Unify the Stage

Katie Mitchell is a personal hero of mine, a trailblazing auteur director who is also, *gasp!*, a woman. I often wonder why we have such fantastic male auteur directors and so few female auteurs. I have a lot of theories about it, some of them are too personal to go into here on this blog on this day. That's because I have been known to deconstruct a classic in my time, but I haven't done it often, or often professionally. And so when I wonder this about the world, I also wonder this about myself. Lately, a couple of fabulous articles have come out about Katie Mitchell and her work. I must be honest here, I haven't seen her work, and it's certainly controversial. But here's what inspires me about her: first off, if you read her amazing book THE DIRECTOR'S CRAFT, then you know that she isn't just making up ideas and placing them on her productions, she is doing some serious and deep text analysis to get to her conclusions. The attention to detail in every...

On today's blog, I'm excited to post that Katie Mitchell is also a total directing history nerd...and to prove it, she created this exhibit at the V&A. And it was two years ago, but it's new to me: she makes 5 videos of Ophelia in the style of great directors: Artaud, Brook, Brecht, Grotowski, & Stanislavski. It's just like my directing history class, only maybe cooler.

You should know who George Abbott was, because he was a legend. The man lived to be 107. He first directed on Broadway in 1913, and directed almost to his death. He made a few movies, he was known for the "Abbott Touch" which caused hits. He is known for using young, malleable actors, so he could shape them. Here's a great little tidbit from the New York Times in 1989. Google him. Look around. He directed all the musicals you've ever heard of. Enjoy.

Romeo Castellucci

And for those of you not familiar with Francesca Zambello, here is her website: http://www.francescazambello.com/

The thing that continues to strike me as ironic as I teach the history of directing is that commitment to the theater and only the theater is commitment to a moment, in the now, not to making your mark on the future. The directors that are easiest to study are those who wrote replete theories on what theater, directing, and art should be. But perhaps this obscures the great directors who did just that: directed. They didn't write theories down, they didn't publish books on how to direct, they just did their work. This is how I feel about Max Reinhardt. He had a massive career. He directed over 300 (and by some accounts closer to 500) new productions in his lifetime. Between 25-40 a year. He was versatile: he did realism, symbolism, expressionism, and most notably he blended these forms together as the play seemed fit. He is credited with putting Wagner's theories of the "total art work" into practice, he tried to make his theater the ultimate form of words, mu...

Robert Wilson's staging of Rufus Wainwright's musicalization of Shakespeare's sonnets. So pretty. Oh yeah.

This article came out in the New York Times yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/theater/richard-maxwell-comes-full-circle-with-oneills-early-plays.html?pagewanted=all I put this in here to inspire the young directors out there who can afford to intern, to do it. And if you can't, then, find other ways to get in the rooms. But not just anywhere. Look for people who inspire you and get in their rooms, find a way, there is always a way, and you learn things that you never thought possible. Richard Maxwell fascinates me. He founded a theater company in Chicago years and years ago that no longer exists called the Cook County Theater Department. If you live in Chicago find someone older than you and ask them about Cook County. They speak of this company with affection. I had a teacher when I went to Columbia who had been working in New York with the Wooster Group and other "downtown" theater companies, and he showed us a video of Richard Maxwell's company t...