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DIRECTING POIESIS New York: Peter Lang Publishing 1993CTING POIESIS New York: Peter Lang Publishing 1993
• Contents • Preface • Origins • Poiesis & etc. • Epilogue •SHIFTING FUTURE OF

PREFACE

“…….The creation of a theatre performance as a complete theatrical event and as a syncretic act is a complex artistic process. It is a collective artistic act in which many arts, artistic disciplines, skills and crafts are included. But, when we speak about theatre today, we are often referring to Stanislavsky's theatre, Meyerhold's theatre, Brecht's theatre, Brook's theatre, Grotowski's theatre and/or Artaud's theatre. These are the names, all of them directors, who stand side by side behind their diverse ideas of theatre, and with which 20th century theatre is identified most readily. Their theatrical ideas and theoretical concepts, especially as embodied in their productions, have played a major role in the shaping and/or redefining of the theatrical event. They are also largely responsible for the (re)emergence in this century of the director as the dominant force in contemporary theatre…..

…..While the directorial function has always been fulfilled, the idea of the director personalized in a single artist, and along with that the idea of directing as a creative art, is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the theatre. Indeed, it was not until the twentieth century that directing was recognized as an individual art and that the director was considered to be a significant artistic force in his own right. It was also not until World War II that a body of significant theatrical work began to appear as evidence of the need in theatre to develop an aesthetic of the director's role, meaning and function. Even today relatively few books have been written about the meaning, role and function of the director in the theatre, and most of those deal with the technical crafts of staging a play. In fact, it was only in the last twenty-five years that a definition of the director's poetic position was developed within the broader theatrical context.

How does this newly emerging directorial power relate to the many artists and technicians whose combined talents make theatre possible?

There are many views of what a director does and how he or she should go about doing it; but there is little agreement on what directing is! What, if any, is the essence of directing? What is the meaning, role and function of the director in the theatre today? What is the specific nature of the director's controversial art? Is it possible to develop and formulate a poetics of theatre directing that can be applicable to all forms of theatre? Evidently, there is a need to develop such a poetics of theatre directing and to address these questions and issues from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.

This study grows out of my work as an active director in professional European theatre for almost two decades. Working on various artistic problems and issues of directing, both on a practical and theoretical level, I have examined the idea of the director as a complete imaginative creator of the theatrical event and the idea of directing as a powerful expression of the director's individuality, imagination, and fantasy. Under this paradigm, the director is considered to be a theatre artist par excellence, uniting and harmonizing in his individuality the poet, the actor, and the audience. In that manner, the director as a powerful artist unites other arts in his work and creates his specific artistic world. Since directing is not only about the words, that is, about what is said in the theatre, but is also more about the deeds, that is, about what is done on the stage, the director creates a whole net of deeds, signs and meanings in his working process. Out of this the director creates an artistic world which strongly affects the world in which he or she lives and acts. Therefore, the director is not only a core of the theatre, an artist who gives form to his or her imaginative world presented on the stage as his or her performance, but is also an artist who expresses his or her individual world-view by giving form to the world that he or she inhabits. In that sense, I believe that directing must be recognized as an authorial art and act, promoting the director, the true poet of the theatre. In fact, he or she is the Alpha and the Omega of the theatre.

In my theoretical and practical work as a director I have been trying to give some relevant meaning and theoretical definition to my ideas about the nature and essence of directing in the hope of formulating one possible poetics of stage direction. At the same time, I have also been trying to find relevant answers to the fundamental question of our existence, that is, “what a piece of work is a man?” On a personal and individual level this work is a quest to find out who I am, and what is my identity as an artist and human being.”