This volume examines the work of Joan Littlewood, Giorgio Strehler and Roger Planchon, demonstrating how these three directors take up key aesthetic prompts from earlier innovators Stanislavski, the modernist avant-garde and not least Brecht and thereby prepare the ground for contemporary, politically-engaged 'directors' theatre'. It argues that, in creating their major productions in the prosperous 'glorious decades' that followed the devastation of the Second World War, they represent a first expressly 'European' generation of theatre directors. Revisiting works from the classical dramatic canon by drawing on popular theatre traditions, and reaching out to spectators beyond the educated middle-class elite, they put theatre in the service of uniting a traumatized continent. This study posits that for Littlewood, Strehler and Planchon, theatre has the capacity to create communities.
Daugiau informacijos
This volume offers an authoritative account of the work, lineage and legacy of Joan Littlewood, Giorgio Strehler and Roger Planchon.
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction to the Series, Simon Shepherd (Royal Central School of Speech
and Drama, UK)
Introduction to Volume 6: A Popular Theatre for All: Western European Theatre
Direction in the Mid-Twentieth Century, Peter M. Boenisch (Aarhus
University, Denmark) and Clare Finburgh (Goldsmiths College, UK)
Joan Littlewood
1. Joan Littlewood, Rebel With a Cause: Opening New Directions in
British Theatre, Danielle Merahi (theatre director and translator, France)
2. Seńora Littlewoods Rifles: Joan Littlewood and the Leftist Tradition
in British Twentieth-Century Theatre, Robert Leach (independent scholar, UK)
Giorgio Strehler
3. Giorgio Strehler: The Epic Stage Director Who Betrayed Brecht, Bent
Holm (independent scholar, Denmark)
4. A Theatre of/for Europe: Giorgio Strehler and the Dream of a United
Continent, Margherita Laera (University of Kent, UK)
Roger Planchon
5. Theatres Beauty is its Death: Reflections on Working with Roger
Planchon, Michel Bataillon (Maison Antoine Vitez, France)
6. Approaching Brecht Documenting Planchon: Roger Planchons Three
Stagings of The Good Person of Szechwan, Pia Kleber (University of Toronto,
Canada)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Clare Finburgh is Reader in European Theatre at Goldsmiths College, UK.
Peter M. Boenisch is Professor of Dramaturgy at Aarhus University, Denmark.
