Bernard Shaw Director by Bernard F. Dukore (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 337 Kaiser, Kornfeld, Stenheim, Toller, Brecht, Goll) ... the papers deal, some on stage productions, on the lyrical theatre (Schonberg, Berg, etc.), on the stage sets, while others on the cinema or the graphic arts . . . recall and specify those links which, in a civilisation in movement, connect the different arts without destroying their specificity." The claim is ambitious. In fact the twenty-two papers, the bulk focusing on the "Germanic domain" give us glimpses of the complexity of Expressionism rather than any synthesis; nor can they really treat their topic in depth. That is the fate of the colloquium. Certainly the most perfunctory of the papers are those that deal with the non-German domain - more particularly the study of Expressionism in France in the interwar years limited to brief remarks on three dramatists - Lenormand, Gantillon and Pellerin - omitting such figures as Roger Vitrac and Artaud among others. One feels a certain disappointment too in Lotte Eisner's all too brief study of the expressionist cinema. Perhaps the best group of papers are the three which deal with expressionism in the lyrical theater - by Hans Curgel, Rene Leibowitz and Jean Jacquol respectively. But despite these reservations the book as a whole gives the reader a sense of the diversity and significance of the movement, an invitation to probe further and to follow through on the program of inquiry it has outlined. GERMAINE BREE Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin BERNARD SHAW DIRECTOR, by Bernard F. Dukore. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971. 199 pp. illus. $7.95. In Bernard Shaw, Director Bernard Dukore has done a service for Shaw as well as for students. In an article a year before his death, Shaw published his Rules for Directors, "a beginners' guide"; he lamented the lack of an "established method of directing and no handbook from which a novice can learn the technical side of the job." Professor Dukore's book can be regarded as the handbook Shaw might have written: direct quotations comprise the bulk of the text. From the point of view of director, Professor Dukore has analyzed apparently all of Shaw's published writing and significant unpublished material in order to glean Shaw's ideas and methods of putting the play on the stage. What makes Bernard Shaw, Director unique from other such analyses and collections, e.g., E. J. West's Shaw On Theatre, is that Dukore classifies, collates, and arranges the material by aspects of production rather than by chronology. In the brief introductory chapter the summary of Shaw's theater background and experience accounts for the soundness of Shaw's directorial theory which had evolved by the time he began writing and producing plays. The sound evolution of Shaw's theory explains why he maintained his views regarding production with the consistency that permits the kind of collation Dukore has made. 338 BOOK REVIEWS The table of contents of Bernard Shaw, Director points to the book's usefulness as a guide to the technical aspects of play production as well as to the mind of Shaw. University theater departments might adopt it as a directing text. "The Director: Goals and Groundwork" (Aims, Training, Prerehearsal Planning), "General Directing Practices" (Casting, Conducting Rehearsals, Cutting and Changing the Script), "The Actor" (Aims, Training, Degrees of Realism, The Actor and the Character, Motivation, Mechanical Technique), "Stage Effects and Stage Effectiveness" (The Grouping of Actors, Devices, Pace, Timing), "The Technical Elements of Production" (Scenery, Lighting, 'Costume, Make-up, Music), and "The Business of Theatre" (Finances, Promotion and Publicity). The general effect of Dukore's book is to clarify Shaw's method of directing. Shaw viewed the production of a playas the collaboration of fellow artists, each contributing the best of what he was capable in his specialty to the service of the play. Shaw's method contrasts with that of the dictator-director who would impose his own vision on the work. In his Rules for Directors (1949) Shaw indicated that "these rules are founded on experience. They are of no use to a director who regards players not as fellow-artists collaborating with him, but as employees on whom he can impose his own notions...