SAP - The Rise of the Modern Director (Lesson)

The Rise of the Modern Director

In contemporary theatre, the role of the director seems almost essential to the development of any play; however, the modern director is a relatively new concept. In ancient Greece through the middle ages of Europe, and even into and beyond the Renaissance, there were coordinators of the production such as the playwright that would give some indication about how the performance should be arranged. The idea of a single voice tying all aspects of the production together is only about 200 years old. Given the fact that theatre in some form or other is as old as humanity itself, it's a new concept!

We have discussed the role of the director in earlier lessons. In this lesson, we will go over the origins of the modern director as well as a more detailed overview of the roles and expectations of the director.

What Made Directors Necessary?

As you discovered in the last unit, when societies change the art that reflects that society changes along with it. Every major shift in population or change in the zeitgeist has been followed by a major shift in artistic movements.

All of these elements began to come together in theatre generally around the end of the Industrial Revolution.

The need for pulling all of these elements together in a cohesive way led to the common use of a director who was accepted as the “author” of the production and production concept.

The First Directors

Duke George II of Saxe-Meininghen is widely considered to be the first modern director. He was a wealthy aristocrat and head of a small German principality who created his own theatre in 1866. He was very demanding about every aspect of the production, insisting on realism in every aspect for the production from lighting, speech, stage mechanics, and historically accurate costumes and sets resulting in extensive rehearsals and some of the first truly ensemble acting. The results of his tyrannical approach to control had lasting effects and ultimately his influence deeply shaped contemporary acting as we know it. "When the group was disbanded in 1890, it had toured 36 European cities. The Meiningen troupe’s methods had an effect upon the younger generation of European stage directors, particularly André Antoine, who founded the first theatre of naturalism (Théâtre-Libre, Paris, 1887), and Konstantin Stanislavsky, an influential proponent of realism in the Russian theatre."  SOURCE Links to an external site.

Richard Wagner was a German opera composer whose scale of production was unmatched by previous operas.  Wagner's desire to control the audience's perception of his work led to revolutionary approaches to theatrical presentations that we still emulate to this day. He was one of the first to implement turning the lights off on the audience so that the focus of attention must be on the action on stage.  Prior to this, many people went to the theatre just as much to be seen and socialize as to see the play itself. Wagner also went so far as to rearrange the seats in the audience to insure everyone had a similar experience in what they could see. These were all part of a much larger idea Wagner had for creating a Total Work of Art or  “Gesamtkunstwerk.”  In the pursuit of achieving this artistic-philosophical goal, he because concerned with the experience of each audience member.  This centralized approach further solidified the idea of having a single "captain of the ship" for a production who was responsible for coordinating all aspects from staging to acting to the execution of the technical design.

Auteur Director vs Collaborative Director

For modern directors like both Wagner and Duke George II, the director functioned as a single person whose voice was unchallenged.  All aspects of the production were done the way one person wanted them to be. This is known as an Auteur, or Author Director. The benefits of this are that it is incredibly efficient and it is impossible for any aspect of the production to not match the directorial concept. There are many directors that still function this way.

Contemporary modern directors have often found that there are benefits to being more collaborative than simply relying on the single voice of an Auteur Director. The negative aspect of the single voice is that all participants of the production wind up doing an interpretation of one person. To really mine the life experience of multiple artists, the contemporary director tends to have a central directorial concept, but then has multiple meetings to discuss what the other artists bring to the table. This is more time-consuming and lots of communication is needed, but the end result allows more artistic minds to contribute to the whole.

Virtues of a Director

Since the job of the contemporary collaborative director is to work with a team of artists to create an experience for an audience based on the director's concept, there are a few virtues or general skills that directors need to keep in mind in order to have a successful harmonious experience.  

The Role of the Director

In previous modules, we discussed generally the role of the directors stating that the director is responsible for the casting and decision-making with regard to the performance of the text. We also talked about the nature of auditions and rehearsals in general. We will now look at the role of the director for a full play rather than simply for a staged reading. 

*A few of these will be a review of information from the Writing a Ten Minute Play and Staged Readings lessons.

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