Play Directing: Analysis, Communication, and Style

Play Directing describes the various roles a director plays, from selection and analysis of the play, to working with actors and designers to bring the production to life. The authors emphasize that the role of the director as an artist-leader collaborating with actors and designers who look to the director for partnership in achieving their fullest, most creative expressions. The text emphasizes how the study of directing provides an intensive look at the structure of plays and acting, and of the process of design of scenery, costume, lighting, and sound that together make a produced play.

Francis Hodge, late. Hodge was a Professor Emeritus in The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance and served as professor of directing from 1949–79.

Michael McLain participated in the founding of the Geffen Playhouse as its initial Literary Director and Artistic Associate, and he was similarly involved in the founding of the School of Theater, Film and Television as its first Associate Dean for Theater. As a Fulbright-Scholar, Professor McLain conducted research in the areas of directing and director training in the former Soviet Union. Subsequently, he was a member of the first faculty exchange between the UC and what was then Leningrad State University. In 2011, Prof. McLain became a Fellow of the Likachev Foundation, St. Petersburg. In over three decades of teaching in the Department of Theater, Prof. McLain directed works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht and Sam Shepard, among many others, and he is the co-author of "Play Directing: Analysis, Communication and Style," now in its 7th edition from Allyn & Bacon. He is a consultant to the government of Hong Kong in the area of theater curricula for graduate and undergraduate programs