Chapter 1Purpose of a Director

Why am I here? No, I’m not talking about the existential mating call version of this question; I’m talking about the question that many directors find themselves faced with upon agreeing to direct a play. For several hundred years, plays were performed (very successfully, I might add) without our help. What changed in the mid-nineteenth century to cause the modern director to be born? Why did dear ol’ Georg II, the Duke of Saxe Meiningen feel the need to assert himself? The answer to this one is actually simple and can be expressed in one word: cohesiveness; or vision; or, maybe, unity. OK, that’s obviously more than one word, but you get the point.

But perhaps that’s jumping ahead. In discussing the beginning of ...

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