Directing for the Stage

The role of stage director is all-encompassing: storyteller, interpreter, collaborator, people-manager, producer, visual artist, counselor, literary consultant and creative artist. Why take on this role? How do you become a director? Where do you learn your craft and how do you formulate your stylistic direction?

In Directing for the Stage, twelve top international directors reveal their approach, their inspirations, and what they believe the future holds for live theatre. The contributors include Yukio Ninagawa, who has developed a spectacular grand-style theatre that marries traditional Japanese and Western traditions; Deborah Warner, who reminds us of the joy of stripping theatre back to the actor, the text and the story; and Robert Lepage, one of the worldÆs leading theatrical inventors.

Directing for the Stage brings together the diverse processes and methods of working of its contributors in their own words and each has contributed unique visual material -- sketches, notes, images from the rehearsal process, drawings of the set in progress and images from the final productions.

Polly Irvin has been acclaimed as 'one of the UK's up-and-coming young directors'. Her productions include A Doll's House, which represented Britain in the 1992 International Ibsen Festival in Olso; The Basset Table and As You Like It for the Bristol Old Vic; Les Liaisons Dangereuses with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Hansel and Gretel for the Lyric Hammersmith. Ms Irvin also teaches acting at Rose Bruford College and the Actor's Company in London.