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries centres on a number of outstanding actor managers. Starting with David Garrick, all of the leading actors are recorded as bringing a new and exciting realism to the stage. This is a very surprising idea when we see it recorded that Garrick, when playing Hamlet, had a special wig made, which he could activate so that the hair stood on end when he saw the ghost of Old Hamlet! Garrick was noted as having a conversational style – he made the most of death scenes.

The reason why it is the actor managers, and not the playwrights, who are noted in this period is that there are scarcely more than a dozen plays of note in the nearly 200 years between 1737 and the early twentieth century. This is because of the Theatres Act, which – among other restrictions on theatres – introduced the censor, which more or less dampened down exciting and controversial themes. The focus over this long period is on revivals of the classics or new plays, which are now forgotten. The writers of new plays, broadly speaking, self-censored themselves, in the knowledge that if they didn’t, someone else would. The repeal of the Theatres Act in 1968 resulted in a huge tidal wave of new work from writers such as David Hare, Howard Brenton, Trevor Griffiths, Howard Barker, Adrian Mitchell and Caryl Churchill. This cascade of new writing continues in this country to the present day.

NINETEENTH CENTURY

Kemble and Macready were both outstanding actor managers of the early nineteenth century, but it was Kean who brought a development to the production of plays. Charles Kean (1811–68) was particularly noted for his insistence on authentic designs, both of costume and settings. His productions of Shakespeare were admired for their attempt to create an accurate historical look. This is the link with more modern production conventions.

MEININGEN COMPANY

The real start of theatre directing, as we know it now, came with the largely unknown Duke Georg II of Saxe Meiningen (reigned 1866–1914). He was passionate about the theatre, had seen the development of a more natural theatre in London and carried the process further with his own court theatre. From the 1860s to the 1890s, with his stage director, Chronegk, and an actress, Ellen Franz (later his wife), he pioneered a naturalness of delivery that was the starting point for the exciting developments of the twentieth century. The Duke was the designer, sometimes director and financier, of the company. He tried to bring everything on stage in a unified vision. The verdict on the Duke’s company was that the conventional, flamboyant acting style of the period was still very much present, but the deployment of the crowds of extras (apparently as many as 200 in some productions) was highly disciplined and, importantly, gave individuality to the extras in the crowd scenes.

The company was not built around a star actor, but was more of an ensemble. There were recognizable rehearsals, where Chronegk would encourage the actors to understand the whole play and not just their own scenes. He would devote time to the overall look of the play, and investigate the meaning and emotional content of a scene, as well as pay attention to the historical references of the play. The Duke worked with his stage director and designer to create a style of theatre that not only employed an historical look, but that offered the performers what today we would describe as ‘a world’ to inhabit. This involved replacing painted backdrops with a three-dimensional stage setting. Together with detailed research of the historical period, the elements for the ground-breaking work of Stanislavski were laid down.

With the technological advances coming with the Industrial Revolution, theatre production became more and more complex. Lighting, gas and later electricity, enabled different lighting states and, consequently, required someone to organize it. Audiences had a growing interest in spectacle – shipwrecks, train crashes – and this also needed co-ordination.

ANDRE ANTOINE (1858–1943)

In France in the 1870s and 1880s, André Antoine carried forward the ideas of the Meiningen Company. With an emphasis on ‘naturalism’ his work was recognized as being another move away from the more bombastic acting legacy of the large theatres, which characterized early and mid-nineteenth-century European theatre.

Because the concepts of ‘naturalism’ and ‘realism’ are central to the changes in art in general, and theatre in particular, it is worth pausing here to define each of them.

In theatre the use of the word ‘realism’ refers to a play that is recognizable as a slice of everyday life, and not a theatrical confection. The issues the play discusses should be important and not trivial, and the action should be straightforward. It is distinguished from romanticism and the mythological. ‘Naturalism’ on the other hand refers to the influence that environment and background have on a character and action. It concerns the pressures and changes brought about by circumstances. So a play may be realistic and the performances naturalistic. In actual fact the two terms are now more or less interchangeable. These twin forces exercised immense influence on the theatre in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Antoine was devoted to the idea of the fourth wall, i.e. the audience is eavesdropping on events in a room (or other location) the wall of which, nearest the audience, has been removed.

TWENTIETH CENTURY

Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938)

The star, the guru, the original! Although Stanislavski is popularly credited with the invention of the director, we should acknowledge, as he did, the debt he owed to the Meiningen Court Company. He watched their performances when they toured to Moscow in 1890.

Stanislavski’s most celebrated association was with Anton Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre (founded in 1898). From the earliest part of his professional career, Stanislavski employed, and extended, the detailed research that he witnessed in the Meiningen productions. Documents, pictures, even travelling to locations associated with the play in question, formed an essential part of the preparation for a production. In addition, while studying Chekhov’s plays, Stanislavski recognized that what people were saying did not necessarily represent what they felt. He understood what is called subtext. The story of the relationship between Chekhov and Stanislavski is intriguing and well documented.

Stanislavski – the originator of the first system for training actors. Subsequent actor training systems have been an extension of, or a reaction to, Stanislavski’s pioneering work.

Stanislavski’s work, as the only systematic description of an actor’s training, is described in very many ways. It is possible to think of his career as falling into three parts. In the early years he worked as an actor with good success. He was dissatisfied with what he witnessed of the conventional approach to acting, and moved onto directing in the middle stage of his development. His approach to directing was heavily research-based and, once he had done the research, the approach in the rehearsal room was rather direct and emphasized the externals of the process. So, for example, he was very strong on creating the sound world of the plays. Most importantly – in this period – he becomes aware of the implications of subtext. Following this middle period, he shifts the emphasis of his work from production to rehearsal. It is here he initiates his work on a systematic approach to acting. He recognized different types of acting: external performance, which can be thought of as copying or imitating actions and vocals; and internal or psychological, experienced or lived-through, the acting style he wanted to achieve with his system.

Stanislavski’s ‘system’, when later in life he was persuaded to write about it, might seem complex, and is regarded by some as unnecessary. As we shall see with Brecht, it is important to look at Stanislavski in the context of the conventionally flamboyant, gestural style of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, it might be possible to suggest that as most acting now is governed by the Stanislavski approach, there is less need to teach it, as it is what most actors have grown up watching and absorbing.

It is an indisputable fact that some people have an innate talent to transform into a fictional character and don’t seem to need any theoretical framework to achieve the most convincing performance. For others there is the danger of thinking that simply by obeying the rules, and investigating the character through the series of exercises, which comprise Stanislavski’s system, the outcome will automatically be a convincing performance. But after the relaxation exercises, the application of the questions and everything else suggested about the character creation in Stanislavski’s system, the actor still has to make the representation of the character his or her own, and add talent. (Stanislavski is discussed again in Chapter 3.)

It should not be overlooked that Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a close colleague of Stanislavski, took a major responsibility for setting up the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavski. Together they established what, at the time, was an unknown level of naturalism in their productions.

Max Reinhardt (1873–1943)

Reinhardt placed the actor at the centre of his productions, and many actors recorded how he managed to get the very best performances from them. He began by instigating a theatre/cabaret, which emphasized lightness and comedy. He directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1905 and released Shakespeare from the customary heavy, ponderous delivery of the text, common at the time. He was responsible for introducing the drama of Ancient Greece into the modern repertoire. He turned his attention to film and emigrated to the USA. His interest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream was undiminished and he filmed it in the 1935 with Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney.

Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940)

Although he had been an actor in Stanislavski’s company, Meyerhold disagreed fundamentally with his old boss. Stanislavski insisted on naturalism in the construction of the setting, in the realization of the sound effects, in the cut of the costume and, most of all, in the truth of the acting. Meyerhold was interested in quite a different set of theatrical skills: namely, the circus and street performers with the sense of mystery, sensation and delight they bring to their audiences. Clowns, acrobats, Commedia dell’Arte, Chinese and Japanese theatrical conventions, and all other popular forms of entertainment, produced for him the essence of theatre – playfulness.

He developed ‘biomechanics’, a system of scientifically inspired, mechanical, automatic physical moves, with which the actor produced physical movement to create emotion, in contrast to Stanislavski who demanded the internalized creation of emotion. In the absence of existing plays that conformed to his vision of theatre, he edited, rewrote and reorganized plays. One of the leading poets, playwrights and actors of the Russian Soviet revolution, Mayakovsky collaborated with Meyerhold several times and was said to have written The Bedbug especially for him. Again, in strict contrast to Stanislavski’s realism, Meyerhold wanted giant machine-like sets. His designs were like scaffolding and cranes, derived from the constructivist movement of post-revolutionary Russia, rather than the realistic interiors of the middle-class houses of Chekhov’s plays in the hands of Stanislavski. It is probably true to say that the seminal work and methods of Meyerhold and Stanislavski, in their different ways, have strongly influenced all Western theatre since.

Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883–1922)

Inspired equally by Stanislavski and Meyerhold, the Vakhtangov approach was a synthesis of both ways of thinking about acting. He called this synthesis ‘fantastic realism’ and brought together the apparent divisions of reality and artifice, psychology and physical expression, theatricality and behaviour. He used masks, music, dance and abstract costume, as well as close examination of the texts.

Michael Chekhov (1891–1955)

Regarded as Stanislavski’s best student, Michael Chekhov developed a psycho-physical approach to acting. Chekhov evolved a series of movement dynamics that apparently focused on the externals of acting, but were intended to enrich the inner, subconscious life of an actor’s character. His exercises and theories aim for transformation and imaginative realization of a role.

Erwin Piscator (1898–1966)

Admired by Brecht, who respected and was influenced by Piscator’s membership of the Communist Party, and his belief in satirical, political theatre, Piscator was an innovator in the staging of drama. He used film, moving stages, travelators and scaffolding, which was highly influential in both Europe and the USA.

Bertold Brecht (1898–1956)

Brecht – his politically and socially engaged form of theatre led to a very different approach from Stanislavski’s. Much of what he proposed is now embedded in our theatre practice.

When you look at Brecht’s life in detail, you realize that whatever you can say about him, the opposite is more or less true as well. He declared himself a poet and gained fame or notoriety by composing an anti-war song, The Legend of the Dead Soldier. Winning The Kleist Prize as a young man, his early plays were in the expressionist style before he wholeheartedly embraced left-wing politics and Marxism.

There is a great misunderstanding about Brecht. He is popularly thought of as an agit-prop kind of writer and director. He is regarded as someone who insists on hijacking the audience’s own ideas and imposing a way of thinking. In reality his aim was to get the audience to think about issues within the play, and relate those thoughts to issues outside. His writing and directing thrives on the complexity and contradictions of human behaviour.

Brecht thought the design of his plays was very important. He worked on detailed preparation with his designer, Caspar Neher, on a storyboard of the play. The finished set allowed space for the actors, gave an impression of period and place, while the aim was also to create lightness and beauty. One way of approaching Brecht, who remains a controversial figure in some places, is to think of him as re-introducing the conventions of Shakespeare’s theatre into the twentieth century. The similarities between Brecht and Shakespeare are striking:

• No matter how we present Shakespeare’s plays now, he had no fourth wall.

• Brecht uses narrators to advance the action; Shakespeare uses a chorus figure. Consider the similar functions of the singer in Caucasian Chalk Circle and the chorus in Henry V.

• Shakespeare introduces songs, as does Brecht.

• Shakespeare teases the audience with the notion that we know we are in a theatre watching a play. For example:

∘ In Twelfth Night Fabian says, ‘If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.’

∘ Hamlet, alone on the thrust stage of The Globe, which looked like a promontory and had a roof over it with stars painted on the underside says, ‘it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth [The Globe Theatre], seems to me a sterile promontory [the stage], this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament [the roof], this majestical roof [the roof again] fretted with golden fire [the painted stars …’.

• One of the major thrusts of Brecht’s ideas of theatre was that the audience would never forget they were in a theatre.

• Brecht is keen for the audience to know what happens next. Shakespeare only wrote one original play. Many educated audience members would already know the stories of Comedy of Errors, Holinshed’s Chronicles of Macbeth and so on.

Aristotle in The Poetics described the theatre of the Ancient Greeks. This, amazingly, has remained the blueprint for how to think of theatre for the most of two and a half thousand years. This involved identification with the characters, whereas Brecht was attempting to create a more dispassionate theatre.

The differences between Brecht’s theatre and Aristotelian theatre are summarized in the Table.

The great legacy of Brecht lies not so much in his writings about theatre, such as the difficult and abstruse Messingkauf Dialogues – which have led to so many slow, dull, politically heavy, yet strangely politically naive productions – but the plays, the organization of a company as an ensemble and, most importantly, as a director, his redefinition of what theatre could legitimately discuss.

Aristotle/Stanislavski v. Shakespeare/Brecht!

CONVENTIONAL THEATRE: ARISTOTELIAN

EPIC THEATRE: BRECHTIAN

Dominant, traditional, orthodox.

Dissident, subversive, resistant.

Theatre of illusion. Theatre of action.

Theatre of realism. Intellect.

Based on Aristotle’s Poetics.

Based on Plato’s Republic.

Models: Greek – Sophocles; Ibsen.

Epic tales of Homer, Dante.

Appeals to emotions and satisfies.

Appeals to reason and satisfies.

Psychological needs.

Intellectual needs. Objective.

Appeals to individuals. We relate, identify, feel empathy with the main character.

Appeals to the masses, moves us to action leading to social remedies.

No lasting consequences – emotions ephemeral.

A changed mindset, more permanent.

Suggestive, implicit, ambiguous.

Didactic, explicit, overt.

Interest in outcome of action.

Interest in course of action.

Emphasis on structure, causation, unity, cohesion.

Disconnected scenes, montage. Minimalism in props.

Assumes rational moral order.

Assumes chance. Nihilistic.

Affirmative sense of purpose. Fate controlled by Nemesis. Divine retribution, poetic justice.

Fate is chance. Random, chaos, absurdity.

Suffering is inherent in human condition. Leads to noble form of dignity.

Suffering is degrading, leading to brutalization and instinct for self-preservation.

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)

Although Artaud only produced one play in his lifetime, his thinking and writing about theatre was very influential. He wanted theatre to forget its preoccupation with psychology and his Theatre of Cruelty relied on elemental forces. The performance of The Cenci by Shelley was loud, windswept and spoken in a coded, non-verbal language – all aimed to shake the spectators from their conventional reactions. His work was the inspiration for Peter Brook’s experimental Theatre of Cruelty season with the RSC in the 1960s.

Yuri Lyubimov (1917–2014)

A very influential Russian director who also acted, he rejected the label ‘political theatre’ and described his work as a search for ways of expanding the range of the use of space and style. His productions of Crime and Punishment and Shakespeare won accolades and awards. He drew together the influences of both Stanislavski and Meyerhold – his work was both realist and expressionistic.

Joan Littlewood (1914–2002)