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The Director as Collaborator teaches essential directing skills while emphasizing how directors and theater productions benefit from collaboration. Good collaboration occurs when the director shares responsibility for the artistic creation with the entire production team, including actors, designers, stage managers, and technical staff. Leadership does not preclude collaboration; in theater, these concepts can and should be complementary. Students will develop their abilities by directing short scenes and plays and by participating in group exercises.
New to the second edition:
updated interviews, exercises, forms, and appendices
new chapter on technology including digital research, previsualization and drafting programs, and web-sharing sites
new chapter on devised and ensemble-based works
new chapter on immersive theater, including material and exercises on environmental staging and audience-performer interaction
List of contents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
What Is Collaboration?
The Core Action
The Responsibilities of Collaboration
Fundamental Techniques
Supplemental Reading
1 Collaboration and Leadership
Balancing Leadership and Collaboration
Supplemental Reading
2 Core Action
Story and Plot
Exercise Critique
Action Analysis
Script Analysis
Key Terms
Supplemental Reading
3 Collaboration in Rehearsal
The First Scene Collaboration
Preparation
Sample Rehearsal Schedule
Rehearsal Observations
Videotaping Rehearsals
Supplemental Reading
4 Directing Elements
Textual Elements
Structure
Actions and Objectives
Shifts and Key Moments
Groundplan
Character
Relationship and Status
Language
Visceral Elements
Tempo and Rhythm
Sound and Mood
Visual Composition
Movement
Stage Configurations
Gesture
Environment
Style
Integrating Directing Elements
Script Analysis
Dramaturgy Checklist
5 Design Collaboration
Core Action Statements
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Design Timetable
Key Terms
Supplemental Reading
6 Other Collaborators
Playwrights
Readings and Staged Readings
Dramaturgy
Music Directors and Choreographers
Key Terms
7 Collaboration and Technology
Technology as a Tool for Collaboration
Technologists and Technical Directors
8 Devised and Immersive Theaters
Devised Theatre
Immersive Theatre
9 Auditions and Casting
Casting the One-Act Plays
Audition Goals
Supplemental Reading
APPENDIX A Forms
Project Proposal Form
Sample Audition Notice
Audition Form
Sample Callback Form
Sample Cast List
Rehearsal Observation Form
Producing Checklist
Program Information
Poster Information
Course Outline
APPENDIX B Glossary of Key Terms
APPENDIX C Bibliography of One-Act Plays
APPENDIX D Selected Bibliography
Directing
Acting
Design
Playwriting
Dramaturgy
Ensembles
Theater History and Theory
Management
Publicity
Index
About the author
Robert Knopf teaches script analysis, directing, and improvisation at University at Buffalo/SUNY, where he is Director of Theatre Studies and Professor of Theatre. A theater director, scholar, and writer, Robert Knopf is the author of two books, The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton and The Director as Collaborator. For Yale University Press, he edited Theater and Film and co-edited the seminal two-volume critical anthology,Theater of the Avant-Garde. He has directed plays at Circle-in-the-Square Downtown, Cherry Lane Studio, Paradise Factory, Circle Rep Lab, and New York's historic Town Hall, as well as for National Public Radio.
Summary
The Director as Collaborator teaches essential directing skills while emphasizing how directors and theater productions benefit from collaboration. Good collaboration occurs when the director shares responsibility for the artistic creation with the entire production team, including actors, designers, stage managers, and technical staff. Leadership does not preclude collaboration; in theater, these concepts can and should be complementary. Students will develop their abilities by directing short scenes and plays and by participating in group exercises.
New to the second edition:
- updated interviews, exercises, forms, and appendices
- new chapter on technology including digital research, previsualization and drafting programs, and web-sharing sites
- new chapter on devised and ensemble-based works
- new chapter on immersive theater, including material and exercises on environmental staging and audience–performer interaction
