Directorless Shakespeare

Pellone, Elena M. (2023). Directorless Shakespeare. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

“Directorless Shakespeare” means an ensemble staging of a Shakespeare play with no single external authority to interpret the play for the actors, where all decisions in the rehearsal room are made collaboratively by the actors, including casting, cutting, design and interpretation of characters. This thesis posits that the heteroglossia (Bakhtin) of Shakespeare’s texts, its myriad mindedness (Coleridge) and its dialogical forces have a greater chance of being released by the centrifugal force of the collective ensemble, rather than the centripetal force of the single director: the heterogeneity of the text served by the concomitant heterogeneity of a directorless, diverse acting company. It considers critically the contemporary mindset and cultural bias towards leadership to reconsider possibilities of working without a director when we stage Shakespeare’s plays, and the philosophical conundrums involved in giving actors a sense of what the existentialists termed “autonomy”. It examines the power imbalances in the rehearsal room with director-led, conceptual, contemporary Shakespeare in contrast with the distributed mindset evidenced in the actor-led historical practice of English Renaissance theatre. As well as investigating praxis at Shakespeare’s Globe and the American Shakespeare Center, this thesis conducts original practice-based research as Embodied Literary Criticism (ELC), detailing the process and reception of three directorless Shakespeare plays (five productions) – a History, a Comedy, a Tragedy – with different acting companies, different performance spaces, and in different countries. These directorless Shakespeare productions, by Anərkē Shakespeare and V.enice S.hakespeare C.ompany, revealed obscured aspects of the plays and offered alternative conclusions to currently accepted academic theories on the working process of English Renaissance theatre concerning cue scripts and rehearsals. Directorless Shakespeare as ELC has revelatory potential, supports and empowers the acting process, and can produce great and moving art.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):