Shakespeare and Directing in Practice
Description
When directors approach Shakespeare, is the play always the thing - or might something else sometimes be the thing?
How can directing produce fresh contexts for Shakespeare's work?
Part of the innovative series Shakespeare in Practice, this book introduces students to current practices of directing Shakespeare. Ewert explores how the conventions and creative tropes of today's theatre make meaning in Shakespeare production now. The 'In Theory' section starts with an analysis of theatre production and directing more generally before looking at the specific Shakespeare context. The 'In Practice' section offers a wonderful range of production examples that showcase the wide breadth of approaches to directing Shakespeare today, from the 'conventional' to the most experimental.
Providing a useful general overview of directing Shakespeare on stage today, this is an ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying 'Shakespeare in Performance' in Literature, Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies departments. This book will also inspire students studying directing as part of a Theatre programme, and scholars, performers and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.
Reviews / Votes
Part memoir, part manifesto, this candid and clever account brilliantly captures the forms, pressures and pleasures of Shakespearean theatre-making in the early twenty-first century. Kevin Ewert is an expert and inspiring guide to postdramatic Shakespeare. * Paul Prescott, Associate Professor of English, University of Warwick, UK * The focus here is on the doing and making of directing Shakespeare, offered through a deft combination of theory and practice, braided into a tight plait of deeply informed historical understanding, theoretical sophistication, and useful notes-from-the-field by a practicing director. * Paul Menzer, Professor of Shakespeare and Performance, Mary Baldwin University, USA *More details
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Person
Kevin Ewert is Professor of Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, USA. He has contributed to The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare and The Routledge Companion to Actors' Shakespeare, and was the Associate Editor for the latter volume. He is a series editor for Palgrave Macmillan's The Shakespeare Handbooks, and wrote the volume on Henry V for that series. From 1997-2003 he was a company member and regular director for the Unseam'd Shakespeare Company in Pittsburgh.
Content
Introduction.- Part I: In Theory.- 1. The Play's The Thing.- 2. The Thing is the Thing.- Part II: In Practice.- 3. The Production Machine.- 4. Playing With Time and Space.- 5. Devising Shakespeare.- 6. Fixing Shakespeare.- 7. My Year of Shakespeare.- Part III: Provocation and Debate.- 8. A Conversation with Rude Mechs.- Annotated Reading List.