The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare

The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare is a major collaborative book about plays in performance. Thirty authoritative accounts describe in illuminating detail how some of theatre’s most talented directors have brought Shakespeare’s texts to the stage. Each chapter has a revealing story to tell as it explores a new and revitalising approach to the most familiar works in the English language.

A must-have work of reference for students of both Shakespeare and theatre, this book presents some of the most acclaimed productions of the last hundred years in a variety of cultural and political contexts. Each entry describes a director’s own theatrical vision, and methods of rehearsal and production. These studies chart the extraordinary feats of interpretation and innovation that have given Shakespeare’s plays enduring life in the theatre.

Notable entries include: Ingmar Bergman * Peter Brook * Declan Donnellan * Tyrone Guthrie * Peter Hall * Fritz Kortner * Robert Lepage * Joan Littlewood * Ninagawa Yukio * Joseph Papp * Roger Planchon * Max Reinhardt * Giorgio Strehler * Deborah Warner * Orson Welles * Franco Zeffirelli

John Russell Brown has directed plays in England, the USA and around the world; he was an Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre for fifteen years and has chaired the Drama Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain. He is author of numerous works on Shakespeare and contemporary theatre, including New Sites for Shakespeare (Routledge, 1999) and Shakespeare and the Theatrical Event (2002); he is editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (1995).