Theatre Director - The Director in Theatre History

The Director in Theatre History

In ancient Greece, the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays. Actors would generally be semi-professionals, and the player director oversaw the mounting of plays from the writing process all the way through to their performances, often - as was the case for Aeschylus for instance - also acting in them. He would also train the chorus, sometimes compose the music and supervise every aspect of production. The term applied to him, didaskalos, the Greek word for "teacher," was indicative of how these early directors had to combine instruction of their performers with staging their work.

In medieval times, the complexity of vernacular religious drama, with its large scale mystery plays that often included crowd scenes, processions and elaborate effects, gave the role of director (or stage manager or pageant master) considerable importance. A miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 (pictured) bares one of the earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, the proceedings of the staging of a dramatization of the Martyrdom of Saint Appolonia. According to Fouquet, the director's tasks included overseeing the erecting of a stage and scenery (there were no permanent, purpose-built theatre structures at this time, and performances of vernacular drama mostly took place in the open air), casting and directing the actors (which included fining them for those that infringed rules), and addressing the audience at the beginning of each performance and after each intermission.

From Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the so-called actor-manager. This would usually be a senior actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it and managing the company. This was the case for instance with Commedia dell'Arte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber and David Garrick.

The modern theatre director can be said to have originated from the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company, large scale theatre productions staged by Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, and Germany would provide a platform for a generation of emerging visionary theatre directors, such as Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt. Simultaneously, Constantin Stanislavski, principally an actor-manager, would set up the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary.

The French regisseur is also sometimes used to mean a stage director. This is most common in ballet. A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène.

Post World War II, the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, became the norm rather than the exception. Great forces in the emancipation of theatre directing as a profession were notable 20th century theatre directors like Peter Brook, Peter Hall (Britain), Bertolt Brecht (Germany) and Giorgio Strehler (Italy).

A cautionary note was introduced by famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said "the only way to learn how to direct a play, is ... to get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, and direct."

A number of seminal works on directing and directors include Toby Cole and Helen Krich's 1972 "Directors on Directing:A Sourcebook of the Modern Theatre", Edward Braun's 1982 book "The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Growtowski" and Will's 1976 classic "The Director in a Changing Theatre".