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  • The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing ed. by Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova
  • Michael Earley (bio)
The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing. Edited by Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; 296 pp.; $75.00 cloth, $24.99 paper, e-book available.

[Errata]

Although titled an “Introduction” this volume is far from introductory, offering us new insights along with a survey of contemporary directing styles through a careful selection of directors who relate to one another in terms of “schools of directing,” defined by variants like theatricality, the epic, total theatre, ensemble acting, improvisation, and uses of media and musicality.

The opening chapters, set historically, seem all too predictable when compared with other like introductory texts still in print: the birth of modern European art theatre directing as opposed to the tradition of actor-managers in the Anglo-American theatre. We hear yet again about the changes wrought by the Duke of Saxe Meiningen and his Players, which sound less innovatory with each retelling. We get yet another recounting of the contrasts between naturalism, realism, and symbolism. The opening chapters are the obligatory ones, straight out of the many academic theatre history books, which all say pretty much the same things.

About a third of the way through the book, however, the essays begin offering significantly new observations about the theories and practices of directing. The examples are well chosen and bold, and potentially unfamiliar to readers without broad and eclectic experience in viewing contemporary theatre. Examples begin with the Russians first and then the Germans, a bit from the French, and finally we travel into Eastern Europe and to a few experimental outposts in North America and Britain. No one coming to this introduction is likely to have heard of, much less seen, the kind of work that the authors go on to describe in detail.

What many will find contentious about this book is its Eurocentrism. Nothing is said about Asian directors or directing processes (apart from the obligatory nod to Asian practice reflected in the work of Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine). But the authors state at the outset that the restrictive length of the volume meant a choice had to be made to sacrifice Asia — and, they might have added, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Possibly more awkward is the paucity of directors from contemporary North America (only Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Peter Sellars, and Elizabeth LeCompte are mentioned) and Great Britain (a group slimmed down to Katie Mitchell, Declan Donnellan, and Simon McBurney). Crucially missing, too, is Italy (a bit is included on Giorgio Strehler, but his name is misspelled in the index), and there is nothing from Spain, where great directing abounds. Most highly celebrated and showcased is Russia, early in the 20th century with “The four great strands: Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov and Tairov,” (94), though no one more contemporary appears except for Valery Fokin, Lev Dodin, and Anatoli Vassiliev; and Germany, with quick jumps from Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Heiner Müller to Frank Castrof, Christoph Marthaler, Roberto Ciulli, and Thomas Ostermeier. The final heavy emphasis is on Denmark’s sui generis laboratory Odin Teatret and director Eugenio Barba; and Polish and East European directors Jerzy Grotowski, Włodzimierz Staniewski, Anna Zubrzycki and Grzegorz Bral, Jarosław Fret, Silviu Purcarete, Eimuntas Nekrosius, and Oskaras Korsunovas. I imagine this process of selection comes from the viewing history of both authors: Christopher Innes’s strength is in the avantgarde theatre from the turn of the 19th into the 20th century (particularly André Antoine, Edward Gordon Craig, and Adolphe Appia) and after, while Maria Shevtsova’s main sphere is the 20th century to the present, primarily in Russia and Europe. The territory they chart is what is familiar to them and, crucially, what they have seen up close, turned over and examined in detail. [End Page 185]

The book is at its best when it makes connections between the directors chosen for study, defining both their similarities and differences. For instance, when Stanislavsky’s use of “noise” — denoting a kind of silence onstage or suspension of activity — is discussed in some detail, a cogent link...

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