Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance: From Rehears ...

Preface

This study focuses on artistic collaboration and the processes that, during an operatic rehearsal period and performance (or potentially any theatrical rehearsal and performance), make incarnate a director’s personal or shared vision. The underlying requirement to unite various people within a creative setting, in order to produce an event whose success is determined by those individuals’ parts in the making of that event, is a complex one. For directors, eliciting powerful performances is integral to their own professional success in the sense that, as they work through a period of rehearsals, the quality of acting and emotive characterisation will determine, to a large extent, the quality of the production. Many directors have signature styles of directing, developed via their subjective knowledge and the influences they have been exposed to, be they historical periods, psychological qualities, fashionable artistic genres, interpersonal influences, and so on. The language chosen during a rehearsal period (whether that be musical, linguistic, or bodily, via gesture and movement) would seem to be fundamental to the interaction within a group of professional performers and production personnel in