Great North American Stage Directors Volume 8

Book excerpt: The three directors gathered in this volume all approach theatre-making in part as an act of citizenship. Jesusa Rodríguez, Peter Sellars, and Reza Abdoh differ markedly in many important respects, but they all come to the theatre as an intervention in the public sphere. Rodríguez, Sellars, and Abdoh blend a spirit of social critique with acts of democratic community building. These essays examine how theatre, for them, is not a sphere of aesthetic experience insulated from the divisions, antagonisms, and alliances of a conflicted society. It is a way to forge fleeting but consequential communities that might reverberate through that society and affect its future development. The Great North American Stage Directors series provides an authoritative account of the art of directing in North America by examining the work of twenty-four major practitioners from the late 19th century to the present. Each of the eight volumes examines three directors and offers an overview of their practices, theoretical ideas, and contributions to modern theatre. The studies chart the life and work of each director, placing his or her achievement in the context of other important theatre practitioners and broader social history. Written by a team of leading experts, the series presents the genealogy of directing in North America while simultaneously chronicling crucial trends and championing contemporary interpretation.