200187eacoverv05bjpg

CONTEMPORARY EUROPEANTHEATRE DIRECTORS

Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented over-

view of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past fifty

years It is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre

during this period situated lucidly in its artistic cultural and political context The

resulting study is a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were

forged and tempered in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s The featured

directors are

Calixto Bieito

Piotr Borowski

Romeo Castellucci

Frank Castorf

Patrice Cheacutereau

Lev Dodin

Declan Donnellan

Kristian Freacutedric

Rodrigo Garciacutea

Jan Lauwers

Christoph Marthaler

Simon McBurney

Daniel Mesguich

Katie Mitchell

Ariane Mnouchkine

Thomas Ostermeier

Silviu Purcarete

Peter Sellars

Travelling from London and Craiova to St Petersburg and Madrid the book examines

directors working with classics new writing and new collaborative theatre forms

Each chapter is written by a specialist in European theatre and provides a detailed

critique of production styles The directors themselves provide contributions and

interviews to this multi-authored work which unites the many voices of European

theatre in a single volume

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at Queen Mary University

of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre Review Her books include lsquoOtherrsquo

Spanish Theatres (2003) and Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008) as well as three co-edited

volumes and two collections of translations

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway University

of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include

1956 and All That (1999) and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright

whose works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europe and the USA

C O N T E M P O R A R YE U R O P E A N T H E AT R E

D I R E C T O R S

Edited by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

First published 2010by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group an informa business

Collection and editorial matter copy 2010 Maria M Delgado and Dan RebellatoIndividual chapters copy 2010 the contributors

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized inany form or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in any information storage orretrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataContemporary European theatre directors edited by Maria M Delgado andDan Rebellato

p cmIncludes bibliographical references1 TheatermdashProduction and directionmdashEuropemdashHistorymdash20th centuryI Delgado Maria M II Rebellato Dan 1968ndashPN2570C663 201079202prime3309224mdashdc22 2009031598

ISBN10 0-415-46250-9 (hbk)ISBN10 0-415-46251-7 (pbk)ISBN10 0-203-85952-9 (ebk)

ISBN13 978-0-415-46250-1 (hbk)ISBN13 978-0-415-46251-8 (pbk)ISBN13 978-0-203-85952-0 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2010

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcouk

ISBN 0-203-85952-9 Master e-book ISBN

For David Bradby ndash a brilliant scholar inspiring teacher and great

friend without whose lifelong work on directorsrsquo theatre and the

European stage this volume would not have been possible and to

whom this volume is dedicated with love and respect

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

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7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

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viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

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ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

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F

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ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

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AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

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RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

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xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

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TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

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ED

GE

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

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TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

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TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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UC

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

CONTEMPORARY EUROPEANTHEATRE DIRECTORS

Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented over-

view of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past fifty

years It is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre

during this period situated lucidly in its artistic cultural and political context The

resulting study is a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were

forged and tempered in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s The featured

directors are

Calixto Bieito

Piotr Borowski

Romeo Castellucci

Frank Castorf

Patrice Cheacutereau

Lev Dodin

Declan Donnellan

Kristian Freacutedric

Rodrigo Garciacutea

Jan Lauwers

Christoph Marthaler

Simon McBurney

Daniel Mesguich

Katie Mitchell

Ariane Mnouchkine

Thomas Ostermeier

Silviu Purcarete

Peter Sellars

Travelling from London and Craiova to St Petersburg and Madrid the book examines

directors working with classics new writing and new collaborative theatre forms

Each chapter is written by a specialist in European theatre and provides a detailed

critique of production styles The directors themselves provide contributions and

interviews to this multi-authored work which unites the many voices of European

theatre in a single volume

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at Queen Mary University

of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre Review Her books include lsquoOtherrsquo

Spanish Theatres (2003) and Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008) as well as three co-edited

volumes and two collections of translations

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway University

of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include

1956 and All That (1999) and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright

whose works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europe and the USA

C O N T E M P O R A R YE U R O P E A N T H E AT R E

D I R E C T O R S

Edited by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

First published 2010by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group an informa business

Collection and editorial matter copy 2010 Maria M Delgado and Dan RebellatoIndividual chapters copy 2010 the contributors

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized inany form or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in any information storage orretrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataContemporary European theatre directors edited by Maria M Delgado andDan Rebellato

p cmIncludes bibliographical references1 TheatermdashProduction and directionmdashEuropemdashHistorymdash20th centuryI Delgado Maria M II Rebellato Dan 1968ndashPN2570C663 201079202prime3309224mdashdc22 2009031598

ISBN10 0-415-46250-9 (hbk)ISBN10 0-415-46251-7 (pbk)ISBN10 0-203-85952-9 (ebk)

ISBN13 978-0-415-46250-1 (hbk)ISBN13 978-0-415-46251-8 (pbk)ISBN13 978-0-203-85952-0 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2010

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcouk

ISBN 0-203-85952-9 Master e-book ISBN

For David Bradby ndash a brilliant scholar inspiring teacher and great

friend without whose lifelong work on directorsrsquo theatre and the

European stage this volume would not have been possible and to

whom this volume is dedicated with love and respect

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

CO

NT

EN

TS

7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

CO

NT

EN

TS

viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

CO

NT

EN

TS

ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

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ED

GE

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NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

C O N T E M P O R A R YE U R O P E A N T H E AT R E

D I R E C T O R S

Edited by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

First published 2010by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group an informa business

Collection and editorial matter copy 2010 Maria M Delgado and Dan RebellatoIndividual chapters copy 2010 the contributors

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized inany form or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in any information storage orretrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataContemporary European theatre directors edited by Maria M Delgado andDan Rebellato

p cmIncludes bibliographical references1 TheatermdashProduction and directionmdashEuropemdashHistorymdash20th centuryI Delgado Maria M II Rebellato Dan 1968ndashPN2570C663 201079202prime3309224mdashdc22 2009031598

ISBN10 0-415-46250-9 (hbk)ISBN10 0-415-46251-7 (pbk)ISBN10 0-203-85952-9 (ebk)

ISBN13 978-0-415-46250-1 (hbk)ISBN13 978-0-415-46251-8 (pbk)ISBN13 978-0-203-85952-0 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2010

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcouk

ISBN 0-203-85952-9 Master e-book ISBN

For David Bradby ndash a brilliant scholar inspiring teacher and great

friend without whose lifelong work on directorsrsquo theatre and the

European stage this volume would not have been possible and to

whom this volume is dedicated with love and respect

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

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7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

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viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

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ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

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F

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ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

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PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

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RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

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RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

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OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

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UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

First published 2010by Routledge2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue New York NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group an informa business

Collection and editorial matter copy 2010 Maria M Delgado and Dan RebellatoIndividual chapters copy 2010 the contributors

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized inany form or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafterinvented including photocopying and recording or in any information storage orretrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataContemporary European theatre directors edited by Maria M Delgado andDan Rebellato

p cmIncludes bibliographical references1 TheatermdashProduction and directionmdashEuropemdashHistorymdash20th centuryI Delgado Maria M II Rebellato Dan 1968ndashPN2570C663 201079202prime3309224mdashdc22 2009031598

ISBN10 0-415-46250-9 (hbk)ISBN10 0-415-46251-7 (pbk)ISBN10 0-203-85952-9 (ebk)

ISBN13 978-0-415-46250-1 (hbk)ISBN13 978-0-415-46251-8 (pbk)ISBN13 978-0-203-85952-0 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2010

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor amp Francis or Routledgersquoscollection of thousands of eBooks please go to wwweBookstoretandfcouk

ISBN 0-203-85952-9 Master e-book ISBN

For David Bradby ndash a brilliant scholar inspiring teacher and great

friend without whose lifelong work on directorsrsquo theatre and the

European stage this volume would not have been possible and to

whom this volume is dedicated with love and respect

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

CO

NT

EN

TS

7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

CO

NT

EN

TS

viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

CO

NT

EN

TS

ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

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BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

TR

OD

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

For David Bradby ndash a brilliant scholar inspiring teacher and great

friend without whose lifelong work on directorsrsquo theatre and the

European stage this volume would not have been possible and to

whom this volume is dedicated with love and respect

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

CO

NT

EN

TS

7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

CO

NT

EN

TS

viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

CO

NT

EN

TS

ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

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GE

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

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11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

C O N T E N T S

List of platesx

Notes on contributorsxii

Foreword by Michael Billingtonxvi

Acknowledgementsxviii

Introduction by Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato1

1 Ariane Mnouchkine Activism formalism cosmopolitanism29Brian Singleton

2 Patrice Cheacutereau Staging the European crisis49David Fancy

3 Lev Dodin The director and cultural memory69Peter Lichtenfels

4 Silviu Purcarete Contemporising classics87Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic

5 Frank Castorf and the Volksbuumlhne Berlinrsquos theatre of103

deconstructionMarvin Carlson

6 Daniel Mesguich lsquoUnsummarisablersquo mises en scegravene125Jim Carmody

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7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

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viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

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ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

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F

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ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

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AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

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RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

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RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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TI

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

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ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

7 Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl lsquoTo protect the actingrsquo145Aleks Sierz

8 Piotr Borowski and Polandrsquos Studium Teatralne Where process165

becomes performancePaul Allain

9 Christoph Marthaler The musicality theatricality and politics185

of postdramatic directionDavid Barnett

10 Jan Lauwers Performance realities ndash memory history death205Janelle Reinelt

11 Simon McBurney Shifting undersoaring over the boundaries233

of EuropeStephen Knapper

12 Romeo Castellucci The director on this earth249Alan Read

13 Kristian Freacutedric Boxing with the lsquogodsrsquo263Judith G Miller

14 Calixto Bieito Staging excess in across and through Europe277Maria M Delgado

15 Rodrigo Garciacutea and La Carniceriacutea Teatro From the collective to299

the directorLourdes Orozco

16 Katie Mitchell Learning from Europe317Dan Rebellato

17 Thomas Ostermeier Mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of339

actors and authorsPeter M Boenisch

CO

NT

EN

TS

viii

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

CO

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TS

ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

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RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

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BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

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BU

TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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UC

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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UC

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

P o s t s c r i p t s

18 Thomas Ostermeier On Europe theatre communication and363

exchangeJames Woodall

19 Peter Sellars Identity culture and the politics of theatre in377

EuropeMaria M Delgado

20 The directorrsquos new tasks395Patrice Pavis

Index413

CO

NT

EN

TS

ix

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

RE

WO

RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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OD

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TI

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

L I S T O F P L A T E S

The plate section can be found between pages 204 and 205

1 Heacutelegravene Cixousrsquos Tambours sur la digue (Drums on the Dam)directed by Ariane Mnouchkine with the Theacuteacirctre de Soleil(1999) Photograph copy Martine FranckMagnum Photographs

2 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos Combat de negravegre et de chiens (Black

Battles with Dogs) directed by Patrice Cheacutereau (1983) Photo-graph copy Marc Enguerand

3 Life and Fate adapted from the novel by Vasily Grossman anddirected by Lev Dodin (2007) Photograph copy Viktor Vasiliev

4 Pantagruelrsquos Cousin conceived and directed by SilviuPurcarete (2003) Photograph copy Pierre Borasci

5 Bulgakovrsquos The Master and Margarita directed by FrankCastorf (2002) Photograph copy Thomas Aurin

6 Moliegraverersquos Dom Juan directed by Daniel Mesguich (2003) Stillby Jim Carmody from La Gestion des Spectaclesrsquos DVDrecording of the production

7 Cymbeline directed by Declan Donnellan and designed byNick Ormerod (2007) Photograph copy Keith Pattison

8 HHH directed by Piotr Borowski in Studium Teatralnersquosspace in Praga Warsaw (2006) Photograph copy Marcin Cecko

9 Christoph Marthaler Stefanie Carp and Anna ViebrockrsquosGroundings directed by Christoph Marthaler and designed byAnna Viebrock (2003) Photograph copy Leonard Zubler

10 Isabellarsquos Room written and directed by Jan Lauwers (2004)Photograph copy Maarten Vanden Abeele

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

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xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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TI

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

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TI

ON

26

11 Street of Crocodiles an adaptation by Simon McBurney andMark Wheatley of the stories of Bruno Schulz directed bySimon McBurney (1992) Photograph copy Nobby Clark

12 Inferno part of the trilogy inspired by Dante Alighierirsquos The

Divine Comedy written directed and designed by RomeoCastellucci (2008) Photograph copy Luca del Pia

13 Bernard-Marie Koltegravesrsquos La Nuit juste avant les forecircts (Night

Just before the Forests) directed by Kristian Freacutedric (2004)Photograph copy Guy Delahaye

14 Macbeth directed by Calixto Bieito designed by Alfons Flores(2002) Photograph Ros Ribas copy Ros RibasTeatre Romea

15 La historia de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of

Ronald the Clown from McDonaldrsquos) written directed anddesigned by Rodrigo Garciacutea (2002) Photograph copy SofiacuteaMendez

16 Waves (2006) devised by Katie Mitchell and the company fromThe Waves by Virginia Woolf Photograph copy Tristram Kenton

17 Mark Ravenhillrsquos Shoppen amp Ficken (Shopping and Fucking)directed by Thomas Ostermeier (1998) Photograph copy GerlindKlemens

xi

LI

ST

O

F

PL

AT

ES

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

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BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

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RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

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RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

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xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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OD

UC

TI

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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UC

TI

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

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8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

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OD

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20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

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ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

N O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Kent He has published extensively on Eastern Europeantheatre including Gardzienice Polish Theatre in Transition (1997) andGrotowskirsquos Empty Room (2009) He also wrote The Art of Stillness The

Theatre Practice of Tadashi Suzuki (2002) and co-authored The

Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006)

David Barnett is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drama at the Uni-versity of Sussex He has published monographs of Heiner Muumlller(1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005) the latter as a researchfellow of the Humboldt Foundation He has written articles andessays on German English-language political and post-dramatictheatre

Peter M Boenisch is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at theUniversity of Kentrsquos School of Arts Born in Germany he graduatedfrom Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaumlt Muumlnchen in theatre studiesEnglish literature and linguistics His research specialisms are direct-ing and dramaturgy in Continental European theatre contemporarydance and dance performance and theories of theatre andintermediality

Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E Cohn Professor of Theatre andComparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York He is the founding editor of Western European StagesHis book The Haunted Stage (2001) received the Joseph CallowayPrize In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Athens

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

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BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

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TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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WO

RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

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ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Jim Carmody is the author of Rereading Moliegravere Mise en Scegravene

from Antoine to Vitez (1993) as well as articles on mise en scegravene trans-lation and theatre photography He is currently working on a Moliegraverein America project He teaches in the Department of Theatre andDance at the University of California San Diego and is an editor ofthe departmentrsquos journal TheatreForum

Maria M Delgado is Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts at QueenMary University of London and co-editor of Contemporary Theatre

Review She has published widely in the area of Spanish- and Catalan-language theatres Her books include Federico Garciacutea Lorca (2008)lsquoOtherrsquo Spanish Theatres (2003) and six co-edited volumes forManchester University Press Routledge and Smith amp Kraus

Aleksandar Sasa Dundjerovic is Senior Lecturer in Drama at theUniversity of Manchester and a practising director who has workedwidely in Eastern Europe and Canada He has published numerousbooks on the theatre of Robert Lepage including The Theatricality of

Robert Lepage (2007) The Cinema of Robert Lepage (2003) and Robert

Lepage (2009)

David Fancy teaches acting and performance analysis at the Mari-lyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock UniversityOntario Canada He has published on French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltegraves and on the performance of spirituality in corporate set-tings He is currently writing a volume on immanence performanceand the thought of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze

Stephen Knapper teaches at Kingston University He has written onComplicite Scaramouche Moliegravere and clowning He specialises inthe history and practice of commedia mask and carnival and is ajudge at the Notting Hill Carnival He co-directed The Red Noses asmall-scale touring theatre company in the 1980s studied at theEacutecole Jacques Lecoq and has worked in television and on the streetsof Naples

Peter Lichtenfels was Artistic Director of Edinburghrsquos TraverseTheatre from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic and Executive Directorof Leicester Haymarket Theatre from 1986 to 1990 He is now

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xiii

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

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RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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UC

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

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TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

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21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Professor of Theatre at the University of California Davis He con-tinues to work as a professional director and writes about stagingdirecting and Shakespeare in performance His co-written book onRomeo and Juliet Negotiating Shakespearersquos Language was publishedby Ashgate in 2009

Judith G Miller is Professor in the Department of French NewYork University She has written widely on plays and productions byFrench and francophone theatre artists most recently Ariane

Mnouchkine (2007) She also translates plays from the Frenchrecently Drums on the Dam in Selected Plays of Heacutelegravene Cixous (2004)and The Sister of Zarathustra by Joseacute Pliya (2008)

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the WorkshopTheatre University of Leeds Her research interests are primarily inthe area of contemporary European theatre and performance Shehas written on the work of Rodrigo Garciacutea Els Joglars Jan Fabre andWilliam Forsythe Her first monograph on theatre and politics inBarcelona was published in 2007 and she is currently working on hersecond monograph on festivals

Patrice Pavis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University ofKent and the author of books on Marivaux theatre theory and con-temporary theatre His most recent publications include Vers une

theacuteorie de la pratique theacuteacirctrale (2000) Le Theacuteacirctre contemporain (2002)Analyzing Performance (translated by David Williams 2003) and La

mise en scegravene contemporaine (2007)

Alan Read is the author of Theatre Intimacy amp Engagement The Last

Human Venue (2007) and Theatre amp Everyday Life An Ethics of

Performance (1993) He is a founding consultant editor of the journalPerformance Research and is currently Professor of Theatre at KingrsquosCollege London where he directs the Performance Foundation in theAnatomy Theatre and Museum on the Strand

Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the RoyalHolloway University of London He has published widely on post-war British theatre and his books include 1956 and All That (1999)and Theatre and Globalization (2009) He is also a playwright whose

CO

NT

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BU

TO

RS

xiv

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

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TO

RS

xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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OD

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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TI

ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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OD

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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OD

UC

TI

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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UC

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ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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UC

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

26

works have been performed on stage and radio in Britain Europeand the USA

Janelle Reinelt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Uni-versity of Warwick She was President of the International Feder-ation for Theatre Research and a former editor of Theatre JournalHer books include After Brecht British Epic Theatre (1994) Critical

Theory and Performance 2nd edn with Joseph Roach (2007) The

Performance of Power with Sue-Ellen Case (1991) and The Cambridge

Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights with Elaine Aston(2000)

Aleks Sierz is Visiting Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College andauthor of In-Yer-Face Theatre British Drama Today (2001) The Theatre

of Martin Crimp (2006) and John Osbornersquos Look Back in Anger (2008)He also works as a journalist broadcaster lecturer and theatre critic

Brian Singleton is Research Fellow at the International Instituteof Interweaving Performance Cultures Freie Universitaumlt BerlinAssociate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and Presi-dent of the International Federation for Theatre Research Publishedwork includes two books on the life and work of Antonin Artaudmany articles in journals and edited collections on the work of theTheacuteacirctre du Soleil and a monograph on Orientalism and Britishmusical comedy

James Woodall is a writer and broadcaster His first book onflamenco was published in 1992 and a biography of Borges followedin 1996 From 1999 to 2007 he was an arts writer and theatre criticfor the Financial Times and The Economist He is currently lecturer inPublishing and Writing at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge andalso a regular drama reviewer for the new arts website The ArtsDesk

CO

NT

RI

BU

TO

RS

xv

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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WO

RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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UC

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

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UC

TI

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

26

F O R E W O R D

Michael Billington

I feel f lattered to be asked to write a foreword to this excellent bookI also feel slightly surprised Turning to Dan Rebellatorsquos essay onKatie Mitchell I find myself characterised as an old curmudgeonwho attacks the application of the auteur theory to theatre and whochampions the centrality of the writer So what am I doing here

Without retreating from my views I think they should be seen incontext My warnings against the auteur theory were specifically todo with the danger of falling into the trap of uncritical adulation ofkey directors It happened notoriously in the cinema where a pieceof Hollywood fluff like Manrsquos Favourite Sport (1964) was reverentlyanalysed by the Cahiers du Cinema gang simply because it was dir-ected by Howard Hawks As a critic I was arguing for the need fordiscrimination My zealous championship of the writer should alsobe seen in the context of British theatre We have produced and stilldo as this book proves innovative and imaginative directors But Iwas claiming in a book about post-war British society that it isdramatists who provide an unerringly accurate picture of the variousstages of our national identity-crisis

Intriguingly that crisis as applied to Europe is the theme thatreverberates through this book Clearly a previous generationincluding giant figures such as Strehler Ronconi and Stein believedin the affirmative power of a humanist European culture Today thatfaith is being challenged in a variety of ways by global capitalism bydisillusion with political institutions by demographic shifts inducedby mass migration And what emerges from this book is a continuingconversation about how theatre should reflect the new rapidlychanging Europe This is in the best sense a deeply political book in

FO

RE

WO

RD

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

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WO

RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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UC

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

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UC

TI

ON

26

that it relates theatre to society And for me some of the most tellingwords come from Peter Sellars who works in Europe but lives inAmerica lsquoThe make-up of all these national theatre companies inevery one of these European countriesrsquo he says lsquohas yet to reflectthe actual demographics of walking down the street in BarcelonaParis or Stockholmrsquo (p 384) Specific directors such as MnouchkineBrook and Sellars himself have addressed this issue both throughcasting and choice of subject But the big challenge facing Europeantheatre is that of reflecting the ethnic religious and cultural diversityof the population Diversity is one key issue The other which thisbook wisely confronts is how to preserve a distinct identity in an agewhen national boundaries are blurred and the Internet makes globalcitizens of us all and on this I feel more optimistic Reading thisbook I am struck by the extent to which the work of many of thedirectors is known around the world Dodin Donnellan BieitoMcBurney Castellucci and Ostermeier are now coveted names onthe international festival circuit Yet they all work in their own par-ticular idiosyncratic way and have a style that could be quickly spot-ted by any reasonably perspicacious theatregoer Calixto BieitorsquosCatalan Catholic guilt manifested in a revulsion against materialistexcess is for instance very different from the ingrained IrishCatholicism shaded by a Cambridge education of Declan Donnel-lan which shows itself in a love of storytelling and visual purity Inshort the directors discussed and interviewed in this book may beconcerned with similar issues the nature of Europe the global mar-ket the democratisation of theatre the purpose of art itself Yet theyremain distinctive impassioned highly articulate figures with astrong individual aesthetic and unshakeable roots in a particular cul-ture Reading about them and listening to their own words you get aclearer sense of the volatility of Europe today than you would fromclose study of any number of Strasbourg political summits

FO

RE

WO

RD

xvii

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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UC

TI

ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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OD

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TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

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ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

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TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

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ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We have accumulated numerous debts while preparing this volumeThese include the directors who agreed to be interviewed and thewriters who undertook the interviews and essays We are grateful tothem all for sharing their expertise with us Our thanks go also to thephotographers who have granted us rights to reproduce images here

Talia Rodgers has been an enthusiastic supporter of this projectfrom its very inception Ben Piggott and Niall Slater offered us prac-tical guidance and the production team at Routledge have seen thebook through to final publication We owe them all a great debt ofthanks

Both the editors have been assisted by the support of staff andstudents at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway especially Una BauerDavid Bradby Jen Harvie and Nick Ridout The TaPRA workinggroup on DirectorsCollectives provided a lively forum fordiscussion and debate on many of the issues that run through thebook

We would also like to acknowledge the support of producerspractitioners and colleagues working in the field of European theatrewho provided useful information during the conception and realis-ation of this volume especially Anna Aurich Julia Carnahan DavidGeorge Kevin Higa Louise Jeffries Claire Macdonald BonnieMarranca Joan Matabosch the late Tom McGrath Marcos OrdoacutentildeezAnnabel Poincheval Josep Maria Pou Mark Ravenhill John RouseMercegrave Saumell Caridad Svich David Whitton Ella Wildridge DavidWilliams and Simon Williams Chris Baugh Stephen Bottoms andMaggie Gale offered advice and references at key stages of the pro-ject Susan Letzler Cole and Joanne Tompkins provided concrete

AC

KN

OW

LE

DG

EM

EN

TS

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

support in the early stages of development Joel Andersonrsquos contri-bution to this volume goes beyond the translation of a chapter tovaluable advice on photographs and image sourcing his generositydeserves our special thanks

This project was completed with support from the SpanishEmbassy in London Queen Mary University of Londonrsquos sabbaticalleave provision and the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilrsquosResearch Leave Scheme

Henry Little and Thomas Delgado-Little were patient and sup-portive in the final stages of preparing this volume This book couldnot have been completed without their support A

CK

NO

WL

ED

GE

ME

NT

S

xix

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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UC

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ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Maria M Delgado and Dan Rebellato

Over twenty years have passed since David Bradby and DavidWilliamsrsquos Directorsrsquo Theatre (1988) provided a guide to the new gen-eration of directors that emerged from the tumult of the late 1960s torevolutionise the European stage Inspired by the cultural revolt of1968 and the political visions it conjured these directors worked tocreate new collective structures of theatrical production took theirwork beyond the subsidised seats of European high culture to thestreets and factories warehouses and hangars and disrupted theelitist divisions between art and popular culture so entrenched inEuropean cultural traditions They were culturally and politicallyeclectic refusing the distinctions between art and entertainmentbetween the elite and the popular Roger Planchon oscillatingbetween film and theatre was typical of this wave his politics lessdoctrinaire than Bertolt Brechtrsquos his method less formal thanVsevelod Meyerholdrsquos his results more successful than AntoninArtaudrsquos For directors such as Planchon Ariane Mnouchkine PeterStein and Joan Littlewood theatre was a wholly collective activity inwhich people meanings and sensations would mingle and collideand find something none of them could have experienced apart

The impact of the cultural renewals and exchanges of the 1960sgenerated models that moved beyond the significant scenic and dir-ectorial experiments of the early twentieth century The new watch-words were openness and ambiguity the old narrative theatre yield-ing to a dreamlike succession of images technological and culturalforces conspiring to create arresting transformations of scale andspeed The work of Pina Bausch and Tadeusz Kantor created dizzy-ing juxtapositions of image text and sensation Jorge Lavelli and

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

1

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

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2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

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3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Viacutector Garciacutea brought excess immediacy and ecstasy to France withtheir sensory explorations of Arrabal Gombrowicz and Genet Forothers this was an opportunity to reinscribe art theatre in a networkof political realities and responsibilities Revelatory productions byPlanchon Mnouchkine and Stein sought to rediscover the politicaldimensions of the European canon In all cases the new directorsplayed a role in overthrowing the pre-eminence of the text in thetheatrical experience and in its place offered a vision of whatPlanchon called eacutecriture scenique (scenic writing)1 the directormarshalling all the resources of the stage in a wholly visual concep-tion that was perhaps for the first time not dependent on the work ofthe playwright

That generation of directors soon established a new chapter incontemporary theatre history and their work from that period is wellcovered by general books on the period in some cases by mono-graphs on particular directors and ndash in the case of Peter Brook ndashmonographs on particular productions2 The widespread acceptanceof their work has however tended to overshadow the generation ofdirectors who have emerged since the time when Mnouchkine andPlanchon were at their peak There have been important articles onindividual auteurs3 the work of directors like Thomas OstermeierRomeo Castellucci and Calixto Bieito is seen and discussed acrossthe world they are interviewed and debated championed andreviled There is however no book that provides an overview of therange of work currently being undertaken in European directorsrsquotheatre places that work in a broad artistic cultural and politicalcontext and provides a guide to that whole generation whosecareers were forged in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s

This volume brings together a series of twenty essays (both art-icles and interviews) that detail the aesthetics of a series of directorswho crucially formulated their trajectories in the aftermath of 1968These were figures shaped definitively (as with Mnouchkine andCheacutereau) or tangentially by the events of 1968 and the political shiftsin both Eastern and Western Europe that followed A significantnumber (as with Frank Castorf Cheacutereau and Thomas Ostermeier)have emerged from a socialist tradition shaping their trajectorieswithin the structures of national or state-subsidised theatres whose

IN

TR

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UC

TI

ON

2

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

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UC

TI

ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

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6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

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7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

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8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

remit included a sense of public and political accountability Othershave functioned ostensibly outside official structures (as withDeclan Donnellan Rodrigo Garciacutea Mnouchkine and Simon McBur-ney) creating companies that have themselves become globalbrands bartered bought and sold in the marketplace of the inter-national festival Indeed it is the festival circuit that offers the spaceof exchange where directors nurtured within both neo-liberal andMarxist principles convene and converge

The volumersquos organisation is broadly historical beginningwith an account of one of the great survivors from the 1960sMnouchkine whose frequent reinventions act as a guide through the1980s through economic crises changing patterns of migrationthe fall of the Soviet bloc the emergence of European integrationmonetary union and enlargement The chapter that follows proffersan English-language overview of the directorial trajectory of PatriceCheacutereau an associate of Planchonrsquos whose connection with Strehlerndash he spent time at the Piccolo during the early stages of his career ndashoffered an engagement with Strehlerrsquos vision of theatre as a form ofpublic service that might engage with the shifting boundaries of newEuropean borders and policies (Strehler 1996 268) Mnouchkine andCheacutereau can be located as part of a group of practitioners whoemerged in the 1960s and looked beyond their national frontiers fortexts collaborators performance vocabularies and commissionsOne of Cheacutereaursquos defining productions the 1976 Ring Cycle for Bay-reuth created with his Italian long-term scenographer RichardPeduzzi re-envisaged the Cyclersquos mythical iconography in favour of aloose late-nineteenth-century setting witnessing the social upheavalof industrialisation4 Mnouchkinersquos array of performers and perfor-matics imported from Asia and the Americas were part of a move-ment to internationalise the French theatre while simultaneouslypromoting a representation of the nation that stressed outward-looking credentials and social consciousness as fundamental to itssense of cultural legitimacy That these ideals have served as founda-tions for directors both within and beyond the French state can beevidenced in contributions to this volume on Lev Dodin SilviuPurcarete and Ostermeier The wave of directors who work withinthe theatre shaped so decisively by Planchon Mnouchkine Cheacutereau

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

3

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Wilson and Brook are also in their turn challenging that generationfinding new forms in which to make work developing further stylesof scenic writing disconnecting and reconnecting the theatre withnew political contexts and providing practices of theatre whereauthorship itself is questioned and fragmented

While it does not claim to be exhaustive the coverage of thebook is broad taking in directors from Italy (Castellucci) Spain(Garciacutea and Bieito) France (Cheacutereau Kristian Freacutedric DanielMesguich Mnouchkine) Germany (Castorf and Ostermeier)Belgium (Jan Lauwers) Poland (Borowoski) Romania (Purcarete)Russia (Dodin) Switzerland (Christoph Marthaler) and the UnitedKingdom (Donnellan McBurney and Katie Mitchell)5 It moves fromthe well known (Mnouchkine) to those working in more marginalisedcontexts (Borowski) It features directors who have worked primarilywith the classics (as with Donnellan Mitchell and Purcarete) thosewho have worked extensively with new writing (as with Freacutedric andOstermeier) and those who create new collaborative work (as withCastellucci Garciacutea Lauwers McBurney and Mnouchkine) Recog-nising the intra-European currents that have shaped directorialpractices in the latter half of the twentieth century this volume seeksto provide an evaluation of directors whose work has circumventedpolitical oppression (as with Castorf Dodin and Purcarete) demon-strated a continuing commitment to theatre as a medium for vigor-ous social debate (Bieito Cheacutereau Mnouchkine and Ostermeier)and probed new forms of working that question established roles byprising apart writerndashdirector binaries (Borowski Castellucci Garciacuteaand Mesguich) The choice of directors encompasses the generationthat emerged during the 1960s (Mnouchkine and Cheacutereau) thosewhose work materialised in the aftermath of the 1960s (Dodin andPurcarete) those whose work built on the earlier examples ofthese figures (Donnellan Castorf and Bieito) and those who havequestioned high-modernist ideals in ways that can be and have beenconsidered lsquopostmodernrsquo (Castellucci McBurney Lauwers andMarthaler) This range of choice also allows for the discussion of across-section of different stylistic vocabularies from the corporealtheatres of Lauwers and McBurney to the theatricalised neo-realismof Bieito and Ostermeier from the meticulous naturalism of Mitchell

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

4

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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UC

TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

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ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

and Dodin to the minimalist bare landscapes of Donnellan fromthe baroque theatricality of Purcarete to the exposed actors ofBorowskirsquos Studium Teatralne from the psychoanalytical paradigmsof Mesguich to the experiential theatres of Castellucci and Garciacutea

While European directors have featured in recent volumes6

there has been no sustained examination of the phenomenon of dir-ectorsrsquo theatre in contemporary Europe and this volume goes someway to finding new ways of discussing theatre practices of thoseworking within this context

T h e d i r e c t o r E u r o p e a n d n a t i o n a li d e n t i t y

What constitutes European identity is a subject of continuous debatethrough this volume as it has been more widely in the period thevolume covers At a colloquium on European identity held in 1990in an address titled lsquoLrsquoAutre Caprsquo (The Other Heading) JacquesDerrida asked what a new Europe might be in the aftermath ofSoviet Communismrsquos vertiginous collapse in Eastern Europe a dis-course had arisen of European lsquoreunificationrsquo which Derridaobserved seemed to propose a mythologically whole Europeanidentity that was to be restored he cites French President FranccediloisMitterrandrsquos tremulous declaration that Europe lsquois returning in itshistory and its geography like one who is returning homersquo (Derrida1992 8) At such a moment more than ever it was vital to insist thatany identity is created within a structure of difference in which iden-tity is never settled never stable and remains constituted by what itseems to exclude lsquowhat is proper to a culture is to not be identical toitself rsquo (Derrida 1992 9)

Contributors to this book have somewhat in this spirit drawnand redrawn borders and boundaries that refuse to allow for ageographically fixed space that can authoritatively be defined aslsquoEuropersquo The idea of Europe and the cultural ramifications andimplications of such a political unit are discussed by a number of thecontributors (pp 44 49 52ndash3 62 64 74ndash5 149 160ndash1 210 211233ndash4 291ndash3 320ndash2 373 382) as are the cultural policies and

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

5

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

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8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

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ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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UC

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ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

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ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

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19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

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OD

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20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

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OD

UC

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ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

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ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

initiatives that such a geographical configuration offers (15ndash1652ndash3 72 90 329ndash30 363 368 373 385) For Sellars Europe existsprimarily through a shared high culture and intellectual heritage thatgenerates further issues around representation and power (p 380)Indeed Janelle Reineltrsquos 2001 speculations as to whether the devel-opment of a strong EU is primarily a lsquofinancial strategy for competingwith the United States and gaining a transnational presence in for-eign often developing countriesrsquo (2001 366) find echoes in Sellarsrsquoscomments on the wider social interventions that directorsrsquo theatrecan make in the evolving landscape of Europe

The directorrsquos relationship to national identity again featuresthrough the contributions to this volume The roots of directorsrsquotheatre as Bradby and Williams demonstrate (1988 2ndash23) lie in thenineteenth century and the director is a figure shaped in the forgesof European nationalism and internationalism Wagnerrsquos vision ofthe Gesamtkunstwerk was by sly analogy a vision of national renewalof cultural identity all the parts of the nation working together Morecomplex was the story of Andreacute Antoinersquos Theacuteacirctre Libre and itsrelation to national identity Antoine started the Libre in 1887 in thehope of discovering new French playwrights Instead he discoveredthe director the naturalism that he became known for demanding asingle figure capable of harnessing and organising all the multiplecrafts and codes that make up the theatrical experience But even asthe playwright was displaced in the Theacuteacirctre Libre project by thedirector the Frenchness of the enterprise too was dispersed as pro-ductions that made his companyrsquos name in Paris and further afield ndashTolstoyrsquos The Power of Darkness Ibsenrsquos Ghosts Strindbergrsquos Miss

Julie Hauptmannrsquos The Weavers ndash were all from abroad Between1800 and 1900 Parisrsquos population had grown from just over half amillion to a number fast approaching 3 million and the social impactof these changes was decisive and unsettling (and provided Zola withthe subject matter of the twenty volumes of his Rougon-Macquartnovel sequence) In the second half of the nineteenth century Parisrsquosurban geography was dramatically reshaped under the designs ofBaron Haussmann to enhance flows of commerce and capital Indoing so successive French governments were seeking to enhanceParisrsquos position as a pre-eminently world city a nodal point for

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

6

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

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UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

international finance commerce culture and tourism a rebrandingexercise that also included the International Exhibitions heldsomewhat obsessively in the city in 1855 1867 1878 1889 and1900 Under Haussmannrsquos reforms the seedy theatres along theBoulevard du Temple (known as the lsquoBoulevard du Crimersquo because ofthose theatresrsquo preference for lurid thrillers) were demolished tomake way for the enlarged Place de la Reacutepublique a crucial axis inthe new organisation of city space a meeting point for no less thaneight grands boulevards In demolishing those boulevard theatresHaussmann was laying the groundwork for a new internationalisturban flow that would permit unprecedented access between thewealthy financial districts of the west and the bohemian quarters ofthe north (where Antoinersquos theatre was initially located) and aidednews of Antoinersquos work being disseminated to other urban centressuch as Stockholm Berlin London Dublin Barcelona Brussels andMoscow all of which had a theatre modelled closely on the TheacuteacirctreLibre with a similarly international repertoire within a decade Theemergence of the director in France at least was intimately entwinedwith the emergence of cosmopolitan not nationalist Europe

The directors who emerged in the first three decades of thetwentieth century such as Stanislavski Meyerhold Brecht andReinhardt can all be associated with the forces that were to solidifythe directorrsquos role as a major cultural agent shaping and in turn beingshaped by wider artistic and social practices Over time and some-times despite themselves they became national icons of culturalstrength and achievement while also manifestly exceeding any nar-row identification with nation (lsquoAll the legends about the nationalmentalitiesrsquo notes Lev Dodin with asperity lsquoget destroyed when wego on stagersquo [p 73]) They were associated with venues that cameto embody something of the spirit of change of the age ndash as withthe association of Stanislavski with the Moscow Arts TheatreMeyerhold with its Theatre-Studio Reinhardt with the KleinesTheater and the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and Copeaursquoswith the Theacuteacirctre du Vieux-Colombier This laid the foundationsfor the roles that Geacutemier and then Vilar in France Brecht and laterStein in Germany and Strehler and subsequently Ronconi in Italywere to play in establishing organisational structures that were to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

7

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

contribute as Fancy indicates in this volume lsquoto the continuedtheatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty republicantradition and national prestigersquo and legitimation (p 49)

Directors have been the figureheads of prominent nationalinstitutions In these positions they have both endorsed the statusquo and served to articulate potent critical responses to dominanttrends in both their national and transnational cultures Bradby andDelgado have seen this as in part due to the legacy of 1968 lsquoastheatre activists digested the lessons of the momentous events inParis and other parts of the old continentrsquo with directors formulatinga theory and practice of cultural opposition that promoted efficacywhile lsquoavoiding the trap of naiumlve revolutionary activismrsquo (Bradby andDelgado 2003a 1) The director may have begun as metteur en scegravene

but increasingly he ndash constructed predominantly as a white maleentity ndash embodied particular bourgeois ideals of individual attain-ment entrepreneurialism and capitalist enterprise that saw a movetowards cultural management the directeur or Intendant7 It is per-haps no surprise then that Planchon and Jonathan Miller have bothargued that directors are somewhat like museum curators (Bradbyand Williams 1988 6) and that the analogy of the museum and itsrelationship to the marketplace has increasingly come to feature inthe discourses through which the work of directors across the festi-val circuit ndash suppressing lsquothe local in favour of the transportablersquoprivileging lsquothe symbolic over the realistic the metaphorical over thereferentialrsquo (Carmody 2002 251) ndash has been discussed and debated8

Directors have become indelibly linked with the cultural institu-tions they lead and manage and these can be seen to function asnational trademarks or lsquoshowplacesrsquo functioning as manifestationsof a wider lsquo ldquoculturerdquo of nationsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181) Steinrsquos associ-ation with the Schaubuumlhne and Cheacutereaursquos with the TNP (TheacuteacirctreNational Populaire) have haunted much of their later work Othersrsquodirectorial identities are ineradicably bound up with the companiesthey founded (as with Mnouchkinersquos with Soleil Donnellanrsquos withCheek by Jowl Garciacutearsquos with La Carniceriacutea Teatro and McBurneyrsquoswith Complicite) or the theatres they now head (Dodin at the MalyBieito at the Romea Ostermeier at the Schaubuumlhne) All these com-panies tour regularly aided with financial support from national

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

8

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

governments and cultural agencies foreign embassies and officesdisplaying national cultural products lsquoin much the same way thatother products are displayed and promoted at international tradefairs and through aggressive governmentbusiness trade delega-tionsrsquo (Knowles 2006 181ndash2) Theatre proves part of the culturaleconomy that travels across the boundaries of Europe and beyond

Nevertheless we would argue that the identification betweenthe director and the nation which proved such a cornerstone of the-atrical culture in the Europe of the post-war era is no longer as solidas it might have been perceived to be in the 1970s The Council ofEurope was formed in 1949 In the 1950s Europe was a continentfeeling its way tentatively towards more unified structures ndash theEuropean Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed in 1952the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Com-munity (EEC) was signed in 1957 ndash whilst simultaneously protectingthe interests of its particular nation-states in a climate shaped bypolarisation between East and West Reinelt has effectively mappedthe gradual establishment of an infrastructure that has produced thelsquocommonrsquo working and trade environment that defines the newEuropean Union of twenty-seven member-states9

The European Union has gradually defined itself not only through

the EEC but also through a series of treaties on agriculture

environmental regulation transportation key industries and also

through the growth of a European Court a European Parliament

with directly elected members and a Council of Ministers which

decides issues on the basis of a majority vote In addition to these

juridical and regulatory matters the EU has also established the

discourse of lsquonationrsquo albeit a unique notion of nation through the

adoption of a flag an anthem the introduction of a European

passport (allowing open access throughout the EU on nation-

member passports) and a single currency [ ] all of course the

classic symbolic means of national identification In addition the

EU now has a common working environment (no immigration

restrictions for EU members) and a common trade environment

(no customs and limited trade tarif fs)

(Reinelt 2001 368)10

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

9

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

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ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

In the aftermath of the Second World War the need to rebuild aEuropean heritage was crucially linked to key initiatives both polit-ical ndash as with the European Union ndash and cultural Edinburgh andAvignon the two most renowned post-war festivals were lsquolaunchedon the wave of relief at the end of the war in Europe and shaped by amodernist belief in the inestimable value of cultural activity as ameans of allowing communities to reenvisage and reimagine them-selves following epochs of profound traumarsquo (Bradby and Delgado2003b 2)11 Nation-building happened both through physicalreconstruction and through the establishment of cultural infra-structures that would further promote the preoccupations of thenew age As the edifices of these political orders have collapsed ndashwith the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of theYugoslav Federation in 1991ndash2 ndash further redrawing the map of thecontinent so directors have questioned and redefined their roles inrelation to the cultural organisations that they work with and forAlthough as Marvin Carlson has suggested the idea of a lsquoNationalTheatrersquo is a distinctively European one (2008a 28) Europeandirectors associated with state-subsidised theatres such as BieitoCastorf and Ostermeier are increasingly reluctant to associatethemselves with a nationalist agenda Ostermeier strongly positionshis work as a conscious move away from an idea of the nationaltheatre that he views as connected with potentially discriminatorydiscourses of nation building (see pp 363ndash4)

At a time when nationalist discourses have splintered theimagined whole of the Continent with consequences that can bemeasured in painfully human terms ndash over 200000 died in theBalkan conflicts of the 1990s ndash it is not surprising to see issues ofnationhood running through the volume Language territory andpolitical legitimacy emerge as dominant tropes through which thework of the directors covered here can be viewed While this appearsparticularly marked in the work of Purcarete Castorf and Dodinwhose trajectories were shaped by the discourses of Communismduring Ceausescursquos Romania Honeckersquos East Germany andBrezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachevrsquos Soviet Union itcan be traced even in the theatrical languages and concerns of thosewhose careers have been made in the climate of a post-dictatorial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

10

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

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OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

continent The work of Marthaler and Ostermeier is indelibly con-textualised within the debates and dilemmas that have marked thereunified German nation Bieito lives and works in Catalonia whichin the years since Francorsquos death in 1975 has negotiated a movefrom being understood as a region within a centralised state to beingrecognised as a nation within a wider social and political bodyLauwersrsquo The Deer House (2008) commemorates the brother of aregular member of Needcompany killed in Kosovo during theBosnian War (see p 225) Katie Mitchellrsquos The Phoenician Women

(1995) found plangent echoes in Euripidesrsquo story of fraternal strife ofthe then-current Bosnian conflict

Theatre has been made and remade within a landscape shapedby exile migration and a shifting of the northndashsouth eastndashwest bin-aries As Castellucci states in Alan Readrsquos chapter (see p 253) thenew lsquoenlargedrsquo Europe lsquomeans and probably has meant a rethinkingof its own history in the light of the conflicts that have accompaniedits becomingrsquo On the one hand the politics of the new directors hasled them often to assert the local specificity of their work ndash mostfamously in the cases of Bieitorsquos association with Barcelonarsquos TeatreRomea and Borowskirsquos with the Studium Teatralne Meanwhile how-ever these directors have found themselves increasingly involved inan international touring circuit assisted by their frequently non-verbal scenic productions which has created skeins of cross-fertilisation and mutual influence such that directorsrsquo theatre maynow be described as a truly pan-European phenomenon

This reflects changes in the geo-political organisation ofEurope The European environment was a more hostile place in thelate 1980s than it had been in the late 1960s The political ideals ofthe counterculture gave way to retrenchment and disillusion In1989 a wave of revolutions brought down the old Soviet bloc andbarriers between East and West This accelerated a process that sawmarkets and capital f lows dramatically changing the shape andpower of the nation Transnational corporations have the power vir-tually to erase national borders in response supranational forms ofcollective action (in the form of international trade union links theEuropean Union international campaign groups etc) havedeveloped raising questions about the identity of the nation as

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

11

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

such Across Europe nations are being compromised by new nation-alisms terrorism regionalism localism and an axis of power thatquestions federal aspirations Culturersquos role is shifting the new utili-tarian priorities of our increasingly corporate world are demandingnew defences of art new modes of working a new internationalismEuropersquos current lsquostatersquo to paraphrase the opinions of Bellamy andCastaglione can be seen no longer as a collection of national entitiesbut rather lsquoa complex mixture of the subnational national andsupranationalrsquo (2005 293) As theatre moves in new directions andthe political ground shifts beneath it this collection of essays probeswhere directorsrsquo theatre is in the new century and how it relates tothe wider national and global movements that shape contemporarysociety

T h e a t r e E u r o p e a n d g l o b a l i s a t i o n

While the directors discussed in this volume are positioned withintheir nation-state and debates (both theatrical and social) thatemerge from this contextualisation there is also a focus on issuesthat transcend national boundaries Mnouchkinersquos early productionswith the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil seemed particularly embedded in the par-ticularities of French historical narratives ndash whether those of theFrench revolution and its aftermath in 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) orthe Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War (throughwhich Singleton reads 1789) It is also possible to locate in her work abroader concern with the boundaries of exchanges of territorypeoples and capital Le Dernier Caravanseacuterail (The Last Halting

Site 2003) draws on the untold stories of the refugees at the RedCross Sangatte camp in northern France to examine both processesof narratology and their relationships to wider ideological frame-works As with Lauwersrsquo The Lobster Shop (2006) Stephen FrearsrsquoDirty Pretty Things (2002) and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennersquos The

Silence of Lorna (2008) the breakdown of boundaries in the newEurope sees the vulnerable caught in the lawlessness that marks thejourney to securing European legitimacy in the form of an EUpassport

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

12

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

The global movement from east to west and south to north hasrendered a generation of stateless migrants suspended in delegiti-mised territories As such there appears a direct link betweenMnouchkinersquos LrsquoAcircge drsquoOr (The Golden Age 1975) and Bieitorsquos Peer

Gynt (2006) Both probe the exploitation of migrant labour renderedby a shift in boundaries driven by economic gain for an elite classCheacutereaursquos La Reine Margot (1994) and Bieitorsquos Peer Gynt similarlypoint to the dangers of nascent nationalism in a socio-political land-scape where the power to buy and sell remains the ultimate markerof economic might Marthalerrsquos Groundings (2003) intersects thebankruptcy of Swissair in 2002 with the early termination of his con-tract at Zurichrsquos Schauspielhaus that same year offering a treatmentof the intersections (and confrontations) between cultural and eco-nomic capital lsquosomething of a topos in German-language theatresince the fall of the Berlin Wallrsquo (see Barnett p 187) Indeed thetrajectories of Castorf at the Volksbuumlhne and Ostermeier at theSchaubuumlhne similarly demonstrate a marked leaning towards bothtexts and ndash in the case of Castorf and his favoured invited directors atthe Volksbuumlhne12 ndash an aesthetic concerned with the crumbling of asocial order that both reflects and comments on the post-1989 ten-sions in a recently reunified Germany Crucially while it is possibleas Peter Boenisch does to view Ostermeierrsquos Nora (2002) and Hedda

Gabler (2005) as a commentary on the frustration of thirty-somethingprofessionals in a crisis-ridden Germany grappling with a temporaryaffluence threatened by its own unstable edifice (pp 347ndash50) thelsquoothernessrsquo of the textsrsquo trans-European roots serve to embed thediscussion within wider discourses of global dissent and politics

Globalisation however remains more than an economic phe-nomenon here it is shown to cultivate the structures through whichmuch of the work of the directors presented in this volume is pro-duced ndash across international touring circuits that bring together cap-ital from diverse national and transnational sources13 These debatesmove beyond the loose configuration now regarded as the lsquonewEuropersquo and touch on wider operations of cultural exchange andimperialist appropriation For Ostermeier lsquoAs globalisation global-ises economic interests and markets it also globalises problems com-

ing from globalisationrsquo (see Woodall p 364) and it is these problems

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

13

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

that he has chosen to focus on in the playtexts from writers acrossEurope ndash including Mark Ravenhill Sarah Kane Jon Fosse andAlexej Schipenko ndash that he has staged at the Schaubuumlhne Singletonrsquosfocus on Mnouchkine discusses particular indicators of Orientalism(from performance vocabularies to decor and scenography) as a wayof indicating how it can be viewed as a process a mode of exploringartistic and textual heritage (see pp 38ndash46) Fancy argues thatCheacutereaursquos relationship with Koltegravesrsquos writing was part of a process ofprobing encounters between Europe and the colonial Other also evi-dent in his production of Genetrsquos Les Paravents (The Screens 1983)(see pp 58ndash60) For Garciacutea too encounters with the post-colonialOther shape two of his most resonant pieces Borges (1999) and Goya

(2006) The vocabularies of torture degradation and intimidation ndashsuch a feature of the lsquodirty warrsquo waged by Argentinarsquos military Juntabetween 1976 and 198314 ndash are core terrain for the Argentine-bornGarciacutea embodied in the aggressive visceral aesthetic of La historia

de Ronald el payaso de McDonalds (The Story of Ronald the Clown from

McDonaldrsquos 2004) The language of corporate Western culture isshown by Garciacutea to be indelibly bound up with the politics of global-isation McDonaldrsquos and Ikea are for Garciacutea more than just per-formance tools they are the manifestations of a popular culture thatbinds North and South East and West into an insidious imperialistweb that eradicates difference and diversity For Sellars any discus-sion of a European tradition cannot help but acknowledge ties withAfrican South-East Asian and American cultures and a culture ofsegregation ndash played out in the geographical configuration of citiessuch as Paris Barcelona and Berlin ndash must be addressed throughcultural encounters that try to envisage new communities andconfigurations (p 384)

Many of the directors featured in this volume work acrossdifferent languages and some ndash most conspicuously Bieito Lauwersand Marthaler ndash negotiate different linguistic registers in their pro-ductions as a way of commenting on both the structures of languageand the modes through which language both controls and can itselfbe controlled English emerges ndash broken dismembered reworked ndashas the language of global capitalism It is also a language that can bere-envisaged and reworked through translation (as when Shakespeare

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

14

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

is represented through the prisms of linguistic adaptation) Indeedthe challenges of handling the classic text whether through therefractions of translation or in the source language run through thevolume For many of the directors including Bieito OstermeierCheacutereau and Mesguich directing is as much about archaeologicalexploration as it is about the construction of a reading The shapingof the canon that inevitably comes through the prioritisation of cer-tain plays in performance allows for issues concerns and tensions toemerge through the storytelling process that forms part of the publicdiscourse of performance

Intersecting genealogies of directing can also be traced throughthe volume further testament to the pan-European currents dis-cussed by many of the contributors The Russian line from Stanis-lavski through to Meyerhold Chekhov Lyubimov and on to DodinDonnellan Mitchell and Ostermeier is commented on across variouschapters (see pp 75ndash6 149 152 160ndash1 320ndash33 354) There arehowever also routes from Italy to France ndash as with Cheacutereaursquos debt toStrehler (p 51) and Mnouchkinersquos to Ronconi (p 36) from France tothe UK through Brook and then across Russia and into EasternEurope (as with Dodin and Donnellanrsquos debt to Brook) The legacy ofGrotowski and Gardzienice can be sketched through to Borowksi andMitchell Borowski however also questions his relationship to sucha Polish lineage through a marked focus on the urban underclass of anewly modernising Polish nation (p 177) McBurney discusses hisown encounters with Pina Bausch and a Parisian landscape that wel-comed performers artists and intellectuals from across Europe andthe Americas in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s (p 238) Garciacutea is posi-tioned by Orozco within a European avant-garde that includes hisacknowledged influences ndash Kantor Fabre Lauwers and Castellucci(p 301) Rebellato traces Mitchellrsquos indebtedness to and her continu-ing investigation of a north-east European tradition of austerelypowerful visual images and an implacably serious attitude to training(pp 322ndash9) Dodin comments on a lsquodialogue between nationalitiesthrough culturersquo that he traces from French theatre into Russiantheatre through Stanislavski and Meyerhold across to Germanywith Brecht and then into England and France via Brook back to hisown work (p 73) Bieito may link his own work to the Spanish cul-

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

15

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

tural landscape (p 286) but the influence of Donnellan and Cheek byJowl is evident in his Shakespeare stagings (p 282) The pan-European repertoire that directors negotiate further enforces thissense of a shared heritage that a number of the contributors to thisvolume comment on

Directors are themselves migrants across different traditionsand geographical landscapes Purcarete articulates his own move-ment from East to West ndash Bucharest to Limoges in 1996 and then toParis in 2002 ndash as that of lsquoa vagabondrsquo (p 92) evoking something ofthe wandering troubadour of the medieval cultural landscape Garciacutealeft Argentina for Spain in 1986 shortly after the difficult years ofthe Argentine Junta that sought to eradicate dissent from both thepolitical and cultural spheres Swiss-born Marthaler now directsprimarily within the structures of the German theatre Since 1986Donnellan has worked for extensive periods in Russia and Franceand his contact with canonical texts from both nations has resultedin productions that move away from dominant ways of readingCorneille Pushkin and Racine Directing is perceived as a negoti-ation of traditions texts materials and processes It is less aboutlsquointerpretingrsquo than about collision and exchange Marthaler is bothmusician and director McBurney and Mesguich both actors and dir-ectors Purcarete and Castellucci both designers and directorsGarciacutea and Lauwers both writers and directors Directorsrsquo theatre inEurope is haunted both by its own cultural memories and by thewider historical social and cultural structures in which it takes place

Indeed it is the directors themselves who initiate imaginativepossibilities for cultural exchange and transnational theatre prac-tices Dragan Klaic laments the lack of European initiatives toencourage such work lsquoOfficials tend to think primarily in terms ofexporting national prestige [ ] The Brussels bureaucrats within theEuropean Unionrsquos convoluted international structure [ ] hope-lessly circle around a few opaque and inefficient schemes incapableof coming up with any plausible programs of cultural action thatwould further European integration in the eyes of the citizenrsquo (Klaic1999 115) It is perhaps the festival producers the annual Euro-pean Cultural Capital schemes and directors of state-subsidisedvenues that now offer the most productive options for concrete

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

16

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

pan-European collaboration with cost-sharing possibilities for co-productions and long-term ventures It is within these structures thatmany of the directors in this volume have consolidated theirreputations And indeed as Klaic concludes

In Europe where practically every large city contains a greatdiversity of religions languages ethnicities and countries oforigin international collaboration is not an elitist exercise but away to catch up with urban reality with its complex interactionsbetween different groups and the emergence of a syncreticyouth culture

(Klaic 1999 127)

T h e d i r e c t o r i n E u r o p e f r o m t e a c h e rt o b r a n d

The idea of the director as teacher or pedagogue features strongly inthis volume Mesguich began teaching at the Conservatoire Nationalin 1983 and now significantly runs this institution Dodin directorof St Petersburgrsquos Maly Theatre since 1983 links his own practice asa director to his work with the St Petersburg Academy where hecontinues to work with the actors who in turn join the Maly Oster-meier is now a teacher at the Russian-influenced Ernst Busch Schulewhere he himself studied between 1992 and 1996 Donnellan (2003)and Mitchell (2008) have followed the example of Stanislavski inproviding published volumes on the craft of directing that offerdetailed guidelines on the process of constructing a production andDonnellan talks in his contribution to this volume of lsquoa profoundrespect for teachingrsquo that can be traced through his own careful workwith actors (p 151) For Dodin teaching goes beyond the work in theconservatoire and is linked to a concept of theatre that probes themodes in which we process and engage with the courses of history(pp 75ndash6) For Purcarete working for twelve years in CommunistRomania theatre was a necessity a way of speaking to a communityabout shared concerns and ideals (p 91) Castorf rsquos careerdeveloped in Anklam under the watchful eye of the Stasi challenged

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

17

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

both the aesthetic and the political absolutes of communist EastGermany offering openings that were simply not permitted underthe ideological apparatus of the state (pp 103ndash4) Ostermeierregards theatre as capable of changing lsquoonersquos view of the worldrsquo(p 339) For Sellars too theatre is never lsquoa destination point itrsquosalways the route towards something elsersquo (p 380)

For the directors discussed in this volume the craft of directingis never simply a question of lsquointerpretingrsquo but rather about shapingrepresenting positioning and creating While there is a particularschool of directors who see directing as something that should berendered invisible lsquoa demand that the production illuminate the playor the film rather than itself rsquo (Eyre 2003 111) there is also a clearreaction to this by those who perceive history as a construct ratherthan a given and who consequently position theatre as a means ofcommenting on the ideological structures of both theatre and soci-ety Cheacutereaursquos work is thus positioned as an engagement with forma-tive European discourses of political power played out in a choice oftexts that moves between the siegravecle des lumiegraveres and the Balkan con-flict (pp 50ndash62) Dodin and Purcarete reflect on a choice of reper-toire that allows for an exploration of the ways in which theatre cre-ates and conceives our ideas of history and facilitates new discus-sions about the intersections between past and present (pp 81ndash83100) Bieito envisages theatre as the space of moral debates a placewhere norms can be rattled and certainty challenged and under-mined (p 293) Castellucci sees the director as a figure lsquowho creates

problems instead of trying to solve themrsquo (p 253) and Mesguich tooargues for a theatre that doesnrsquot provide answers but rather offers amise en scegravene that proves lsquounsummarisablersquo a series of experiencesthat the spectator negotiates (pp 128ndash9) Sellars views lsquotext asa living being not as an objectrsquo (p 381) and indeed the definition ofhow one creates a theatrical text is at the forefront of many of thediscussions conducted through the volume

Crucially the idea of the director as an embodiment of indi-vidual authority is also questioned through the volume in ways thattestify to the influence of live art practices on directorsrsquo theatreText when it exists is there to be engaged with and reformulatedeither directly through radical interventions (as with Bieito Castorf

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

18

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Castellucci Marthaler and Mesguich) or through performative andscenographic registers that themselves expose gaps and fissures inthe dramaturgical play (as with Cheacutereau Donnellan McBurney andMitchell) While some may prioritise narrative (as with Donnellan)for Castellucci Lauwers and Garciacutea linearity and text are themselvesconstructs there to be questioned and challenged It is a penchant forthe episodic for colliding micro-narratives intersecting tales andarresting images that dominates their theatrical work The text isthere to be negotiated and its treatment and delivery become part ofthe process of making theatre in a contemporary era where directorsno longer aim to provide answers through their work but rather askquestions with which to provoke surprise and disarm an audienceOften this comes as Barnett observes through eschewing mimeti-cism of speech and movement lsquoin a theatre in which hierarchieshave been undermined the director is no longer the visionary inter-preter but rather moderates his or her claim to authorityrsquo (p 185)Purcarete uses the term lsquodistortionsrsquo to discuss the ways in which histextual interventions have been read by UK critics (p 94)

This volume presents no single understanding of what directingconsists For Singleton Mnouchkine can be positioned within themodel of the German Probenleiter lsquoleading rehearsalsrsquo (p 32) shehas also referred to herself as a midwife (Mnouchkine 1996 187)Bieito refuses to see himself as a patriarch in the sense of the earliergeneration of auteurs such as Bergmann and Strehler (Delgado 200363) Freacutedric uses a sporting analogy when speaking of himself as acoach (p 272) but later refers to his work as more sculptor thandirector (p 275) Garciacutea too positions himself within the visual artsprioritising the visual in his exploration of the relationships betweenpublic and private spaces (p 301) Stephen Knapper sees McBurneyas an imprimatur lsquosigning his workrsquo like a cinematic auteur (p 246)Katie Mitchell with her connections to European dance theatreand mixed media performance forms has been simultaneouslyacclaimed and denounced precisely for her auteur status as Rebel-lato shows (pp 317ndash18) Indeed while Kelleher and Ridout (2006 1)have commenced from positions that signal the separation of UKdirectors from those working in Continental Europe the UK artistsand companies whose work is discussed in this volume are shown to

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

19

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

be productively embedded in wider European structures of makingtheatre treating issues of displacement territoriality and historicalmemory that are so pertinent to the wider discussions of the UKrsquosposition within the wider structures of the EU

Perhaps the most prominent of the shared reference points isthe idea(l) of an ensemble company a team collective or group thatcomes together for extended periods to develop a project whether inthe form of an individual production or a laboratory structure forgenerating work For Bieito Borowski Castellucci Castorf DodinGarciacutea Lauwers Marthaler McBurney Mitchell MnouchkineOstermeier Purcarete and Sellars such organisational models offera structure for both their methodologies and for a wider view of whatit means to make and watch theatre across Europe The relationshipwith wider company structures is evident not only in Mnouchkinersquosassociation with the Theacuteacirctre du Soleil but also in the modes throughwhich McBurney discusses his own associations with Complicite(pp 235ndash9) Ostermeier his position within a wider creative team atthe Schaubuumlhne (p 369) and Bieito his function within the Romea(pp 280ndash1) And while the idea of the ensemble may have evolved ndashas Orozco demonstrates in charting Garciacutearsquos shift to a transienttroupe that works intensively on a single project rather than acrossnumerous ventures (pp 308ndash9) ndash it serves as a powerful organisa-tional model for theatre-making in Europe in the twenty-firstcentury

Indeed the role of the director in an lsquoactor-centred creativeprocessrsquo (Singleton p 32) is the focus of a number of the contribu-tions to this volume Aleks Sierz writes of Cheek by Jowl as lsquoanunofficial acting academyrsquo (p 146) and Donnellan himself articu-lates a vision of directing founded on a consideration of acting andthe actor as both individual and a member of an ensemble (pp 158ndash9) This is not to say that Donnellanrsquos decisions are entirely governedby a prioritisation of the actor he admits that sometimes he choosesa play to suit particular actors but at other times it is the play thatcomes first and actors are cast subsequently (p 152) Paul Allainnotes the importance of the core group of performers working withPiotr Borowski at Studium Teatralne since 1995 (p 180) Bieitorsquosreliance on a small team of regular actors at the Romea was crucial

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

20

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

to his Catalan- and Spanish-language work for ten years (pp 279ndash80) Ostermeier too has been able to work with regular performers ndashincluding Bruno Cathomas and Jule Boumlwe ndash at the Schaubuumlhne andrefers to his own job as that of letting lsquoactors growrsquo (p 371) KatieMitchell has remarked lsquoI think what Irsquove been learning all the time ishow to give the actors freedom rather than trying to control themrsquo(Gardner 1998 15)

But the process of making work marked by a signature aestheticis repeatedly shown to go beyond the actorndashdirector relationshipMarthalerrsquos trajectory since Murx den Europaumler Murx ihn Murx ihn

Murx ihn Murx ihn ab Ein patriotischer Abend (Kill the European Kill

Him Kill Him Kill Him Kill Him Off A Patriotic Evening 1993) isbound up with set designer Anna Viebrock and dramaturg StefanieCarp Donnellanrsquos aesthetic is created with designer Nick OrmerodFreacutedricrsquos visually opulent worlds are conceived with cartoonist-turned-scenographer Enki Bilal Ostermeierrsquos aesthetic is formu-lated with designer Jan Pappelbaum and dramaturgs Jens Hillje andMarius von Mayenburg Mitchellrsquos working relationship withdesigner Vicki Mortimer has passed the quarter-century mark andher current work in multimedia rests heavily on her consistent col-laboration with video artist Leo Warner All these directors providesome indication through the essays collected here of how they worktowards a production The director may be the brand but it is abrand cultivated by a team This volume does not seek to see thedirector as a homogenous individual but rather as a construct thatitself articulates wider debates around the intersections betweentheatre nation state and the broader structures through which geo-graphical political and cultural spaces intersect or collide Directingis shown to be both a function and a profession a brand and a pro-cess an encounter and a market force

J o u r n e y s

The different chapters in this volume look at particular concerns thatemerge in relation to European history in the productions discussedWith Cheacutereau it is the lsquoinvestigation of the specifically European

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

21

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

emergence of certain broad manifestations of institutionalised sub-jectionrsquo (p 54) with McBurney an internationalism that movesbeyond the boundaries of Europe from which his early Lecoq- andGaulier-trained collaborators came to embrace collaborations withJapanrsquos Setagaya Public Theatre the Los Angeles Philharmonic andthe National Actorsrsquo Theatre New York with Mesguich an engage-ment with European Continental philosophy that has offered a modeof disarming established understandings of a textrsquos dramaturgyFreacutedricrsquos transatlantic journeys are crucial to the increasinglybilingual nature of his work Ostermeierrsquos work in establishing FIND(the Festival for New International Drama) allows for trans-Europeanencounters that present alternatives to the formal network ofStrehlerrsquos Union of Theatres of Europe

Some contributors chose to focus primarily on a single produc-tion while others detail a wider body of work in constructing theirargument The emphasis is always on a treatment that allows fordiscussion of the particular characteristics of a directorrsquos aestheticworking process and directorial choices as well as the ways in whichhis or her work has been received by both critics and audiencesSome essays as with those on Borowski and Purcarete provide con-crete examples of how loose ideas are converted into a performanceOthers as with those on Garciacutea and Ostermeier give close consider-ation to issues of space and place examining the implications of theperformance space and its location McBurney addresses the ways inwhich theatre can serve to create and bind communities at a timewhen the concept of community is itself so fractured and fraught(pp 242ndash3) Ostermeierrsquos reflections on what it means to work inEurope serve as the organising frame for the interview conducted byJames Woodall that opens the concluding postscript section of thebook It is both a commentary on his geographical landscapes and away of situating the final chapters of the book each offering a surveyon the ideologies of Europe as they relate to directorsrsquo theatre ForPavis the Europe of the past half-century is no longer the spacelsquowhere all contradictions are resolvedrsquo in a globalised world mise en

scegravene is now lsquochallenged and renewedrsquo by the performises that liebeyond Europersquos geographical economic and imagined boundaries(p 409)

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

22

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Indeed while the realities of working in Europe shape this pro-ject the volume also touches on the networks of associations thatmove beyond the parameters of the Continent Numerous contribu-tions delineate working practices that draw on North AmericanAsian and African practitioners and practices (pp 30 37 38ndash42 75207 229 233 263ndash4 267 283) and our final two essays ndash aninterview with Peter Sellars a director who sees his own work in theUSA only possible because of his trajectory of operatic and theatricalwork in Europe and an overview of directorsrsquo theatre by PatricePavis ndash return to the idea of exchanges that happen both within andbeyond Europe As the idea of Europe shifts to take in greater con-figurations and clusters the boundaries of what the continent is andhow it has been shaped are themselves called in to question Muchof the work discussed in this volume is about lsquotesting the limitsrsquo(p 384) examining the possibilities of how theatre can participate inthe discussions about nationalism migration terrorism capitalismrsquosfault-lines and excesses that now shape Europersquos sense of selfand lsquootherrsquo Sellars describes Europe as lsquothis place of the possiblersquo(p 380) the contributions to this volume indicate the ways in whichpossibilities have been envisaged by directors across political socialand cultural paradigms that make up the terrain both imagined andreal of what is understood to be contemporary Europe

N o t e s

1 See Bradby 1991 101ndash28 132ndash41 Bradby and Sparks 1997 41ndash5Bradby and Delgado 2002 16

2 See for example Bablet and Bablet 1979 Daoust 1981 Heilpern 1977Hunt and Reeves 1996 Hirst 1993 Patterson 1981 Schumacher 1986Todd and Lecat 2003 Whitton 1987 Williams 1999

3 See the bibliography at the end of this introductory chapter for furtherdetails

4 For further details on the production and Cheacutereaursquos other operaticwork see Sutcliffe 1996 99ndash124

5 In addition the North American director Peter Sellars provides acommentary on the experiences of an lsquooutsiderrsquo working largely inEurope

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

23

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

6 See for example the treatments of Bieito in Bieito et al 2005 Castel-lucci and Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio in Ridout 2006 Giannachi and Kaye2002 137ndash69 Castellucci et al 2007 Garciacutea in Orozco 2010 ClausPeymann in Bradley 2008 Carlson 2008b Reneacute Pollesch in Barnett 2006Michael Thalheimer in Boenisch 2008 Olivier Py in Bradby 2005 as wellas a range of contemporary German directors covered in Carlson 2009

7 On the role of the Intendant as both artistic and executive director seeBarnett 2008 For further information on theatrical nationhood andcultural legitimation see Kruger 1992 3ndash29

8 See especially Carmody 2002 Fricker 2003 Knowles 2006 180ndash2049 The founder members of the ECSC were Belgium France Italy Luxem-

bourg the Netherlands and West Germany The EEC was established in1957 and in 1967 the ECSE EEC and the European Atomic EnergyCommittee merged into a single institution the European CommunityThe six founder states were joined by Denmark Ireland and the UK in1973 and Greece Spain and Portugal over a decade later Germanreunification saw East Germany welcomed into the structure and follow-ing the formal establishment of the EU with the 1993 Treaty of Maas-tricht Austria Sweden and Finland joined in 1995 Ten further nationsndash Cyprus the Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia LithuaniaMalta Poland Slovakia and Slovenia ndash joined in 2004 Romania andBulgaria joined in 2007 Turkey and the Balkan States of Croatia andMacedonia are currently in the process of adopting the stabilisationand association agreements that will allow them to become candidatesfor EU membership For further details see httpeuropaeu

10 On projects towards a unified Europe in the post-war era see Duchecircne1996 Hallstein 1962 Kotlowski 2000

11 At the turn of the twenty-first century Klaic (1999 116) estimated thenumber of European festivals at 350

12 These include Andreas Kriegenburg and Marthaler13 On theatre and globalisation see Rebellato 200914 At least 30000 civilians were lsquoeradicatedrsquo by the military dictatorship

during these years

B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bablet Marie-Louise and Denis Bablet (1979) Le Theacuteacirctre du Soleil ou la quecirctedu bonheur Paris CNRS

Barnett David (2006) lsquoPolitical Theatre in a Shrinking World Reneacute

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

24

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

Polleschrsquos Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stagersquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 16 (1) 31ndash40

mdashmdash (2008) lsquoThe Problems and Pleasures of Running a Theatre in Berlin TheChanging Role of the Intendantrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1)80ndash3

Bellamy Richard and Dario Castiglione (2005) lsquoBuilding the Union TheNature of Sovereignty in the Political Architecture of Europersquo in DimitriosKarmis and Wayne Norman (eds) Theories of Federalism New YorkPalgrave Macmillan pp 293ndash310

Bieito Calixto Maria M Delgado and Patricia Parker (2005) lsquoResistantReadings Multilingualism and Marginalityrsquo in Lynette Hunter andPeter Lichtenfels (eds) Shakespeare Language and the Stage The Fifth Wallndash Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism Performance and TheatreStudies London The Arden Shakespeare and Thomson Learningpp 108ndash37

Boenisch Peter (2008) lsquoExposing the Classics Michael Thalheimerrsquos Regiebeyond the Textrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 30ndash43

Bradby David (1991) Modern French Drama 1940ndash1990 Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

mdashmdash (2005) lsquoOlivier Py A Poet of the Stage Analysis and Interviewrsquo Con-temporary Theatre Review 15 (2) 234ndash45

Bradby David and Maria M Delgado (eds) (2002) The Paris Jigsaw Inter-nationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress

mdashmdash (2003a) lsquoEditorial The Director as Cultural Criticrsquo ContemporaryTheatre Review 13 (3) 1ndash3

mdashmdash (2003b) lsquoEditorialrsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (4) 1ndash4Bradby David and Annie Sparks (1997) Mise en Scegravene French Theatre Now

London MethuenBradby David and David Williams (1988) Directorsrsquo Theatre Houndmills and

London MacmillanBradley Laura (2008) lsquoContemporary Theatre Brecht Peymann amp Co at the

Berliner Ensemblersquo Contemporary Theatre Review 18 (1) 69ndash79Carlson Marvin (2008a) lsquoNational Theatres Then and Nowrsquo in S E Wilmer

(ed) National Theatres in a Changing Europe Houndmills PalgraveMacmillan pp 21ndash33

mdashmdash (2008b) lsquoClaus Peymann and the Performance of Scandalrsquo Contempor-ary Theatre Review 18 (2) 193ndash207

mdashmdash (2009) Theatre is More Beautiful than War German Stage Directing in theLate Twentieth Century Iowa City Iowa University of Iowa Press

Carmody Jim (2002) lsquoCreating the Theatrical Museum Theatrical Visions of

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

25

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26

an Alternative America Cultural Politics and the Festival drsquoAutomne1972ndash2000rsquo in David Bradby and Maria M Delgado (eds) The Paris JigsawInternationalism and the Cityrsquos Stages Manchester Manchester UniversityPress pp 248ndash66

Castellucci Claudia Romeo Castellucci Chiara Guidi Joe Kelleher andNicholas Ridout (2007) The Theatre of Socigraveetas Raffaello Sanzio Abingdonand New York Routledge

Daoust Yvette (1981) Roger Planchon Director and Playwright CambridgeCambridge University Press

Delgado Maria M (2003) lsquoCalixto Bieito ldquoReimagining the Text for theAge in which it is Being Stagedrdquo rsquo Contemporary Theatre Review 13 (3)59ndash66

Delgado Maria M and Paul Heritage (eds) (1996) In Contact with the GodsDirectors Talk Theatre Manchester Manchester University Press

Derrida Jacques (1992) The Other Heading Ref lections on Todayrsquos EuropeBloomington Ind Indiana University Press

Donnellan Declan (2003) The Actor and the Target London Nick HernBooks

Duchecircne Franccedilois (1996) Jean Monnet the First Statesman of Interdepend-ence New York W W Norton amp Co

Eyre Richard (2003) Utopia and Other Places Memoir of a Young DirectorLondon Bloomsbury

Fricker Karen (2003) lsquoTourism the Festival Marketplace and RobertLepagersquos The Seven Streams of the River Otarsquo Contemporary Theatre Review13 (4) 79ndash93

Gardner Lyn (1998) lsquoThe Mitchell Principlesrsquo Guardian 1 April G2 15Giannachi Gabriella and Nick Kaye (2002) Staging the Post-Avant-Garde

Italian Experimental Performance after 1970 Oxford Peter LangHallstein Walter (1962) United Europe Challenge and Opportunity Cam-

bridge Mass Harvard University PressHeilpern John (1977) Conference of the Birds The Story of Peter Brook in

Africa London MethuenHirst David (1993) Giorgio Strehler Cambridge Cambridge University PressHunt Albert and Geoffrey Reeves (1996) Peter Brook Cambridge Cambridge

University PressKelleher Joe and Nicholas Ridout (eds) (2006) Contemporary Theatres in

Europe A Critical Companion London and New York RoutledgeKlaic Dragan (1999) lsquoClose Encounters European Internationalismrsquo

Theater 19 (1) 115ndash27Knowles Ric (2006) Reading the Material Theatre Cambridge Cambridge

University Press

IN

TR

OD

UC

TI

ON

26