The Director as Collaborator - Paperback

by Robert Knopf (Author)

The Director as Collaborator teaches essential directing skills while emphasizing how directors and theater productions benefit from collaboration. Good collaboration occurs when the director shares responsibility for the artistic creation with the entire production team, including actors, designers, stage managers, and technical staff. Leadership does not preclude collaboration; in theater, these concepts can and should be complementary. Students will develop their abilities by directing short scenes and plays and by participating in group exercises.

New to the second edition:

• updated interviews, exercises, forms, and appendices
• new chapter on technology including digital research, previsualization and drafting programs, and web-sharing sites
• new chapter on devised and ensemble-based works
• new chapter on immersive theater, including material and exercises on environmental staging and audience-performer interaction

Author Biography

Robert Knopf is Professor of Theater at the University of Buffalo. A theater director and scholar, he is the author of The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton (Princeton University Press, 1999). For Yale University Press, he co-edited Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1950-2000 (2011), and edited Theater and Film (2004), and Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950 (2015). For the stage, he has directed at Circle-in-the-Square Downtown, Cherry Lane Studio, Paradise Factory, Circle Rep Lab, and historic Town Hall, all in New York City. He served as dramaturg for the National Public Radio series The Archaeology of Lost Voices, for which he adapted and directed the docudrama Hidden Dragon. Prior to his current teaching position, he taught at Purdue University and the University of Michigan, where he was Director of Graduate Studies in Theater.