Editorial

This editorial was largely conceived in New York, where we, the editors of this issue, were, so to speak, in training: as observers in rehearsal (as Adam Ledger elaborates in a ‘Speaking Image’ contribution), and in the demands of rehearsal as an ever-changing, ongoing training (Avra Sidiropoulou’s postcard). Having experienced moments of extreme exhilaration as well as frustration during our own experiences of directing, and as teachers of directing ourselves, we again reflected upon why this special issue feels so topical and necessary.

Immersed in the challenges of training others in what is both meant to be an art and a full-time profession – and within a ruthlessly competitive and increasingly complex market and contexts for making work - we talked again about the roles a director assumes. The figure of the director and the practice of directing seems to enjoy a kind of elusiveness of definition. In contrast to the long history and shared knowledge of acting techniques and performer training, how the work of the director might be defined seems challenging. And where the director spends most of their time, rehearsal, has been considered a ‘hidden world’ (Letzler Cole, 1992). Direction goes on behind closed doors and is made up of a shifting combination of, perhaps, dramaturgical, literary, acting, collaborative, scenographic, stage- and personnel-management, and financial concerns.

Given the ambiguity around what directing might be, the training of directors seems even more obscure. Whilst there is burgeoning publication on theatre directing, comprising scholarly work, practical guides and books by directors themselves (recently, for example, the Great European Theatre Directors series (Bloomsbury Methuen); Boenisch, 2015; Dunderdale, 2021; Simonsen, 2017; and by us: Ledger, 2019; Sidiropoulou, 2018), director training as a topic appears neglected. In scholarly terms, directing is often dealt with as uncritically accepted directorial technique(s), methodology, and, predominantly, a discussion of productions. In the discourses of directing, a lack of definition of directors and directing has, further, given rise to the many, always-provisional notions of the director. We suggest that the opposite is in fact the case: it is not so much that directing cannot be defined, it is rather that there is a plurality of definitions.

As can be seen in the contributions to this volume, directing is a complex practice of situational leadership, which shifts according to the ideas, needs and circumstances of the moment. Questions immediately arise: how can we discuss how to train for, in and despite such complexity? How can we best prepare and train for the sometimes extraordinary aesthetics of the work yet the sheer difficulty of the profession? What kind of diverse forms of competence, education and personality traits could training encompass? In a changing world, what should director training comprise?

Training(s)?

The idea of the topic of this special issue was born out of what we perceived to be a need to rethink the role(s) of the director, within – and outside – the framework of existing training practices. We looked to contributors to offer new critical perspectives and offer creative propositions for future paradigms of training. We were also mindful to invite contributions internationally and diversely, decentering (again) too-easy assumptions; often, the definition and needs of directors in particular cultural, geographical and sociopolitical contexts are, in fact, sharply defined. And in a world where cultural values are also in flux, what the director may need to do or address – or be trained to facilitate and deal with – comes clearly into focus.

How and where to train remains disjointed. Director training is certainly institutionalised: the most well-known European examples of schools being, for instance, the Ernst Busch Hochschule, Berlin, and the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts; in the USA, university-level, professional directing programmes have long existed, and there has been a noticeable growth in recent years in academic and conservatoire director training courses elsewhere. These models have, to an extent, been adopted by other institutions globally, though some major schools have opened branches in other countries; on the one hand, localised theatre traditions may benefit, but, on the other, a kind of colonisation of practice via imported Euro-American theatre methods predominates. This special issue offers a space to consider, instead, how a director can train in geographically and culturally specific practices.

Some directors have not explicitly trained in directing, but emerged from educational backgrounds other than theatre, or shifted from other roles. Normalised or institutionalised training for direction might also be set against more inclusive, experiential opportunities; for instance, the well-established Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme (UK) now explicitly seeks applications from emerging directors of historically excluded backgrounds, and the many Artist Development schemes in specific theatre organisations (the Directors Lab in New York, for example; see too the report ‘The Director’s Voice’ 2018). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of hybridised theatre forms, training has now moved online (for instance, the NIPAI organisation, but also within academic or conservatoire curricula), to be delivered at a distance. Finally, training might exist in-between performance preparation.

Responses

With the above thoughts in mind, this special issue invited a broad range of contributions from scholars and artists globally, to offer a contemporary consideration of training for directing. The edition aimed to collect together productive and particular examples that would ask what directing training ‘is’, and, crucially, how and where its development could best serve contemporary concerns in theatre practice. Responses could suggest and invite an investigation and theorisation of the field, including how historical practices could be interrogated, reimagined and applied from a contemporary perspective. We sought a place that would discuss how and on what terms institutions offer director training, together with identifying ‘methodologies’ or lineages of directing and how those could be taught, learned and challenged, and by whom.

Away from methods or institutionalised practices, we wanted to ask where and what might be the place for continuing professional development, intensives and workshops, and, as we allude to above, whether the rehearsal room can also be seen as a laboratory for ongoing directing training. Given the most recent concerns with the dynamics and imbalances of power and, of course, the recent pandemic, we need also to ask how directors can ‘learn’ to direct collaboratively and in new forms of output. We were also interested to find out about modes of directing or theatre-making that require certain types of training, including choreographic, musical or scenographic skills.

As a response, we received longer articles, some of which foreground the director’s voice – in this edition, both real and imagined – each interrogating director training as it appears in a contemporary context; shorter ‘Essais’, inviting more personal reflections; and quick-fire ‘Postcards’ responding to a question or illuminating a moment of practice. Like previous editions of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, we interweave these contributions, ignoring perceived hierarchies of academic contribution.

As might be expected, a clear theme that has emerged from several contributors is that of leadership. Donna Soto-Morettini’s article offers an interdisciplinary perspective to suggest that a consideration of leadership style should be an important part of training directors. Soto-Morettini considers how directors can use ‘motivational interviewing’ techniques to help actors gain a greater sense of ownership over their performance choices. Fundamentally, these techniques are specifically attitudinal and linguistic, a kind of management training that is clearly lacking in director education. Gabrielle Metcalf and Andrew Lewis’s article thus challenges historically accepted models, to propose, instead, the notion of ‘dialogic leadership’. The article offers a specific case study of implementing the teaching in Australia of what might be seen as form of coaching and includes student feedback on the attempt. Shane Pike’s essai, though, robustly critiques the still limited opportunities for structured director training in Australia. For Pike, institutional director training too often turns training into generic – and commercialised – ‘creative leadership’ education. Still, the idea of the director as a coach is again developed in Tamur Tohver’s essai, which also suggests that the director should undertake ongoing self-development, especially in terms of their nurturing relationship with actors. Alex Cahill’s essai offers another and specific means that this can be developed through a reconsideration of Boalian techniques, which, like Soto-Morettini, looks to another discipline, this time the psychology of empathy, to offer some solutions.

In his pedagogic reconsideration, George Rodosthenous offers a way to draw together concerns so far. Rodosthenous seeks to reconsider authority and aesthetics by drawing together aspects of mise en scène with musicality, to offer specific in-class exercises. In contrast, Emma Large proposes in her essai that step by step, formal education may not offer the kind of experiential, rounded challenge provided by student drama opportunities, which often require the kind of resilience we alluded to earlier.

In one of a set of contributions to localise questions of training directors in socio-political contexts, Emma Durden and Roelof Twijnstra explore director training in the context of contemporary South Africa. This contribution draws together political histories, contemporary needs and the recognition that some directors do not train specifically in directing but emerge as directors through other routes. Like many places in the world, aspects of the reality of the theatre industry in South Africa, and how and where an artists may train, remains haphazard and fragmented. Like Metcalf and Lewis, this article offers suggestions for a curriculum for theatre directors in the context of the needs of a cultural context. In his essai, John Michael DiResta provocatively examines casting – a site of considerable directorial power – and how it is that directors can train to become ‘accomplices’, rather than allies, in the complex question of inclusive casting. Drawing together a reflection on the specific challenges of the Brazilian context with the challenges of teaching directing in educational situations that are, typically, challenged in terms of time and space, Pedro de Senna also offers the first of a set of dialogue type pieces. De Senna and colleagues Bruce Adams and Adriana Schneider Alcure again grapple with the knotty questions of what directors should learn, locating director training as a site of personal and political resistance.

In her witty, and this time fictional dialogue, Helen Tenninson exposes the conflicting pressures upon the contemporary director, finding that honest enquiry, ongoing personal development and solidarity are key. The two directors in the conversation conclude that if theatre is to be inclusive, relevant and able to adapt in a rapidly changing world, then personal development is an essential part of ongoing director training. Also advocating for a collaborative and inclusive approach to theatre-making, Bryce Lease presents an interview with the internationally experienced Yana Ross. Ross emphasises the value of understanding the theatre canon and expanding it through alternative perspectives, while also recognising the need for rigour and critical thinking in theatre training. This theme of expertise is echoed in Anne Bogart’s piece, reproduced here from an earlier blog version, which might be taken as a kind of manifesto that the director should rigorously acquire knowledge of things beyond the specifics of the theatrical task.

Threaded throughout these longer pieces, a set of shorter Training Grounds responses, often more imagistic or poetic in tone, illuminate and expand upon moments of practice. Taken together, these Postcards and Speaking Image suggest revelatory moments where a director has had to reflect upon how they know what they know or, of course, do not know. Dermot Daly advises directors to train themselves to listen more, create ‘a trusted connection’ with their listeners and allow the mind to filter what is received. In some contrast, Gabriella Arancibia Villagra understands directing to concern corporeal connection, a way of transferring, guiding and allowing for ‘moments of suspension’ to occur before they are orchestrated into a full composition. Rejecting the rigidity of the term ‘directing’, Villagra favours the essence of the art as being one of creating constant melody. In physical practice again, Danish theatre artist Lotte Faarup explores ways to train for the contradictions of working with physical actions of violence. Faarup shares an array of improvisations that can train the minds of directors and actors to respond specifically to the paradox of a person accepting of violence, acknowledging the fascinating clash between physical and verbal responses.

Broadening out these moments, Ιranian theatre-maker Rouzbeh Hosseini’s postcard argues for ‘a continual living experience’ within a theatre company as an integral part of director training and further stresses the importance of directors understanding the turbulent political climate of their native country, adjusting their methodology and artistic approach accordingly. Also from Iran, Mikaeil Shahrestani demonstrates some of the impossible logistics directors must tackle in relation to securing funding and space. The postcard also revisits some of the problems theatre-makers faced during the pandemic. Such difficulties again attest to the multiplicity and complexity of directorial roles, where the director assumes the role of a set-designer, company manager and fundraiser, among others.

Despite challenges, James Yarker’s postcard demonstrates yet another role, that of the director’s responsibility to keep the ‘terror’ or rehearsal hidden from the outside world. He takes us back to an incident that forced him to reconsider his attitude towards the challenges of the rehearsal process by making ‘positivity’ a practical credo. Greek theatre artist Sidiropoulou’s postcard is written in the form of a real-time diary that captures a particularly strenuous day of rehearsal. It documents the inadequacies of director training in preparing for the diverse and often impossible challenges of the profession, from scheduling conflicts and securing rehearsal space, to budgetary concerns, to interpersonal tensions in the company. In aesthetic terms, Karolina Spaic presents a skeletal yet comprehensive draft of the directing process from the beginnings of defining a personal and cultural identity through to developing creativity, deepening the mental operations of concept building and inspiration, to finally practicing connection, collaboration and sharing. Scholar and director Adam Ledger offers a Speaking Image, reflecting upon a vicarious (re)training through observation, yet how what is observed suggests both the complexities, plurality and – as the Postcards attest – particularities of directing. This is something with which we started this editorial, and the challenges of teaching for such necessary difficulty beyond the aesthetics of directorial craft.

Directions?

In remaining contemporary in our focus, in this edition we wanted to open new conversations about a clearly complex and under-theorised field and to examine the current moment from a broad, inclusive and international perspective. One of the questions that we particularly tried to address is what models of director training exist beyond the Global North and Anglo-American traditions and which are underrepresented in current scholarship. An area still underrepresented here are reflections from Asia. There is also research to develop on how director training might attend to issues including, but not restricted to, disability, gender, and socio-cultural, economic background. As we emerge into the (post-)COVID age, reflection needs, too, to happen on how directors can train for digital and, increasingly, hybridised modes of performance making; what possibilities and, indeed, existential crisis the burgeoning development of AI might bring to theatre practice and the role of the director remains either to be seen or taken control of…

The contemporary world has changed and is changing. Rightly influenced by recent social and ideological movements and shifting directions in critical and cultural thought, archetypical understanding and figures of normativity, authority and hierarchy have been challenged. There is a distrust of those perceived to have power, and it is directors that have often been identified to be representatives of a patriarchal formative narrative in theatre. Yet this cannot be true of all directors, and certainly many represented in this special edition. At the very least, the role of directing and the figure of the director, and specifically how directors should - or even can - train or be trained, raises still ongoing questions, which must be inflected through specific socio-cultural contexts. Again, we advocate for an ongoing and necessary enquiry that does not neglect plurality and complexity. There is still much scholarship to develop to help understand that aesthetic authority (in the true sense of the word) or assumptions around the ‘auteur’ should not be conflated with heavy handed dictatorship or the neglect of care; the abuse of power, which does happen, is not the same as the considered directorial ‘mark of the individual eye’ (Schneider and Cody, 2003, 5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam J. Ledger

Guest Editors

Adam J. Ledger is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Birmingham, U.K., where he teaches and directs various types of performance, acting, and site-based work. He has published widely on performance practice, including the books Odin Teatret: Theatre in a New Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Director and Directing: Craft, Process and Aesthetic in Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and, with Annelis Kuhlmann, L'Albero della Conoscenza dello Spettacolo (Cue Press, 2021) from the original book section on Eugenio Barba, published in the Great European Stage Directors series by Bloomsbury Methuen). Adam has led projects internationally and is co-artistic director of The Bone Ensemble.

Avra Sidiropoulou

Avra Sidiropoulou is Associate Professor of Theatre at the Open University of Cyprus and Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company. She has published extensively on directing theory and practice, including Directions for Directing: Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018) and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan 2011). She is the editor of Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis (Routledge, 2022) and co-editor of Adapting Greek Tragedy: Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts (CUP 2021). Avra has directed, taught and led workshops in various parts of the globe and was nominated for the 2020 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Thomas Wilson

Training Grounds editor

Thomas Wilson is Co-Programme Director for BA (Hons) European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, and an Associate Editor for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal. He has a diverse performance background, initially competing internationally in voltige (Equestrian Gymnastics), before training in a range of physically-rooted practices (Contact Improvisation, Butoh, Theatrical Biomechanics) and making work at the intersection of theatre and dance. He served on Accademia Teatro Dimitri's Educational Advisory Commission from 2016–2020. His book Juggling Trajectories: Gandini Juggling 1991–2015 was shortlisted for the Society of Theatre Research Book Prize in 2016.

The editors

Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds and Head of School of Performance and Cultural Industries. He specialises in the study of performer training and has wider interests in intercultural performance, environmental performance and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the TDPT and has published several books in this area: Vsevolod Meyerhold (2003), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (2006/9), Russians in Britain (2012), Stanislavsky in the World (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017) and The Routledge Companion to Meyerhold (2022) (again with Dr Aquilina). Other publications include: Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau Guthrie (sole editor, 2018) and the monograph, Performing Landscapes: Mountains (2020).

Libby Worth is Reader in Contemporary Performance Practices, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a movement practitioner with research interests in the Feldenkrais Method, physical theatres, site-based performance and in folk/traditional and amateur dance. Performances include co-devised duets; Step Feather Stitch (2012) and dance film Passing Between Folds (2017). She is co-editor of TDPT and published texts include Anna Halprin (2004, co-authored), Ninette de Valois: Adventurous Traditionalist (2012, co-edited), Jasmin Vardimon's Dance Theatre: Movement, Memory and Metaphor (2016). Chapter contributions include on clog and sword dancing for Time and Performer Training (2019, she co-edited) and ‘Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life’ for the Oxford Handbook of Dance Improvisation (2019).