The Great European Stage Directors Set ― Post-1950

The Great Stage Directors Set II offers an an authoritative account of the work, lineage and legacy of the major European theatre directors from the second half of the twentieth century. Across the four volumes and the companion series Set I: European Pre-1950, it provides a uniquely rich study of the genealogy and development of a practice through focus on individual directors and the wider context and artform in which they worked. For professional practitioners and those developing their skills, as well as those engaged in the analysis of theatre practices, forms and history, it will prove an essential resource.

Each volume provides substantial treatment of three major directors, with each director considered by two specialists, combining analysis of the director’s practical craft with accounts of the historical, cultural and theoretical context of their practice. Links between the featured directors and other artists and directors from the period are traced to round out the picture of influences and artistic development.

Volume 5: Grotowski, Brook, Barba (edited by Paul Allain, University of Kent, UK): the ‘moment’ and the method of Grotowski; ‘anthropology’ and ‘interculturalism’

Volume 6: Littlewood, Planchon, Strehler: refunctioning or ‘translating’ written text, and the development of new modes of ‘post-Brechtian’ staging

Volume 7: Barrault, Stein, Mnouchkine (edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA): views on company structures; while having sometimes a politically tense relationship with their context, each comes to occupy the position of a nationally respected artist, indeed an institution.

Simon Shepherd is Professor of Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK, an institution that combines conservatoire and university college education. He conceived and edits Palgrave’s Readings in Theatre Practice series, for which his volume Direction appeared in 2012. Among his other titles are The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Theatre, Drama/Theatre/Performance (with Mick Wallis), and Studying Plays (with Mick Wallis, Bloomsbury, 2010).

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Kent, UK. He took his doctorate at Goldsmiths, trained in Poland with the Gardzienice Theatre Association, and studied the Suzuki Method. He has worked as Movement Director for the RSC and National Theatre and has published extensively on Polish theatre, Chekhov and actor training. He is currently director of the British Grotowski Project and leading a research collaboration with the Moscow Art Theatre School.

Felicia Hardison Londre, Curators’ Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA, is Dean of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre (2012-2014). Her many books include The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theatre, 1870-1930 (2007), awarded the George Freedley Memorial Award by the Theatre Library Association. For twenty-three years she was dramaturg for Missouri Repertory Theatre.