The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre (review)

A thorough account of both what to do as a director and how to do it effectively awaits readers in Katie Mitchell's The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre. Directors who are young in their careers and are aiming for professional work in the theatre have the most to gain from this inspiring book written by a proven director. Actors would do well to read the author's honest reflections of what challenges the director when working with actors, written with much respect for and sensitivity to the process of acting. Those of us who direct and/or act while maintaining our artistic home in an academic setting will appreciate how well the author expresses the professional director's process. Mitchell shares the director's process (and divides her book) in three chronological stages: Part 1: Preparing for Rehearsals; Part 2: Rehearsals; and Part 3: Getting into the Theatre and the Public Performances. She finishes by sharing how she learned what she knows as a director and by including some interesting final thoughts regarding the nature of acting in Part 4: Context and Sources.

In part 1, it is clear that preparation is one of the author's highest priorities. Mitchell uses Chekhov's The Seagull, which she directed in 2007 at the National Theatre in London, as her pre-rehearsal- and rehearsal-period example text. Mitchell thoroughly explains a number of essential research duties, such as the expected examinations of time and place in which the play was written, the time and place of the play's story, the life of the playwright, and the importance of previous action, among others. She thoughtfully reminds the reader to exercise an unhurried response to a play, and to "[r]esist the desire to rush at the material with your own ideas and step back in order to assess the ideas of the writer and what is actually on the page in front of you" (3). Similarly, and with some good-natured humor, Mitchell calls upon directors to compose character biographies to guard against runaway actors. She writes: "Always measure your suppositions about the past against what the character does and says in the present action of the play. There is no point building an extraordinary past for a character, then discovering that this colourful person cannot credibly say and do all that they have to in the action of the play. Preparing a biography with this in mind will help you to stop an actor from inventing a tuba-playing, ex-ice-skating manic depressive from scratch in order to make their performance 'interesting'" (24).

One of Mitchell's most helpful clarifications is when she confirms for younger directors what exactly a "concept" is in her third chapter, "Investigating the Big Ideas of the Play." "Director's concept" tends to be a prickly term and is often misused. Here, the author distinguishes director's concept from the ideas of the play, all of which must be understood and, more importantly, decided on by the director. The author says that "[a] concept is something that the director imposes on a play. An idea is what the writer focused on whilst writing the play—either consciously or unconsciously" (47).

In chapter 4, "Analysing the Action of the Play," another hallmark of the director's process is covered in a helpful way: that of dividing the play's text into manageable units, or what Mitchell describes as "events." She explains that "[o]n a simple level, a play is a series of changes that take place amongst a group of people. To qualify for 'event' status, a change must affect everyone in the scene in some tangible way. A simple example of an event in The Seagull is when Konstantin stops the performance of his play halfway through. Everyone is clearly affected by his action—whether they verbalise their reactions or not" (56).

This first part of the book is one of...