An introduction to theatrical directing using the concepts and terminology of semiotic theory

Flexible and concise, Stage Directing details the seven steps that make up the directing process: selecting a work, analyzing and researching the playscript, conceiving the production, casting, beginning rehearsals, polishing rehearsals, and giving and receiving criticism. Each step is highlighted with valuable directing tips, as well as examples from modern and contemporary playscripts and productions. Exercises, objectives, and key terms put directing precepts to a practical test, revealing what is significant about each phase of the process. Over eighty charts, graphs, and photographs unite to exemplify the text. With a fresh voice and an engaging writing style, Patterson provides insightful questions, suggestions, and illustrations that define and invoke contemplation about the role of the director. Three original short plays provide the opportunity for hands-on analysis and the application of practical concepts. In a final essay, Patterson highlights the function and growing artistry of the director in the modern and postmodern theatre by concisely examining the history of the director.

Scrutinizing the critical tendency to label texts or writers as "postmodern", scholar Stephen Watt argues that "reading post modernly" merely implies reading culture more broadly. In contemporary drama, Watt considers postmodernity less a question of genre or media than a mode of subjectivity shared by both playwright and audience. 6 illustrations.

This text is aimed at undergraduates on Drama / Theatre Studies, English and Cultural Studies degrees and at specialist drama bookshops. This book explores ways in which ideas and practices emerging in art, architecture and music have been taken up and developed in recent performance. Setting the notion of a postmodern style against a broader concept of the postmodern work, the study considers various forms of performance art, dance and theatre which define themselves in opposition to self-consciously modernist modes of work. In doing so, the book seeks to describe a position underlying a range of forms which opposes notions of the self-contained, autonomous art-work and may be understood in relation to concepts of the postmodern defined in criticism, philosophy and cultural theory. It aims to offer a broad-ranging understanding of postmodernism in art, architecture, music and performance, before engaging in a detailed consideration of postmodernism and the performance arts. It is a useful guide and reference book to modernism / post-modernism especially for Theatre Studies / Drama degrees.