The Great European Stage Directors Volume 6: Littlewood, Strehler, Planchon

ISBN-13: 9781474253994

Dr Clare Finburgh Delijani (Goldsmiths U;Professor Peter M. Boenisch (Aarhus Univ;Simon Shepherd (The Royal Central School

Opis

This volume examines the work of Joan Littlewood, Giorgio Strehler and Roger Planchon, demonstrating how these 3 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.