Theatre is Alive

In the 20th century, live theatre faced a challenge from film, television and video. Theatre responded by moving away from realism, which can be more effectively achieved on screen, and exploring other styles including:

• surrealism

• symbolism

• Theatre of the Absurd

• Epic Theatre

Modern writers, directors and actors have changed the way that actors perform and audiences perceive theatre. Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht, Constantin Stanislavsky and Lee Strasberg have all influenced the development of modern western theatre.

Theatre also includes other forms of performing arts – mime, puppetry, dance and musical theatre. Spectacular productions such as Les Miserables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera have contributed to a revival in the popularity of musical theatre.

Who Makes Theatre?

For hundreds of years it was not considered good for women to work in the theatre. In the late 1600s, playwright Aphra Behn became the first known professional woman writer in England; since then, women have continued to work in all aspects of theatre.

Theatre is a team process: as well as writers, there are directors, who interpret and translate the script; actors, who perform the playwright's words and characters; designers, who create magic with light, sound, costume and scenery; and theatre administrators, who manage the business of theatre.

Most importantly, there is the audience: the real magic of theatre is in the relationship between the actor and the audience.

(http://artzia.com/Arts/Theater/)

Theatre Director

A theatre director oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of a theatrical product. The director works with the key individuals and other staff, coordinating research, stagecraft, costume design, props, lighting design, acting, set design and sound design for the production. The director may also work with the playwright. In contemporary theatre, the director makes decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the text. Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration.

The position of the director is a relatively new innovation in the history of theatre, with the first examples appearing in the late 1800s. Actors or the playwright were responsible for presenting the show and coordinating efforts. The director is now considered a vital figure in the creation of a theatrical performance.

Styles of Directing

Directing is an artform that has grown with the development of theatre theory and theatre practice. Generally speaking, directors adopt a style of directing that falls into one or more of the following categories:

The dictator

In this style of directing, the director is very dominant in the process of creating a theatrical work. Rehearsals are more or less fully controlled, with the actors having little or no say.

The negotiator

'The negotiator' is a style of direction in which the director focuses on a more improvised and mediated form of rehearsal and creation, using the ideas of the production team and actors to shape a theatrical work in quite a democratic style.

The creative artist

The director sees himself or herself as as a creative artist working with the 'materials' of dramatic creativity – the actors, designers and production team. The "creative artist" wants input from the actors but, as artist, has final say over what is included and how ideas are incorporated.

The confrontationalist

In this style of directing, the director is in constant dialogue and debate with the cast and the production team about creative decisions and interpretations. The director is actively engaged in such exchanges. Out of these exchanges, which can sometimes be heated or risky, comes a final product.

Many contemporary directors use a creative combination of styles, depending on the genre of the theatrical work, the nature of the project and the type of cast.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_director)

Peter Stephen Paul Brook (born 1925) is a British theatrical producer and director.

Born in London, he studied at Oxford. During the 1950s he worked on many productions in Britain, Europe, and the USA, and in 1962 returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to join the newly established Royal Shakespeare Company for which he directed, among other productions, King Lear (1962), US (1966), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1970). Moving to Paris in 1970 he founded the Centre International de Creation Theatrale, an assembly of actors, dancers, musicians, and other performers of many nationalities, with which he travelled widely in Africa and Asia. Films he has directed include Lord of the Flies (1962), the film version of his own stage drama Marat/Sade (1967), Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979) and Mahabharata (1989). Since then Brook has created a variety of other theatrical works, such as a version of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1994), a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni (1998), and Hamlet (2000).

His work was inspired by the theories of experimental theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Meyerhold, the theatre of cruelty of Antonin Artaud and the metaphysics of G. I. Gurdjieff.

His books on the theater include Empty Space (1969), The Shifting Point (1987), and The Open Door (1995).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brook)

Mike Nichols is an Academy Award winning movie director. He was born on November 6, 1931 in Berlin, and left Nazi Germany for the U.S. with his parents in 1939. While attending the University of Chicago in the 1950s, he began work in improvisational comedy and later started the long-running Midnight Special folk music program on a radio station. He formed a comedy team with Elaine May, with whom he appeared in nightclubs, on radio, released best-selling records, guested on several television programs and had their own show on Broadway.

Nichols moved on to Broadway directing with such hits as Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. His first major film direction was the adaptation of another play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in 1966, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Directing. His next film, The Graduate, made Dustin Hoffman a star, and gave Nichols his Oscar.

He followed that up with more successes in Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge. Since then, he has moved on to more Broadway productions, and executive producing of television programs, including Family.

Nichols has been married to TV journalist Diane Sawyer since April 29, 1988.

Nichols is one of the few people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.

Nichols was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors in 2003. He has also received the following Academy Awards and nominations:

• 1994 Nominated Best Picture The Remains of the Day (with John Calley and Ismail Merchant)

• 1989 Nominated Best Director Working Girl

• 1968 Won Best Director The Graduate

He has also received the following Emmy Awards and nominations:

• 2004 Won Outstanding Miniseries Angels in America

• 2001 Won Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special Wit

• 1977 Nominated Outstanding Drama Series Family

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nichols)

Acting is the work of an actor/actress, a person in theatre, film who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play. Actors are generally expected to have a number of skills, including clarity of speech, physical expressiveness, the ability to analyze and understand dramatic text, and the ability to emulate or generate emotional and physical conditions. Good actors are often also skilled in singing, dancing, imitating dialects and accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, stage combat, and performing classical texts such as Shakespeare. Many actors train in special programs or colleges to develop these skills, which have a wide range of different artistic philosophies and processes.

Modern pioneers in the area of acting have included Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner. (http://encyclozine.com/Acting)