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This volume examines the work of Joan Littlewood, Giorgio Strehler and Roger Planchon, demonstrating how these three directors take up key aesthetic prompts from earlier innovators - Stanislavski, the modernist avant-garde and not least Brecht - and thereby prepare the ground for contemporary, politically-engaged 'directors' theatre'. It argues that, in creating their major productions in the prosperous 'glorious decades' that followed the devastation of the Second World War, they represent a first expressly 'European' generation of theatre directors. Revisiting works from the classical dramatic canon by drawing on popular theatre traditions, and reaching out to spectators beyond the educated middle-class elite, they put theatre in the service of uniting a traumatized continent. This study posits that for Littlewood, Strehler and Planchon, theatre has the capacity to create communities.

This volume foregrounds Pina Bausch, Romeo Castellucci and Jan Fabre as three leading directors who have each left an indelible mark on post-war European theatre. Combining in-depth discussions of the artists' poetics with detailed case studies of several famous and lesser-known key works, the authors featured in this volume trace a range of foundational aesthetic strategies that are central to the directors' work: the dynamics of repetition vis-à-vis fragmentation, the continued significance of language in experimental theatre and dance, the tension between theatricality and the performative reality of the stage, and the equal importance attached to text, image and body. This volume develops a vivid picture of how European stage directors have continued to redefine their own position and role throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

This volume offers a compelling account of Jean-Louis Barrault, Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Stein, who not only won international recognition as directors whose repertoires ranged from classical Greek to Shakespeare to the avant-garde, but also succeeded as leaders of their own companies. The ensembles they nurtured and kept afloat despite setbacks represent the artistic vision of each: the Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, the Théâtre du Soleil and the Schaubühne. Selected landmark productions illuminate the achievements of these three directors and their companies.

This volume provides a fresh assessment of the pioneering practices of theatre directors Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba, whose work has challenged and extended ideas about what theatre is and does. Contributors demonstrate how each was instrumental in rethinking and reinventing theatre's possibilities: where it takes place - whether in theatres or beyond - and who the audience might then be, as well as how actors train and perform, highlighting the importance of the group and collaboration. The volume examines their role in establishing intercultural dialogues and practices, and the wider influence of this work on theatre. Consideration is also given to each director's documentation of their practice in print and film and the influence this has had on 21st-century performance.

In this volume leading scholars assess the contributions of Max Reinhardt, Leopold Jessner and Harley Granville Barker to European theatre. Their work represents the cultural shift from traditional theatre practices of the 19th century to the rise of Modernism and its means of establishing theatre as an art form in its own right. Uncovering the theories and visions of theatre held by Reinhardt, Jessner and Barker, this volume establishes the contribution and importance of these directors in the development of modern theatre and their significance alongside the better-known names of Stanislavski and Brecht.

This volume examines the work of directors Jacques Copeau, Theodore Komisarjevsky and Tyrone Guthrie. It explores in detail many of the directors' key productions, including Copeau's staging of Molière's The Tricks of Scapin, Komisarjevsky's signature season of Chekhov plays at the Barnes Theatre and Guthrie's pioneering direction of Shakespeare's plays in North America. This study argues that their work exemplifies the complexity and novelty of the role of theatre directing in the first three-quarters of the 20th century, as Komisarjevsky was in the middle of the genesis of directing in Russia, Copeau launched his directorial career just as the role was gaining definition, and Guthrie was at the vanguard of directing in Britain, at last shaking off the traditions of the actor-manager to formulate the new role of artistic director.

This volume surveys and assesses the contributions of Vsevolod Meyerhold, Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht to theatre-making, which richly exemplify the range of ways that directors address dramatic material, theatrical space and their audiences. Their directorial work marks an unmistakeable interest in developing the political potential of theatre in the early 20th century, although each director offered more to their actors, collaborators and spectators than simply the staging of politics and the political.

This volume assesses the contributions of André Antoine, Konstantin Stanislavski and Michel Saint-Denis, whose work has influenced theatre and training for over a century. These directors pioneered Naturalism and refined Realism as they experimented with theatrical form including non-Realism. Antoine and Stanislavski's theatre direction proved foundational to the creation of the director's role and artistic vision, and their influential ideas progressively developed through the stylized theatre of Saint-Denis to the innovative contemporary theatre direction of Max Stafford-Clark, Declan Donnellan and Katie Mitchell.

The Great European Stage Directors Set 2 offers an authoritative account of the work, lineage and legacy of the major European theatre directors from the second half of the twentieth century. Across the four volumes and the companion series Set 1: Pre-1950, it provides a uniquely rich study of the genealogy and development of a practice through focus on individual directors and the wider context and artform in which they worked. For professional practitioners and those developing their skills, as well as those engaged in the analysis of theatre practices, forms and history, it will prove an essential resource. Each volume provides substantial treatment of three major directors, with each director considered by two specialists, combining analysis of the director's practical craft with accounts of the historical, cultural and theoretical context of their practice. Links between the featured directors and other artists and directors from the period are traced to round out the picture of influences and artistic development. Volume 5: Grotowski, Brook, Barba (edited by Paul Allain, University of Kent, UK): explorations in space, audience and place in the theatre across cultures; theatre and beyond; and theatre-making as researchVolume 6: Littlewood, Strehler, Planchon (edited by Clare Finburgh, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and Peter Boenisch, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK): refunctioning or 'translating' written text, and the development of new modes of 'post-Brechtian' stagingVolume 7: Barrault, Mnouchkine, Stein (edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA): methods shaped by work with a company; artistry underpinned by responsibility for an ensembleVolume 8: Bausch, Castellucci, Fabre (edited by Luk Van den Dries and Timmy De Laet, University of Antwerp, Belgium): three major contemporary artists with different approaches to directorial 'authorship'