Unify the Stage

"If Theatre could be half as good as HBO, we'd be hitting gold" Simon Stone in the Guardian. 

Great article on the visionary director, Ivo van Hove. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/theatre-laid-bare

A new article on an old topic: http://www.dw.de/how-much-creative-liberty-can-a-theater-director-take/a-18233268

I was struck by this article in the New York Times about Frank Castorf, famous German director, and his new production of The Ring Cycle at Bayreuth. First off, to direct at Bayreuth is an honor. The festival theater was built FOR The Ring Cycle, under the genius of Wagner himself, who is credited with pushing along and defining the role of the director in the modern theater. And Frank Castorf is no unknown. He's run the Volksbrune theater in Berlin since 1992 and is known for his avante-guarde work. (I saw his Medea when I was in Berlin in 2009, the theater was being renovated so it was staged on the front steps of the theater:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESGluUOXDlc ) So when a director known for their desecration of text and insane directorial concepts is hired to direct THE RING CYCLE what do you expect? Sure, parts of it sound horrible to me. And sure, the audience booed. And there he stood, pointing at them. He wanted to make them angry. It's what he does! So...

In A Director Prepares , Anne Bogart describes getting the German theater magazine Theater heute and drinking it in, how it expanded her ideas of theater, how it inspired her to learn German, and how she eventually directed in Germany. The director's theater of Germany is truly outstanding and mind blowing. The artistry of the director is paramount in the German theater and opera, and while for many it's too much, learning about it (instead of writing it off) can help expand our own directing ideas and creativity. And now, with the magic of google translate, you can even read it online in English (broken google translate English, but it's pretty awesome) http://www.kultiversum.de/Schauspiel-Theaterheute/ Take advantage of expanding your horizons via the internet!

For some reason, this is a constant debate in the world: what are directors to do with classic texts? They stick around because they reveal something that seems timelessly relevant to our culture. But how do we best present these plays? Is it important to uphold the playwright's intent, even if the play was written over 100 years ago, and that playwright was being true to their own era? Or do we need to ensure that these plays retain their relevance by expressing them in our own time and place? And, when has a director gone "too far" in their production? Is there such a thing as "too far"? How beholden to the text are we, really? This is something we constantly see in opera. Because the repertoire is so limited compared to theater, the constant recycling of the beautiful classics of Mozart, Puccini, and a handful of other composers has lead to an onslaught of "creativity" among directors. Sometimes I hear about productions that sound absolutely intol...