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This autumn Complicite have no less than three productions running in major venues in London: in September a revival of the wonderful A Disappearing Number at the West End's Novello Theatre, first seen at the Barbican Theatre in 2007; in October at the Barbican a revival of the haunting Shun-Kin, first produced there in 2008, in a collaboration with Tokyo's Setagaya Public Theatre; and in November and December, in collaboration with the ENO at the Colisseum, there is A Dog's Heart, first performed earlier this year at De Nederlandse Opera. Wow!

They've come a long way since I first saw Complicite, or as they were then called, Théâtre de Complicité, in 1983 in Put It On Your Head, presented at the Almeida Theatre in London. The show was a comic look at the seaside and was a devised piece of physical performance using gesture, movement, object manipulation, speech and sound. The piece was sketch-based and consisted of a series of mostly comic vignettes around standard incidents which occur at the beach. These were reminiscent of Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday but focused on what can be described as the embarrassment of being English, such as attempting to undress under a small towel.

Throughout, the company displayed the great virtuosity of the clown. For example, when they played volleyball in slow motion, the sponge ball was caught on a stick which was then manipulated in slow motion in rhythm with the actors' movements. In this show the company consisted of Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden. Fiona Gordon, and Marcello Magni, who had all met whilst at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, although significantly both McBurney and Arden had previously studied at Cambridge University and had been involved in student drama productions there and with the Cambridge Footlights. They bridged the worlds of Cambridge comedy in the Footlights tradition, text-based theatre, and physical theatre in the Lecoq/Gaulier tradition. In this show the emphasis was on physical comedy: clowning, le jeu, complicity; but the seeds of much of their later work were to be seen here - namely, an international cast, physical performance, devising, puppetry, a mix of speech, grammelot (the nonsense language of commedia dell'arte) and inventive sound design. I was extremely impressed, not to say envious, as I myself was working with Zippo and Company at that time, and we were considered to be a successful clown company who were pushing the boundaries, so to speak. Complicite were taking clown far beyond what we dreamed of and were employing the clownesque in innovative, hilarious and incredibly inventive ways.

This inventiveness was further developed in their next show A Minute Too Late in 1984, which again toured small arts centres. This show about death with its three actors, McBurney and Magni, plus Belgian Jos Houben, was painful, funny, tragic, and exhilarating, sometimes all of these at once, as in the scene where Simon attempts to fit the oblong photo of his deceased wife into an oval frame, trimming it with scissors until eventually it is too small to fit. Hilarious, tragic and touching, the characters mixed the practices and the appearance of the bouffon and the clown. The show was revived several times and I saw it when it was last performed - at the National Theatre in 2005 for a six-week run. Twenty-one years later, twenty-one years older... the clowns had finally been permitted onto the stage at the Nash! I admit that the company had mounted productions at the National before, but these were Brecht and Shakespeare and Durrenmatt, serious stuff, and what's more, proper plays. Well, not quite, because the devised pieces The Street of Crocodiles and Out of a House Walked a Man were also performed at the National Theatre. But these were 'serious theatre' with proper actors, and based on and adapted from the writings of Bruno Schulz and Daniil Kharms respectively.

In 1985 the company won the Perrier Award for Best Comedy act at the Edinburgh Festival with More Bigger Snacks Now cementing the link with the Cambridge Footlights. This was sketch-based comedy with a loose structure, about four unemployed blokes passing the time in a flat, and again displayed the performers' visual and comic inventiveness. It was before the time that the Perrier went mainly, although not always, to stand-up comedians, including Lee Evans and Frank Skinner. Despite the award, Complicite was still touring small-scale venues, but gathering a growing reputation until 1989, when they were invited by Pierre Audi, then artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London, to perform a season there. This featured previous shows as well as performances by core company members such as Linda Kerr Scott's solo show Ave Maria and, significantly a production of Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit. It was a radical reworking and production of a neglected text, with direction by Annabel Arden, and featuring a classically trained actress, Kathryn Hunter, which moved them from small-scale, albeit international tours, into mainstream theatre, with subsequent glowing critical reviews, and a later transfer to the National Theatre.

And yet this pattern of diverse work - including devised work, adaptation, site-based, text-based - continues. What has been of particular interest for me is their association with the writer and influential art critic John Berger from 1993-2009. Their adaptation of his novel Pig Earth, which deals with rural peasant life in France, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol (1994-1996), displayed many of their hallmarks I referred to earlier, as well as a precise depiction of the realities of peasant life and manual labour, which included building a barn on stage. The production also displayed a keen awareness of the political, which is appropriate, since John Berger, now in his eighties, is an avowed Marxist.

The company has expanded in its scope, although Simon McBurney has become the overall artistic director, and, as the three productions this autumn attest, the subject matter and form of their work has become very diverse. In addition, more recent productions have included an increasing use of sophisticated technology - this is particularly evident in A Disappearing Number. Simon himself not only directs and performs but also is invited to direct other productions, including Al Pacino in Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui on Broadway in 2004. He has also appeared in films such as The Last King of Scotland (2006), where he played the seedy British diplomat. He has directed Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in their live shows, and played the cameo role of the choirmaster, Cecil, in The Vicar of Dibley, and in 2010 the archest of Archdeacons in Rev on BBC2. What began as a small, tight company in 1983 has now become a loose collection of performers, writers, dramaturgs and associates, working under Simon McBurney's direction.

Whilst many aspects of Complicite have changed, many of the elements of their work in 2010 can be traced back to their early work and are still present: an emphasis on physical characterisation, on virtuosity, comedy intertwined with tragedy, the mix of styles and genres, addressing the audience directly, complex technology with movement and gesture, silence, and of course 'the political' in the widest sense.

Their working methods, like their productions, remain fluid, playful and exploratory. Despite the scale of their current productions, it still feels as though the company is ceaselessly exploring, researching and playing with the forms and meaning of live theatre. For me, it is this which links their work back to that first performance I saw at LIFT twenty-seven years ago.

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The Works: Complicite | Total Theatre Magazine Print Archive

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This autumn Complicite have no less than three productions running in major venues in London: in September a revival of the wonderful A Disappearing Number at the West End's Novello Theatre, first seen at the Barbican Theatre in 2007; in October at the Barbican a revival of the haunting Shun-Kin, first produced there in 2008, in a collaboration with Tokyo's Setagaya Public

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Projection Workshop - Complicite - February 2009

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Complicite (@complicitetheatre) • Instagram photos and videos

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15K Followers, 547 Following, 380 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Complicite (@complicitetheatre)

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This is a series of interviews about the early years of Complicite with Dr Michael Fry (Deputy Director of East 15).

Before we begin here is a selection of videos of Simon McBurney discussing the company and theatre in general that will compliment the more historical focus of the interview with Michael Fry:

Simon's thoughts on theatre (2015):

"The intensity of the moment of theatre in the present is about living. Living here and now."

Interview with Simon by Andrew Dickson (2010) that covers Complicite's productions:

"Each piece is made according to the subject matter."

Complicite at 30: Simon McBurney and Judith Dimant in Converstion at the National Theatre (2014)

"The key thing is: what are the stories that you are telling?"

Michael Fry is the Deputy Director of East 15, University of Essex. He has worked as director and writer across the country including Liverpool Everyman, Nottingham Playhouse, the Young Vic and the Lyric Hammersmith. His adaptations of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Emmaand The Great Gatsby have been performed throughout England and America.

Prior to East 15, he was Senior Lecturer in theatre at Coventry University and was Co-Artistic Director of NOT The National Theatre, for whom he directed Simon Gray's Japesand April de Angelis' Wild East.

Michael Fry's chapter on Complicite in British Theatre Companies (1980 - 1994) focuses on the first fifteen years of the company.
Part 1: Complicite: Connecting with Audiences and Early Tour in Chile Connections to the IB, GCSE, AS and A level specifications

Social, cultural, political and historical context

Influence

Significant moments in the development of theory and practice

The relationship between actor and audience in theory and practice

PC: Théâtre de Complicité started as a group of four with Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, Marcello Magni and Fiona Gordon. Then it became Complicite led by Simon McBurney. How do you think Complicite have changed and developed over their thirty year history?

MF: The continuity which was accepted even when they began was that it was always Simon McBurney driving it and it is still him driving it. The work that Complicite have done over the last five years is mostly unrecognisable from the work that they started doing initially: both intellectually different and an entirely different scale. This is because Simon has changed and developed as an artist himself. When they started they were like any other small scale touring company at the time: playing tiny spaces for no money. Now they are a sought after act that tours worldwide. Different from mainstream but also entirely mainstream. Early on it was purely a kind of street theatre and spontaneous: "Lets make whatever is in our minds work today". The shows were devised over a period of time but they developed and changed very much in response to the audiences that they would play. Today I'm not sure that they do change the show in response to the audience because, like it or not, their shows are more mainstream.

PC: Are there any specific examples of that street theatre mentality, the live interaction between audience and performer, shaping particular pieces of work?

MF: Yes the British Council had paid for them to take A Minute Too Late to Chile in 1984. But there was a big language barrier: the kind of places that they went to in Chile, the audiences spoke no English and had little education. They really had to find a way of transcending language: focussing on what excites people. How can you draw people's attention theatrically? What draws them in? How hard do you work? What is your energy level? What is your physicality? What is your connection with a whole group? You may decide to focus the whole group by focusing on one individual and making the whole group watch. They were put in a position where they had to spontaneously work out what drew audiences to them; what made them hold an audiences attention; what made them stop what they were doing and focus on this group of rather idiosyncratic people. That trip impacted on how they developed their performance level, their energy level and informed performances over the years that followed.

PC: That is fascinating in relation to their current context and their approach to connecting with audiences. With the live streamed version of The Encounter they connected with people on their screens at home.

MF: Did it work for you?

PC: Yes I enjoyed it on one level: the artistry of it and the storytelling but there was a distance, I didn't completely engage with that liveness in the same way that an audience member in the same room would have. You have to be there, in that moment to fully appreciate the power of a performance like that.
Summary
MF: Simon, and indeed all the original company, have extraordinary stage presence, which I think is something that you can't teach. A performer either has stage presence or they haven't. Simon in particular has extraordinary stage presence. It may have started in stand up and comedy at Cambridge, where you learn how to control, as well as engage an audience. It was definitely developed when he went to study with Jacques Lecoq in Paris at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
Part 2: Complicite: The Influence of Jacques Lecoq Connections to the IB, GCSE, AS and A level specifications

Early on it was purely a kind of street theatre and spontaneous.

On an early tour to Chile they really had to find a way of transcending language: focussing on what excites people.

Simon, and indeed all the original company, have extraordinary stage presence, which I think is something that you can't teach.

Social, cultural, political and historical context

Influence

Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing

Theatrical style

PC: How did the training with Lecoq influence their work?

MF: Simon articulates that Lecoq was the biggest influence on Complicite in its initial years. Lecoq's ideas on playfulness - le jeu - were very influential. Lecoq really forced his students to be spontaneous, he put them on the spot. Lecoq wouldn't have said "be funny" but when they were spontaneous and forcing an audience to watch them they tended to go for comedy rather than pathos. Students that were contemporaries of Simon and Marcello say they were always the two that you watched at Lecoq because they were the funniest. I think they learnt their mutual sense of humour through Lecoq. Simon was a stand up but his performance level through Lecoq became more subtle and mature and much more reliant on the body than a stand up is.

PC: Why did they choose to base themselves in Britain after training in Paris?

MF: Probably because Simon and Annabel had connections here and they thought they would start to get money from the Arts Council. None of them were from France. Maybe inside they knew that their work was going to be satirising the British and therefore they needed to begin it in Britain. The British have the ability to laugh at themselves and enjoy being satirised. And I think they got that.

PC: In those early days do you think there was a drive and a need to be popular as that would allow them to continue making work?

MF: I don't think so. Accessible maybe. I don't think that they were consciously driven and ambitious enough to know what their endgame was. They are the company that least panders to what they think the audience wants to see or what the Arts Council wants to hear. Of all the companies they are not the least bit interested in doing what they're supposed to be doing.

PC: How do Complicite find inspiration for their work then?

MF: Now in the last fifteen years or so I think it comes from Simon's intellect and his huge and eclectic reading and huge and eclectic social circle. A lot of the ideas that he bases the material on comes from an idea suggested by a friend of his: You should read that - you should have a look at that. In the first fifteen years again it was usually Simon who had the inspiration but I think it was slightly less intellectual as such and more instinctive so the second show was responding to the death of his father.

PC: Did their early work have a distinctive style?

MF: All their applications to the Arts Council describe themselves as a 'physical theatre group' even at times 'a mime group'. Their applications for the Arts Council were all about being like Trestle. You don't see that same physicality in the productions today. They are much more intellectually driven than focused on physicality. Maybe because there are so many physical theatre companies and it can't be taken any further.

PC: Would you describe their style as distinctiveness then? They set out to be different?
Summary
MF: I don't think self-consciously. Simon is not self-consciously trying to be different and find the next thing. It is just how it works.
Part 3: Complicite: The Almeida Season and The Visit Connections to the IB, GCSE, AS and A level specifications

Lecoq's ideas on playfulness - le jeu - were very influential for Complicite

Simon was a stand up but his performance level through Lecoq became more subtle and mature and much more reliant on the body than a stand up is.

They wanted to satirise Thatcher's Britain and the British have the ability to laugh at themselves and enjoy being satirised.

They are the company that least panders to what they think the audience wants to see or what the Arts Council wants to hear.

The work comes from Simon's intellect and his huge and eclectic reading and huge and eclectic social circle.

Social, cultural, political and historical context

Influence

Key collaborations with other artists

Significant moments in the development of theory and practice

Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing

Theatrical style

PC: Simon becomes the Artistic Director of Complicite and it is made up of returning associate artists. Now they are even expanding out to produce and support the work of interesting emerging artists. How did that shift from four members to just Simon happen?

MF: Marcello says that it came about after the season at the Almeida. It was kind of unique. I don't think that it has ever been replicated. That a theatre gives over its entire repertoire to one company to put on something like 14 shows over 11 weeks. That is quite a long time to give over your theatre to a company. Nowadays they might programme Richard III for 11 weeks. At that time most of the programming was for 3 or 4 weeks when Pierre Audi was running it. So they suddenly really made it.

PC: What attracted Pierre Audi to Complicite?

MF: He saw that this was a company that merited a kind of retrospective. They revived most of their early shows as well as developing new ones. The main new one was Dürrenmatt's The Visit. Marcello says it was the best time that they ever had. There was a huge buzz. The critics who had not always been friendly to them now revered them. And after it was over it was a kind of anti-climax and they all went off to do different things. Simon became sole director shortly after considering moving on as well. He decided to develop the company in a different way from the styles of the other three.

PC: What was the production style and approach for Dürrenmatt's The Visit?

MF: It was the first time that they had done an existing play text rather than devising the material. And although they credited Maurice Valency as the translator they mucked about with it a lot more than was acknowledged. But they told the exact story of Durrenmatt. I believe his widow thought it was the best production of the play, in terms of the tone. She thought it captured the tragi-comedy that she hadn't seen in any other productions. I think they suddenly felt free to experiment with style and form, which they hadn't done in quite the same way when they were devising the material.

PC: Why did they feel that freedom with a text?

MF: Because they were working with a text that allowed them to throw a style on to an existing play. Most young directors prefer to do the classics, then they are reviewed for their work on it rather than the play. In that sense it is comparable with that - the critics were not reviewing the subject matter or content; they were reviewing Complicite's style.

PC: It is interesting to think how criticism can influence creativity. Do you think they made the decision to do that specific text because they thought it would get attention?
Summary
MF: I don't think it was as calculated as that I think it was more they could see that this particular text suited what they did. Although Annabel is credited as the director it was quite obviously Simon who was the co-director - He was playing the central male role - it was his idea. Simon and Annabel would go home every night and talk about what had happened and where they wanted to take it.
Part 4: Complicite: Simon McBurney's Approach to Theatre Connections to the IB, GCSE, AS and A level specifications

The Almeida theatre gave over its entire repertoire to Complicite to put on something like 14 shows over 11 weeks.

After the Almeida season Simon decided to develop the company in a different way from the styles of the other three original members

Doing The Visit by Dürrenmatt allowed them to throw a style on to an existing play.

Significant moments in the development of theory and practice

Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing

Theatrical style

Influence

Key collaborations with other artists

PC: After that season Simon took sole charge and has been creating and developing work ever since. I know we are focussing on the first half of their career but briefly how has Simon approached work since then? He finds something that interests him, it is researched. Then what?

MF: He plays games with the company and sees what works. There is an interesting documentary on Streets of Crocodiles: everybody is in a complete panic because it is three days to go and the show is not at all ready or in any fixed shape. The National is panicking and the other actors are panicking. Simon even shows a little bit of panic and yet it was one of their biggest triumphs. A week later, there it was, astonishing and experimental. I think he needs to work like that. Simon is going to work you for 24 hours in the last week in order to get it ready because that is how he likes to work. He obviously needs that kind of pressure. So initially it is all relaxed and gamey and suddenly it becomes very tense and pressured.

PC: And in that pressure cooker moment of three days to go, what strategies does he use to bring it together?

MF: By drilling: "Go there. Do that. Do less of that. Move that. Bring that light on there."

PC: There seems to be interesting parallels between Simon's approach and Joan Littlewood's in terms of the mixture of improvisation, games and drilling.

MF: Joan Littlewood was exactly like Simon, it is one of the reasons he seems to revere her. She worked in exactly the same way. Again the idea was that everybody was contributing, it was democratic. But really it wasn't, it was her driving everything. Again everything came together in the last very tense week. There are serious comparisons. She was iconic and idiosyncratic. He is not as rude and he is cannier and savvier about how to get money but Complicite have always have great producers and administrators. Joan Littlewood didn't. She had Gerry Raffles who was brilliant in his own way but she was the one driving it. Simon has Judith Dimant as the producer who does all the administration and business side of things.

PC: How can your students at East 15 and younger students of theatre learn from Simon? Could they use his approach as a model?

MF: I don't think they can. It is so much about him: his personality; his intellect; his imagination and his quirkiness. Complicite could not have happened without Simon. His working methods or his approach can't be emulated.

PC: If you were encouraging students with that in mind, would you encourage them in terms of finding their own interests and creating their own work?

MF: Finding their own way of approaching theatre and theatricality. We'll stay away from words like plays and texts. Finding their own ways of responding to subject matter with physicality and theatricality.

PC: Which brings us back to Jacques Lecoq and his approach, such a variety of different artists have come out of that: Steven Berkoff, Ariane Mnouchkine, Julie Taymor.
Summary
MF: Yes. None of them are Simon McBurney clones.

Initially the devising process is relaxed and gamey and suddenly it becomes very tense and pressured. Simon needs to work with that pressure.

Joan Littlewood was exactly like Simon, it is one of the reasons he seems to revere her.

The producer, Judith Dimant, is a key part of Complicite and is central to their process and work.

Simon's working methods or his approach can't be emulated. It is so much about him: his personality; his intellect; his imagination and his quirkiness.

Complicite productions in reverse chronological order with links:

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This is a series of interviews about the early years of Complicite with Dr Michael Fry (Deputy Director of East 15). Before we begin here is a selection of videos of Simon McBurney discussing the company and theatre in general that will compliment the more historical focus of the interview with Michael Fry: Simon's thoughts on theatre (2015): "The intensity of the moment of theatre in the present is about living.

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complicite "live stream" "the encounter" "the barbican" "simon mcburney"

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Complicite is an internationally renowned touring theatre company based in London. Subscribe for new and exciting content from all areas of the Company's work. From Creative Learning resources to behind the scenes rehearsal footage view the Company's history and future all in one place.

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A new Complicité production directed by Simon McBurney

Based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk

'I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It's easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence... I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?' - Janina Duszejko, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Based on Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk's novel of the same name, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a new work for theatre conceived and directed by Simon McBurney. Translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Tokarczuk's controversial, violent, genre defying novel is part thriller, part comedy, and part blistering poetic manifesto for the rights of animals and the environment. The book caused an uproar in its native Poland upon publication.

In the depths of winter in a small community on a remote Polish mountainside near the Czech-Polish border, men from the local hunting club are dying in mysterious circumstances and Janina Duszejko - an eccentric 65 year-old local woman, ex-engineer, environmentalist, amateur astronomer and enthusiastic translator of William Blake - has her suspicions. She has been watching the animals with whom the community share their isolated, rural home, and she believes they are acting strangely...

Collaborating on the project are a creative team of long-standing Complicité associates including set and costume designer Rae Smith, lighting designer Paule Constable, sound designer Christopher Shutt, video designer Dick Straker and dramaturgs Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and Laurence Cook.

Previewing at Theatre Royal Plymouth in December 2022, the production will go on a UK and international tour, including a three-week run at London's Barbican.

" Olga Tokarczuk has created an extraordinary world that speaks to my deepest sense of the continuity between humankind and nature - a world where, like a mycelium web, all entities are connected deeply at the roots, unable to exist alone. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a tale about the cosmos, poetry, and the limitations and possibilities of activism. Tokarczuk is a prophet for our times who understands us in all our hilarity, messiness, cruelty and animalism, and it is a great privilege to bring to the stage what is surely one of literature's most urgent accounts of being alive today." - Simon McBurney

A Complicité co-production with Barbican London, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Bristol Old Vic, Holland Festival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, L'Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, The Lowry, The National Theatre of Iceland, Oxford Playhouse, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Ticket information to be published soon.

Complicité thanks the Mirisch & Lebenheim Charitable Foundation for their generous support of this production.

Complicité is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. The production is additionally funded by Backstage Trust and Maria Björnson Memorial Fund.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is published in Great Britain by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Image credits: Olga Tokarczuk © Łukasz Giza, Artwork © Stephen Gill / Night Procession 2017, Simon McBurney © Jorri Kristjansson

A four-year collaboration with Crystal Pite opening this May

A participatory project exploring grief through song

Upcoming Can I Live? screenings and events

An online movement archive created with ResCen

Complicité welcomes Little Amal at Dover

Simon McBurney hosts a special edition of The Arts Hour, on the BBC World Service

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A new Complicité production directed by Simon McBurney ' I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It's easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence...

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Theatre de Complicité and Storytelling

Catherine Alexander discusses Theatre de Complicité's distinctive and experimental approach to subject, space, form, sound and actor.

'How does a story begin? Never by looking for a story. Stories come up and tap you on the shoulder. You look round and there's nothing there. Then, another day they tap again. And this time you don't look round, instead, you start remembering. Something you heard or saw or met which you hardly took any notice of at the time.'

John Berger. Written for Teacher's Notes - Devising (2001)

We are all storytellers. Each time you talk to your friends you are telling and re-telling stories, editing and organising recent events to entertain them. As human beings, we are hard wired to recount and listen to stories and to use them to make sense of the world around us. Complicité's Artistic Director Simon McBurney is probably most comfortable describing himself as a storyteller (rather than a director or actor) he is suspicious of concepts and largely focuses on 'just telling the story... my only intention is to bring the play alive'.

Complicité was founded in 1983 by Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni. Since then the company has been a constantly evolving ensemble of performers and collaborators, many of whom studied at L'École Jacques Lecoq, the theatre school in Paris led by the celebrated French teacher Lecoq. Complicité's work has mainly comprised devised theatre pieces, adaptations and revivals of classic texts. The company has also worked in other media, with radio productions of Mnemonic and John Berger's To The Wedding, a collaboration with The Pet Shop Boys in Trafalgar Square in central London, and The Vertical Line, a multi-disciplinary installation performed in a disused tube station. If the company is constantly percolating new collaborators, so too the work is in a constant state of evolution: from the actor-led, comic and highly physical early pieces to the vast recent collaborations directed by Simon McBurney which embrace intellectually challenging material and cutting-edge technologies. Over the last 25 years I have been part of Complicité's rehearsal room processes on adaptations, classic plays and devised shows. There are many points of divergence between these processes and there is no defining approach: the creative work in the rehearsal room is shaped by the source material, collaborators and circumstances of the work. There are however many points of convergence between all the processes I have been part of.

Photograph of Theatre de Complicité's Mnemonic, 1999

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Complicité work with a range of media and have created radio productions of Mnemonic.

Usage terms © Sebastian Hoppe
Held by© Sebastian Hoppe

The communicative potential of body, space and gesture

L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq has had a profound influence on Complicité's approach to theatre making. Lecoq's emphasis on developing the imagination, shared working languages and the communicative power of space, image and body are central to the preparation work for every Complicité process. In order for an ensemble to communicate a story effectively they must develop a shared understanding of the story and the languages needed to tell it. When this deep preparation has happened the creative work is richer.

'A moment of inspiration, whilst sounding haphazard, can only exist as the result of profound preparation'. Simon McBurney

In many theatre rehearsal processes the written text is the primary source for the actors and director, but for Complicité, although spoken words are of course important, they do not dominate over other elements of the storytelling. Lecoq's pedagogy places the communicative potential of the body, the space and gesture before the spoken word, and I recall Simon once saying that for every word there emerge ten images. Although we may spend hours of every rehearsal working with text, this is more than balanced with exploring objects, space, sound, light and image.

The collaborators in the Complicité rehearsal room are chosen for their skill as theatre makers and performers and for their individuality. There is a confidence and openness with the actors, designers and other participants and the process is not about conformism or serving the text or director but offering something uniquely of 'you' to the process. Every rehearsal process brings together a room of fascinating, passionate people who are all very different to one another in terms of skill set and background. Actor Chetna Pandya delighted in this circumstance where she was asked to bring her personal stories to the process of making 'A Disappearing Number In one devising week the gathered people might respond to source material with the spoken word, stories of bodies in space, recreating photographs through abstracted movement, making soundscapes or shooting video footage. These propositions become the starting points of every show.

'Simon McBurney is uniquely gifted in the art of collaboration. He rips and trashes through the mounds of material and crafts a show. He wrestles with subject, space, form, sound and actor to make something new. Most importantly, he allows himself and everyone around him to struggle'. Catherine Alexander

Acknowledging the audience

Another common theme that runs through the work is the acknowledgement of the audience. This was especially clear in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1997, which Simon staged in the round.

My intention was not only to make the theatre more intimate, by bringing people closer to the action, but to increase the uncertainty. Where there is uncertainty, unpredictability, there is life.

Photograph of the Complicité and National Theatre 1997 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle

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The 1997 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle was staged by Simon McBurney in the round.

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Held by© Simon Annand

In the round, the audience can directly receive how other people are responding and sharing the tale. In 'The Elephant Vanishes' 2001, there wasn't such a direct relationship with the audience but there was a long period of rehearsals where Simon puzzled with the question 'Who are the characters speaking to? Who are they transmitting their experience to?' The narratives in Murakami's stories were very intimate and a constant question was how to make the stories active and communicate to the audience. There is a clear acknowledgement that when you tell a story in theatre it is being largely created in the imagination of the audience. Complicité constantly asks how we best engage that collective imagination. This work also goes back to the Lecoq training where instant feedback is given from tutors if work on stage fails to communicate. At a first preview Simon is often watching the audience and their engagement in the event as much as the work on stage. This means that the show is only beginning its journey on the first performance.

Photograph of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1997

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Juliet Stevenson in Complicité's 1997 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Usage terms © Robbie Jack

Experimentation

'The rehearsal process that led to the final production of Lucie Cabrol involved a journey of constant experimentation, re-routing, derailing and the charting of new territory. Indeed the first performance felt like a point of departure than arrival.' Simon McBurney

The story that is being told and the way of telling it gradually emerges from a series of collisions and juxtapositions that increase in complexity as the weeks of rehearsal go by. In week one we might attempt to distill a story into ten written phrases or five images but by week five we are using a combination of sound, video, bodies in space and spoken dialogue to tell a fragment of story. But as musician and collaborator Clive Bell eloquently writes, this is not a logical or predictable process:

'Every preconception about what the show might include seems to be hurled out of the window, so as to create a scary blank page. Rehearsals can feel like a long sea voyage, during which the show, that new continent, refuses to appear on the horizon.' Clive Bell

There is clearly something distinctive about a Complicité show but that 'something' is hard to define. Perhaps it arrives from a process that demands everyone stepping out of their comfort zone, of approaching the question of how to transmit a story in multiple ways. Perhaps the process also honours complexity and gives freedom to the spirit of something in a way that attaches to the deep imaginative life of the audience.

Banner: © Sebastian Hoppe

Written byCatherine Alexander

Catherine Alexander is a Reader in Theatre Making at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where she is course leader for BA (Hons) Acting CDT. She is an Associate Director for Complicite ( The Master and Margarita, A Disappearing Number and The Elephant Vanishes). Other directing includes The Gypsy Bible, Opera North, Touching Space Royal Academy of Art and SOLD and The Boy from Centreville, Pleasance. Other work includes Wild Oats, Bristol Old Vic and Coram Boy, National Theatre. Catherine won the Jerwood Prize in 2006 and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award in 2011.

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Theatre de Complicité and Storytelling | The British Library

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By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy. Theatre de Complicité and Storytelling Catherine Alexander discusses Theatre de Complicité's distinctive and experimental approach to subject, space, form, sound and actor.

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Peter Brook's The Empty Space (1973) - Exerpt - YouTube

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Peter Brook's The Empty Space (1973) - Exerpt

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BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Sue MacGregor reunites cast and creatives to explore how director Peter Brook's revolutionary A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC in 1970 changed theatre and Shakespeare forever.

Sue MacGregor reunites cast and creatives to recall how director Peter Brook's revolutionary production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC changed theatre and Shakespeare forever.

On 27th August 1970, an expectant audience arrived at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Such was the anticipation that the New York Times theatre critic, Clive Barnes, had crossed the Atlantic to join them. He was not to be disappointed. Not only did the performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream receive a resounding standing ovation, it did so at the first interval.

"Once in a while, once in a very rare while," wrote a jubilant Barnes the next day, "a theatrical production arrives that is going to be talked about as long as there is a theatre, a production that, for good or ill, is going to exert a major influence on the contemporary stage...It is a magnificent production."

Although Peter Brook retained the original text, his method of developing the production was far from conventional. Rejecting the notion of 'director's theatre' he urged his actors to let the play 'work through them and do things to them'. He even tested out his ideas on a crowd in a Birmingham social club.

The costumes and scenery were no less radical. Working with designer Sally Jacobs, Brook set the play in a minimalist white space, featuring just two doors at the rear. Actors wore brightly-coloured satin costumes inspired by the Chinese circus and entered on stilts and trapezes.

Sue MacGregor is joined by Peter Brook, designer Sally Jacobs and actors Sir Ben Kingsley (Demetrius), Sara Kestelman (Titania/Hippolyta), Frances de la Tour (Helena) and Barry Stanton (Snug).

Producer: Matt Taylor
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Sue MacGregor reunites cast and creatives to explore how director Peter Brook's revolutionary A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC in 1970 changed theatre and Shakespeare forever. Sue MacGregor reunites cast and creatives to recall how director Peter Brook's revolutionary production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the RSC changed theatre and Shakespeare forever.

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Peter Brook - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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The Frantic Method | Frantic Assembly

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The Frantic Method is approaching devising as a series of tasks, each broken down into building blocks. This is designed to establish progress from the simplest discoveries.
Performers are encouraged to take a moment back to its simplest truth and build from there. This places dancers, actors, students, teachers and all participants on the same starting point.

Using these building blocks they are empowered to find and create complex work through a process that is safe, fun and constantly illuminating.

This process came about through recognising my own limitations coupled with a desire to teach and share something as soon as I learnt it.

I wanted to develop a language that felt accessible and honest. I wanted to share a process that would take people past their perceived limitations.

Over the years this has helped performers understand how their bodies tell stories and how those bodies are capable of a strength and nuance they might not have recognised before.

The Frantic Method has helped Frantic Assembly become leaders in movement direction within theatre. It is essentially direction through movement and promotes an acute physical awareness that can be implemented in moments of stillness just as it can be in the physically spectacular.

The Frantic Method is at the heart of all of our work on stage and in studios across the world, from Fatherland, Things I Know To Be True, , The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to our work with students of all ages and abilities.
- Scott Graham, Artistic Director and Co-Founder

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The Frantic Method is approaching devising as a series of tasks, each broken down into building blocks. This is designed to establish progress from the sim

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Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Building Blocks for Devising - YouTube

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Masterclass: Building Blocks for Devising by Frantic Assembly | National Theatre

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OCR AS and A Level Drama and Theatre TEP (Practitioners: Frantic Assembly)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLrabSNRHhg

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49817_guide.pdf (infobase.com)

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https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ntathome

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National Theatre at Home | National Theatre

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Hailed as a remarkable, groundbreaking work during two sell-out runs at the National Theatre, the feature film adaptation of London Road reunites the award-winning team, with a script by Alecky Blythe and music by Adam Cork, and directed by Rufus Norris (Broken).

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Director Lucy Bailey's iconic 2014 production of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy sees the Globe transformed for this immersive staging, with a cast including Indira Varma ( Game of Thrones, HBO; Luther, BBC).

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Globe Player | Shakespeare's Globe | Watch On-demand

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National Theatre Collections 1 and 2

Drawing on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality archive recordings never previously seen outside of the NT's Archive, the National Theatre Collections 1 and 2 are now complete and offer a total of 50 filmed performances.
National Theatre Collection 1 National Theatre Collection 2
National Theatre Collection 1

Comedies

20th Century Classics and Modern Plays

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Sienna Miller stars alongside Jack O'Connell and Colm Meaney in Tennessee Williams' searing, poetic story

The Cherry Orchard: 'Beautifully skewed, melancholic and haunting.' The Stage

Consent: Nina Raine's powerful, painful, funny play which sifts the evidence from every side and puts justice herself in the dock.

The Deep Blue Sea: Starring Helen McCrory, Time Out described it as 'Stunning. Exquisitely sad. Beautifully judged.'

Les Blancs: This theatrical search for the soul of post-colonial Africa features Danny Sapani as Tshembe

A Streetcar Named Desire: Starring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster and Vanessa Kirby, The Daily Telegraph called it 'An absolute knock-out. Raw, emotional and deeply unsettling.'

Translations: Brian Friel's modern classic, a powerful account of nationhood, described by The Guardian as 'A flawless production. A culture-clash masterpiece'

Yerma: Billie Piper won an Olivier Best Actress award for her performance in Lorca's achingly powerful masterpiece

Shakespeare Plays

Coriolanus: An award-winning performance from Tom Hiddleston in the title role

Hamlet: 'Tremendous. Rory Kinnear's performance is superb' The Times

Julius Caesar: Ben Whishaw and Michelle Fairley play Brutus and Cassius, David Calder plays Caesar and David Morrissey is Mark Antony.

King Lear: Starring Sir Derek Jacobi and directed by Tony Award winning Michael Grandage, The Telegraph said it was 'The finest and most searching Lear I have ever seen.'

Macbeth: First performed as part of the National Theatre's series of Shakespeare for younger audiences

Othello: Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear jointly won the Evening Standard Best Actor Award for their performances in the iconic roles of Othello and Iago.

Romeo and Juliet (2017): Bijan Sheibani's thrilling production brings the greatest love story of all time alive for a new generation

Twelfth Night: Tamsin Greig as a transformed Malvolia, in a new twist on Shakespeare's classic comedy of mistaken identity

The Winter's Tale: The perfect introduction to Shakespeare for younger audiences

Literary Adaptations and Inspirations

Frankenstein: Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller each play Victor Frankenstein and his creation in these two performances of Danny Boyle's smash-hit production

Jane Eyre: 'Aflame with passion. A picture of exultant feminism.' The Observer

Peter Pan: Sally Cookson directs this "dazzling production" (Radio Times) of JM Barrie's classic

Small Island: The Guardian described this adaptation of Andrea Levy's Orange Prize-winning novel as 'One of the most important plays of the year.'

Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure brought to life in a thrilling adaptation by Bryony Lavery

wonder.land: Inspired by Lewis Carroll's tale of Alice, this musical is a coming-of-age adventure for the online generation

Greek Classics and World Historical Drama

National Theatre Collection 2

Turn of the Century Plays for Contemporary Audiences

Hedda Gabler: WhatsOnStage described this production, with Ruth Wilson in the title role, as 'A Hedda unlike any I have ever seen. Devastating.'

Julie: Carrie Cracknell directs a cast including Vanessa Kirby and Eric Kofi Abrefa in this 'superlative production' (Time Out) set in contemporary London

The Seagull: Chekhov's masterly meditation on how the old take revenge on the young is both comic and tragic, and marks the birth of the modern stage. 'Land-mark brilliant', The Independent

Three Sisters: Chekhov's iconic characters are relocated to a 1960s Nigeria on the brink of the Biafran Civil War, in this bold adaptation by Inua Ellams. 'Brimming with Life. Enlightening and heart-breaking' Broadway World

20th Century Classics

Contemporary Plays

After Life: If you could spend eternity with just one precious memory, what would it be? Adapted from Hirokazu Kore-eda's award-winning film

Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches: In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, six New Yorkers with interconnected lives grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell

Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika: Prior, Joe, Belize, Louis, Harper and Roy continue their journeys through love, loss and loneliness to overcome abandonment and ultimately discover forgiveness

Barber Shop Chronicles: Directed by Olivier award-winning director Bijan Sheibani. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling

Chewing Gum Dreams: Written and performed by Michaela Coel, this award-winning, one-woman play recalls the last days of innocence before adulthood

Home: Nadia Fall's vital verbatim play about people living on the margins of society features performances from Michaela Coel, Antonia Thomas and Kadiff Kirwan

Rockets and Blue Lights: Directed by Miranda Cromwell, this fiercely political play by Winsome Pinnock won the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award

This House: A timely, moving and funny insight into the workings of British politics. It's 1974 and to a backdrop of infighting and backstabbing the political parties battle to change the future of the nation

Shakespeare and Greek Classics

Musical Theatre

I Want My Hat Back: Based on Jon Klassen's children's picture book classic, this production will support courses in theatre for young audiences as well as musical theatre

The Threepenny Opera: Rory Kinnear is Mack the Knife in a new version of this landmark twentieth-century musical from the Olivier stage of the National Theatre

UK State Schools Provision

The National Theatre Collections are available to state-funded schools and FE colleges in the United Kingdom, free of charge. UK independent schools and sixth form colleges worldwide can request a trial and purchase the collection through JCS Online Resources: info@jcsonlineresources.org
Find out more here
The National Theatre Collection is supported by Richard and Kara Gnodde, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), Sidney E. Frank Foundation, The Attwood Education Foundation, The Candide Trust, The Cranshaw Corporation for Mrs. Robert I. MacDonald, Barbara G. Fleischman, Linda Hackett, The Michael Marks Charitable Trust, and members of the NT Collection Syndicate.

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Drama Online - National Theatre Collection

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Drawing on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality archive recordings never previously seen outside of the NT's Archive, the National Theatre Collections 1 and 2 are now complete and offer a total of 50 filmed performances.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USZ02muwCbk

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The Trojan Women by Euripides | full play | Greek Theatre 2021

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx6jrXg8UG8&t=728s

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvS9y1WjrE&t=3027s

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The Time of Your Life | Full Show | Gecko

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What Does a Theatre Director do? | Theatre Directing Explained (stagemilk.com)

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A theatre director is in charge of the creative vision of a theatre production. Their goal is to bring out the best performance from the actors and tell the story of the play in a compelling way. They also oversee creative choices on stage such as costume, design, lighting and sound-although these decisions are made in conjunction with the other creatives involved. Theatre, at its very best, is a collaborative process and a theatre director will put together a great team to support their vision.

Updated 7 September, 2021.

Pre-Production

Finding A Project

At different levels of the industry, directors may have more or less power with which to find and finance their own projects. A director may be hired directly by a professional theatre company, or pitch a project to either a company or producer that they want to work on bringing to the stage. Most will direct work by existing writers-plays proven to have an audience, or something by an author such as Shakespeare whose work is in the public domain-although some directors do work with writers to develop new work. Some also prefer to write or create their own.

A Director's Creative Vision

"Creative vision" is one of those terms that can elicit an eye-roll amongst creatives. In truth, it's vital to the work of a successful director. Without some kind of thematic and stylistic unity, an otherwise excellent play can become a disastrous production: messy, confusing, over-wrought. It's the director's responsibility to develop and maintain a creative vision, to ensure that all involved are heading in the same direction. This includes the audience, who need strong, clear storytelling lest they lose interest and cease to care.

Often, this process of the director determining their creative vision begins long before there is a stage, or rehearsal room, or even actors. And as the production comes together, it's their job to ensure that this vision is not compromised. Budgetary restrictions, creative differences, low morale-these are all threats to a director's vision, and obstacles they must navigate. The director also sets the emotional temperature and creative climate of the rehearsal room. As the head of the production, they lead by example how cast and creatives conduct themselves. If they behave unprofessionally, or show indifference, it can affect the mood and performance of the entire company.

Building A Team

Depending on a director's process, a director will either cast their play or assemble their creative team first. The creative team will consist of the stage manager (who runs all technical and logistical aspects of a production), designer (who may oversee set and costume, or work in a team), lighting designer and sound designer. Other, auxiliary roles may be filled depending on the scale of the project, such as a videographer or a dramaturg. Directors always have final say over the creative aspects of a production, but will work to the advisement of the experts in each discipline. If a director finds an affinity for a particular creative, they may engage them in multiple projects over a number of years. In some cases, their cumulative output may not be considered 'complete' without one or the other!

Casting

Arguably the most important part/s of a director's team are the actors they choose to cast. Most theatre directors take their time when casting, as choosing the wrong actor for a role can be disastrous. Unlike a film or television job, theatre roles require months of preparation: learning lines, blocking, developing a rapport with the rest of the cast. Actors in theatre are not easily replaced-meaning a director's first choice is usually their only shot at getting it right. This long lead-in process of rehearsal also means directors will consider what an actor is like to work with on a personal level as well. Bad behaviour is seldom tolerated or ignored in the microcosm of a theatre production.

If actors are comfortable, and right for their roles, the director's work can be more collaborative and less didactic. Directors look for actors who will accompany them on the creative journey of exploring and interrogating the play. When auditioning for theatre, it is always a good idea to have an opinion on the script to discuss with the director. Chances are they'll be jumping at the chance to discuss it.

Production

Read Through

Unless the play in question is being devised in the rehearsal room, most rehearsal periods start with a thorough read through of the script, sometimes referred to as a "table read". The director will guide this process and may ask the actors to bring a certain energy to it. Some directors spend a lot of time around a table, working through the script, whereas some like to get up on the floor as soon as possible.

Table reads inevitably transition into the process of analysing the script and breaking down the individual scenes. This part of the process is director-dependent, but most do their best to analyse the entire text as closely as possible with the cast. Actors locate the playable specifics, units of action/beats, character objectives and obstacles. Once work begins on the rehearsal room floor, it's often more focused and unified for having been through this scrutiny. During this time, the creative vision of the director may be challenged, or even changed entirely. A good director knows when to defend an idea not yet solid in their team's mind. A great director knows when they should admit fault or ignorance and work with their team to find the best solution.

Blocking

Directors work with actors to 'block' the play, which is a term used in theatre for working out where everybody stands and how they move. Some directors are very prescriptive-working from their own notes, or from the stage directions written by the playwright-while others tend to work off the actors' impulses in the rehearsal room. Either way, blocking is an important part of the directing process. The goal is to make blocking as natural as possible so that it doesn't look rehearsed. And directors may change blocking if what they've initially planned proves ineffective, or a greater understanding of the text found later in the rehearsal process

Runs

Once the play is blocked and the scenes are beginning to take shape, it's time to start doing runs. Runs of the play, help actors get the flow of the piece and allow the director to see where the issues are. Earlier runs are usually called "stumble throughs" because they can be a pretty messy, stop-start affair. However, messiness is all part of the process. It's not unusual for runs of a play to feel as though they've started far too early. However, this is often when they are the most helpful.

Runs get the creative team into gear: they turn a series of disparate scenes into a complete story. Actors start to find their characters' arcs and super-objectives as their journeys piece together. A director will use runs to take the play's temperature and make necessary changes that strengthen the work. Sometimes, they simply function as a way of rallying actors and letting them glimpse at all they've been working for. At the end of the rehearsal period, runs become a way of energising the company. It allows the actors to recapture the initial spark: that love for the project that brought them together!

Tech Week

"Tech week" is the period a show spends in the theatre before previews. During tech week, all of the technical aspects of the production are installed and tested: set design, lighting and sound. For directors, it's an insanely busy period that requires their attention being split across multiple departments. However, it's also an exciting part of the process, as it's the time when much of their creative vision comes to life. Directors oversee all creatives and ensure that their efforts align in telling the story of the play. This extends to their own work as well, in areas such as blocking. At times, blocking may be incompatible with the performance space, or clash with aspects of the design. When this occurs, directors need to fix this with the actors to ensure they can do their jobs safely and properly. Tech week is seldom thought of as a time for creativity; it's certainly when the team is at their most exhausted. That being said, tech week is where some of the most interesting, important choices are made. These choices can make or break an entire production.
How to Survive Tech Week
When audiences first see the show in previews, the director will lurk in the back row and take copious notes. They will pass these along to the actors, stage manager and creative team to make necessary adjustments to the performance. The length of a preview period differs wildly. Large-scale musicals and theatre productions may spend weeks in previews, whereas independent theatres might be lucky to budget three. A good director will use the preview period to either fix or elevate the show. They'll take cues from the audience as to what works, what doesn't, what's funny, what's too slow, etc. It is not uncommon for shows to emerge from previews wildly different to how they played going in.

Opening Night And Performance

And finally, we arrive at opening night. Here, the director can step back and bask in the praise (or not) of their months-sometimes years-of effort. Once the play is up and running, it is, again, director-dependant on how they proceed with their involvement. Some like to be present for the entire run of the show and give light-to-heavy notes along the way. Other directors believe that once the show has an audience, it is officially the job of their cast and crew to play well and maintain the desired level of quality in performance. Most directors sit somewhere in the middle: they float in and out, occasionally offering feedback if they feel it's warranted. To any would-be directors reading: too many notes can kill a good performance, and make worse a terrible one.

Conclusion

So what does a theatre director do? As it turns out, quite a lot! They have an immense pressure placed upon them; often, it is the names of their cast in the reviews when things go well ... and their own if the play goes poorly. They have to make countless decisions, balance egos and budgets alike and plan every move of a play's production months in advance. But the creative control they enjoy is unparalleled, as is the opportunity to shape and tell stories on stage with a singular flair. The list of a theatre director's jobs and responsibilities is a long one. But there's nothing else in the industry quite like it.

About the Author

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What Does a Theatre Director do? | Theatre Directing Explained

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A theatre director is in charge of the creative vision of a theatre production. Their goal is to bring out the best performance from the actors and tell the story of the play in a compelling way. They also oversee creative choices on stage such as costume, design, lighting and sound-although these decisions are made in conjunction with the other creatives involved.

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https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/book-lunchtime-sophocles-antigone-and-other-tragedies

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Book at Lunchtime: Sophocles - Antigone and other tragedies

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Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all.

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https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2009-10-07.pdf

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https://www.dramaandtheatre.co.uk/practical/article/practitioner-focus-peter-brook

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Peter Brook, who died aged 97 on 2 July 2022, was one of the most influential international theatre practitioners of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Born in London, he collaborated with some of the most extraordinary figures in 20th-century theatre. His work at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and then the Royal Shakespeare Company, was confident and revolutionary, culminating in the 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was famously performed in a white box designed by Sally Jacobs, with actors using trapeze and stilts to convey the magic of the play. Two other productions help define his theatrical career, Marat/Sade and The Mahabharata. His move to Paris marked a shift from telling stories with a specific narrative objective to telling stories with overtly universal themes.

Brook's willingness to provoke extends to thoughts on drama theorists, 'I stayed clear of all theories. I hardly read Stanislvasky or Brecht... I read Artaud... I thought his theories were absolutely useless'. He would not want students to become bogged down in words and theories, but want them to practically explore, examine and act.

To mark his death, we are therefore revisiting some practical exercises inspired by Brook's work and first printed across two issues in 2018-19.

Key influences

Packaging Peter Brook for examination purposes runs contrary to his desire to 'avoid the snobbery of categorisation'. He is a magpie who believes that 'life is a patchwork of influences': Brecht's ideas about theatre as a forum for change and debate influenced the young Brook and Artaud's idea of 'total theatre' was another strong influence. Studying Greek theatre and Shakespeare deeply influenced his understanding of the actor/audience relationship and the use of shared space. His work has always had a significant international dimension, and the influence of India, East Asia and Europe (most notably France) can be seen across his work. Brook has said that performance should reflect 'every aspect of human existence'.

Key features

The actor is the spring of all creativity

Actors must always be intensely aware of the audience and that audience must not be passive

Throughout the rehearsal process it is the director's role to free the actor's impulses, it is a time for rigorous experimentation and for trial and error

Performance emerges from experi ment ation and shouldn't be pre-planned

Productions should not be defined by a theatre space; spaces should be designed to suit the play

Actors must discover simplicity in word and physical action.

Exercises

To match the intentions of Peter Brook, exercises should happen in a space where cushions are provided for non-participants and a marked area on the floor designates the area of activity.

It is important that preparatory exercises are repeated, refined and mined for detail. This process unleashes creativity, making the actor more alive than they are in everyday life (an intention inspired by Artaud). The ensemble is key to Brook's work and his exercises are also designed to create trust and communication between actors.

Mirror Reflection

This simple exercise is repeated throughout Brook's rehearsal notes. Rigorous copying of improvised movement creates a concentration on an actor's physicality.

Two members of the group focus on an everyday task, one leading and one following through the mirror

The activity must be watched by the members of the ensemble and then commented on

The actors then should move with 'free invention', once again the activity should be dissected by the ensemble

Intensive discussion should follow the activity before it is repeated by other members of the ensemble.

Sound in Circle

Brook's works also emphasise sound.

With the same setup as above, one actor sits in the middle with the other actors sitting on the edges facing outward

The centre actor makes a sound that is then imitated by the other actors

The sound is then repeated by the actor in the centre of the group, as the exercise is repeated members of the outer circle supplement the sound. This might be done vocally, or by drumming the floor or percussively hitting the body - creating harmonies and rhythms that liberate the actor from words.

The Tightrope

Perhaps the most famous of all Brook's rehearsal techniques. You can watch him demonstrate it here: youtu.be/EotqLTeLGgs

Set up the space as above.

You may lay a rope out as a guideline, removing it before the activity begins.

The actor needs to cross the carpet as if on a tightrope

The actor needs to recreate the sense of peril that an actual tightrope-walker has

The actor needs to recreate the balance that they would need on a tightrope

The actor should create movements to demonstrate how they are crossing the tightrope.

Discussion: Forensically examine the activity, looking at the sense of peril, the balance and movement, as well as the actor's imagination.

Theatrical journey

Brook's journey took him from 'using every device known' on stage to discovering that 'the human being is richer than the greatest stage effect'. Through putting the human under the microscope Brook unlocked a new exciting world of detail. He believes that 'acting begins with a tiny inner movement so slight that it is almost completely invisible', and the director's job is to see the movement and make sense of it for theatrical purpose. This focus has led him to be described as minimalist, yet he firmly rejects this label, 'I am not a minimalist... I love trying out everything'. His productions became, though, increasingly simplified, concentrating on the relationship between the actor, the audience and the playing space.
Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research has been based at the Bouffes du Nord theatre since 1974 © G FREIHALTER/WIKIMEDIA
His view of the director

The director was central to Brook's notion of the creative process and he strongly argued against the idea that directors are unnecessary, 'without leadership a group cannot reach a coherent result within a given time'. It is the director's job to 'attack and yield, provoke and withdraw' and he believed that the director must be in full control in the rehearsal studio. He loved the push and pull between the actor and director that leads to moments of creativity, clarity and discovery. Brook's own notes reveal detailed planning, but he believed that rehearsal should always be fresh, 'the director who comes knowing what he expects of the actor is a rotten director'. It is helpful to think of Brook as an experimental scientist rather than a 'traditional' theatre practitioner.

The audience and the 'Present Moment'

Given his view of the director it might seem surprising that Brook said 'too much time in rehearsal can end by destroying the unique possibility which the third element brings'; the 'third element' is an audience. If theatre is to be meaningful then Brook believed an audience should engage with the actors well before the play becomes set in stone. He believed in the 'present moment', which he compared to an atom that contains infinite possibilities when it is fractured - this analogy reveals Brook's excitement with the explosive possibilities of live theatre.

Shakespeare

Brook's approach to Shakespeare was to try and shed the weight of cultural expectation: a danger he felt could lead to dreariness. He describes his responses to Shakespeare in his book, The Quality of Mercy, but his shorter Evoking (and forgetting!) Shakespeare is a more punchy and pithy text for the student. He is keen to strip the plays of historic baggage, yet also keen to avoid the actors imposing personal experiences on their roles as they develop in the rehearsal room.

Text with Physical Activity

Brook suggests this exercise as way of reinventing text, releasing the word from tired actions. Any piece of text can be selected for experimentation.

The actor should stand and perform the selected text.

The actor should then repeat the text while performing an unrelated mimed activity, for instance juggling.

The actor should be joined by a second actor who should interact with the first, improvising a 'free invention' activity while the speech is performed again. Brook is particularly keen on tennis or squash as mimed activities.

The immediacy of the language

The aim of this exercise is to refine speech through the use of voice recording. 'The actor's task is not to think of words as part of a text, but...as part of a person who minted them in the heat of the moment.'

Choose an appropriate part of Hamlet and Polonius' dialogue - throughout the scene the actor playing Polonius uses a device to record the conversation.

Improvise the scene following the dialogue between Claudius and Polonius, integrate the playback into the scene. Does the initial recording make it sound as though 'the words he (Hamlet) spoke were really his own'?

During follow-up analysis of the improvisation, interrogate the players as Brook does, do we feel him 'exist, live, breathe and talk'?

Suggest that Hamlet's scripted words are the equivalent of a tape recording, they are 'a witness that these words were really spoken'. Brook suggests that once an actor understands this, the consequences can go very far'.

Brook's booksQuotations in this article are from these key sources:

The Empty Space (1968)

The Open Door (1993)

Evoking (and forgetting) Shakespeare (2002)

Conversations with Peter Brook 1970-2000 (2003)

The Quality of Mercy (2013)

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Peter Brook, who died aged 97 on 2 July 2022, was one of the most influential international theatre practitioners of the 20th and 21st centuries. Born in London, he collaborated with some of the most extraordinary figures in 20th-century theatre.

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https://www.dramaandtheatre.co.uk/practical/article/practitioner-focus-peter-brook-part-two

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Practitioner focus: Peter Brook – Part two

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A second visit to the theories and methods of the great 20th Century theatre director

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http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/101/the-development-of-theatre-peter-brook-and-the-human-connection#:~:text=Brook%20would%20often%20use%20acrobatics,actions%20speak%20louder%20than%20words.

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An actor is on stage. He begins to speak, and as he does so the hearts of the audience wrench. The actor is pronouncing his love to a woman through song; or he is swearing revenge against the man who killed his father; or he is staring at the back of his best friends head, just before he pulls the trigger.

The audience feels for each situation: they are swooned by the man pronouncing his love; they are angry at the man who killed the actor's father; and they feel pity for the man who is forced to kill his best friend. When the audience can truly feel these emotions-sympathize with them-the actor has succeeded. When the audience sits bored, listening to a recital of words with no emotion, the actor has failed. This idea is the soul of Peter Brook's work as a director, actor, and writer. To Brook, the human connection is the essence of good theatre.

Brook defines the human connection through many different mediums, one of which is directing. He claim's "the supreme jujitsu" style of directing "would be for the director to stimulate such an outpouring of the actor's inner richness that it completely transforms the subjective nature of his original impulse"(Brook, 61). What he is describing is non-directional directing. In order for the actor to authentically feel what his character is intended to feel, he must discover those emotions on his own, without the director telling him what they are. The director's job is then to attempt to call forth existing emotions within the actor. If this can be done successfully, then an authentic human connection will be made between the actor and audience.

Though directing may be Brook's most austere style of presenting this human connection, it is the concept that epitomizes his career. Brook did away with conventional methods of acting, staging, and performance. He replaced "quasi-realistic settings" with "bold scenography that often revealed the mechanics of the stage and created startling visual effects" (Aronson, 1). Brook would often use acrobatics and highly physical elements in his performances, shifting emphasis from oration to action. Simply, it was a matter of letting actions speak louder than words.

After seeing Brook's famous production of King Lear, one reviewer stated: "So believable was the acting that audiences were often too stunned and terrified to applaud"(Aronson). His goal was not necessarily a new one, in fact many of his ideas were borrowed from his avant-garde contemporaries, but Brook was unique in his ability to present these ideas on stage. He did this through experimenting with the very nature of theatre, perhaps most famously with his creation of the Theatre of Cruelty Workshop within the Royal Shakespeare Company.

First conceptualized by Antonin Artaud, the Theatre of Cruelty sought to "abolish the separation between the audience's space and the performance space"(Kramer, 1). Through a series of violent lighting, staging and acting, the Theatre of Cruelty would astound the audience-shock them- into a state that transcended just entertainment. It would place them into a new consciousness, hopefully leaving them with some type of revelation within themselves. In this form, the word "cruelty" did not necessarily mean violence or torture or some other aspect that is often associated with it; to Artaud the word "cruelty" was used as a "cosmic rigor or implacable necessity imposing itself on the bodies of the actors" (Kramer, 2). Peter Brook put into action the ideas of Artaud.

In Brook's Theatre of Cruelty, the same characteristics of this shock-and-awe technique were abided, but unlike Artaud, Brook was able to make the concept clear on stage. In 1935 Artaud produced a show called The Cenci, a play about "murder and incest". The production "failed to incarnate [Artaud's] ideas on theater in a clear way and ended after seventeen days" (Kramer, 1). Artaud was eventually admitted to an insane asylum in France for nine years and gave one performance after being let out, just before his death in 1948. The Theatre of Cruelty Workshop that Peter Brook founded was not only more successful than Artaud's demonstration of the concept, it also had a somewhat different aim.

While Brook did use the techniques that Artaud put forth in writing, he was not as spiritual as the Frenchman. Artaud believed that his cruel theatre could act as a guide to enlightenment; it was an instrument to all of society for a spiritual awakening. Brook's belief was simpler: his "goal was to reinvigorate the theater through a theatrical vocabulary not tied to language"(Aronson, 1). Rhetoric would no longer serve as the main device for communication. Brook used all aspects of theatre to stage this: lighting, set, props, costumes, and most importantly, action. All served to present the audience with a real, raw, and emotional experience.

One exercise that Brook practiced in his Theatre of Cruelty Workshop involved an actor attempting to portray a certain state without using physicality at all:

"We set an actor in front of us, asked him to imagine a dramatic situation that did not involve any physical movement, then we all tried to understand what state he was in. Of course, this was impossible, which was the point of the exercise" (Brook, 49).

Exercises such as this encompass what Brook's version of the Theatre of Cruelty was. Through the physical, human nature and emotions are authentically evoked. We sympathize more with the crying woman whose body is wrenching in sobs than we do with a woman who is standing still, struggling to produce a tear.

This style of emotion-through-action took no consideration of the accretion that the last century's Theatre produced. No longer was emphasis on the spectacle. Brook had no interest in theatre that imitated reality: "we are" he claims "more conscious of what is imitative than what is real"(Brook, 34). If the production's goal is an imitation of reality, than it will never go beyond that. Instead, Brook insists, reality itself must be the goal. In his chapter "The Holy Theatre" in The Empty Space, Brook describes this theory as the "invisible". The "invisible" is an act of communication between actor and audience produced out of the need to impart some emotion. The audience may not consciously acknowledge the fact that they are being moved by the emotion, yet they are still moved: the invisible. Brook says "it is like crossing an abyss on a tightrope: necessity suddenly produces strange powers"(Brook, 50). Through the invisible, the actors goal is to access the "hidden impulses of man"(Brook, 71), ultimately establishing a human connection that is inherent in the audience.

This is not to say that Brook did not use abstract methods to achieve this accessibility. In fact, abstractness in performance became a trademark for Brook's productions: Sensationalism in his production of "Marat/ Sade"; glamour in the 1970 Midsummer Night's Dream. These are the productions that Brook will be remembered for. New York Times critic Clive Barnes said that Brook's Midsummer Night's Dream is a "theatrical production that is going to be talked about as long as there is a theater"(Barnes, 1).

Brook forgot convention, and aimed to go beyond anything that audiences had already experienced. He changed, and not without controversy, the effect that the theatre can produce. In his own words, he attempted to "divide the eternal truths from the superficial variations" (Brook, 16): The "eternal truths" being the "invisible"-the inherent emotions in any human-and the "superficial variations" being the way in which to present those truths. "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage," Brook says, "A man walks across this empty space while someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged" (Brook, 9). Thus he creates something honest: a human connection. And from that connection the audience's inner emotions are called forth-they are moved.

Aronson, Arnold. New York Times. NY Times, 25 May 2005. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. .

Barnes, Clive. "Historic Staging of a Dream." New York times [New York] 27 Aug. 1970. Print.

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Print.

Kramer, Andreas. "Antonin Artaud." Ebsco Host. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

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The Development of Theatre: Peter Brook and the Human Connection

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An actor is on stage. He begins to speak, and as he does so the hearts of the audience wrench. The actor is pronouncing his love to a woman through song; or he is swearing revenge against the man who killed his father; or he is staring at the back...

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https://www.economist.com/obituary/2022/07/07/peter-brook-saw-acting-as-an-uncompromising-search-for-truth?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18156330227&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr7XP3-rH_AIVlsftCh2SaQWqEAMYASAAEgIOGvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

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Peter Brook saw acting as an uncompromising search for truth

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The revolutionary theatre director died on July 2nd, aged 97

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https://www.redpepper.org.uk/peter-brook-and-the-empty-space/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA9cuQagp78

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Brook by Brook - An Intimate Portrait - Peter Brook - Documentary - 2001 - 4K

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https://www.stevenberkoff.com/

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Overview

Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group.

​

Steven's plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

​

Steven has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Plays

Berkoff's original stage plays include:

East,

West,

Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion,

The Secret Love Life of Ophelia,

Decadence,

Harry's Christmas,

Massage,

Acapulco and Brighton Beach Scumbags.

Steven has performed his trilogy of solo shows, One Man, Shakespeare's Villains and Requiem for Ground Zero, in venues all over the world.

Films

Films Steven has acted in include:

A Clockwork Orange,

Barry Lyndon,

Octopussy,

Beverly Hills Cop,

Rambo,

Under the Cherry Moon,

Absolute Beginners

The Krays.

Steven also directed and co-starred with Joan Collins in the film version of his play Decadence.

Just Out

Now available on MP3 Digital Download

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Steven Berkoff | Plays Books DVD's | Original Works

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Steven Berkoff and his work in theatre and film | Buy DVD's and signed books directly from Steven's official shop here | Information about Steven, including his films and plays; East, West, Messiah, Oedipus, Decadence, Salome, Metamorphosis and more

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https://www.owltail.com/people/vBwWs-steven-berkoff/appearances

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13 of Steven Berkoff Podcasts Interviews | Updated Daily - OwlTail

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Listen Now. Latest Interviews. Listen to all 13 interviews on OwlTail. Search & Listen to all the podcasts interviews of anyone on OwlTail.com

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https://podcasts.apple.com/il/podcast/katie-mitchell-on-cleansed/id773171724?i=1000364360777

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‎National Theatre: What's on: Katie Mitchell on Cleansed on Apple Podcasts

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Katie Mitchell talks to Matt Trueman about her new production of Sarah Kane's play, Cleansed.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0188526

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BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Drama, Our Country’s Good

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Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play about the convicts and Marines sent to Australia in 1787.

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https://soundcloud.com/asidepodcast/the-aside-translating-liz-morden-our-countrys-good

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The Aside - Translating Liz Morden (Our Country's Good) by The Aside Podcast

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The Aside Podcasts are a free resource supported by Drama Victoria - Australia’s oldest Drama Association

In this episode of The Aside, we translate a number of words from Liz Morden's Monologue from Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
Links below for the sources.

Please feel free to email asidepodcast@outlook.com to ask a question. We will try and answer on a future podcast.

Sources: 
https://www.hamptonhilltheatre.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/Programme%20-%20Our%20Country%27s%20Good_0.pdf

https://www.mansioningles.com/recursos149.htm

https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/convict-sydney/flash-language

https://sites.google.com/site/motman/Home/information/slang

https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/nymphidia-and-the-fairies-of-michael-drayton#:~:text=Katharine%20Briggs%20suggested%20in%20An,hang%20for%20a%20halfpenny.%22

https://sites.google.com/site/motman/Home/information/slang

https://www.definition-of.com/mother+of+all+saints

List of words:
Shifts it’s bob –  moves out of the way
A bob can be the weight attached to a plumb line. A ship is said to bob out when it bounces and bobs in heavy seas without making any remarkable headway. This is a particularly distressing occurrence for those afflicted with seasickness. Waves bobble when they seem to crash without any specific set or direction as during cross currents or riptides.

Born under a Ha’penny planet  - halfpenny = worthless, planet – circumstances of births 
Said of any person remarkably unsuccessful in his attempts or profession.

Nibbler  -nibbler a pilferer or petty thief

Crapped - crap’d - hanged

Titter – girl, young girl, toddler girl, small laugh of a child, women’s breast

Wiper – Handkerchief 

Shoulder-clapped – arrested 

Cudgel – short thick stick/weapon

Prig – a thief, or stolen, to steal or pilfer

Trine for a maker – wait for a

Wap for a winnie – pull for a horse
If she will not lie with a man for a penny, let her hang for a halfpenny

Dimber mort  -pretty girl 

Swell – elegantly dressed, or stylishly dressed
mollisher –  a woman, a villian’s mistress 

Miss Laycock – female genitals, prostitute

Mug – face

Sell my Mother of saints – female genitals 

Swell cove – “swell” man.

Bobcull – good natured man

Mossie face - a slang, potentially endearing term for the pudendal region of a woman

Shiners - money

Spice (steal) the swells – steal from the gentlemen (steal the loot)

Lifts it – steal it /take it

Stir my stumps – move my legs

Swell Squeals beef – gentleman shouts ”thief” 

Snoozie – constable for the night watch

Nibbed – caught / arrested 

Up the ladder to rest – walk up the ladder/stairs to be hanged. 

Nap – get/receive 

Across the herrring pond – across the coean 

Rantum scantum – sex (for food/water or preferential treatment on the ship – which was common)

Nob it here -  become A person of wealth or high social position (short for noble)

Bobcull gov – good natured government person

Niffynaffy - easy

Rufflers – vagabonds/vagrant 

Nibbed – arrested again 

Up the ladder to rest – up the ladder/stairs to be hanged to death

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G.B. Shaw's Arms and the Man is both a sparkling romantic comedy and a telling satire of love, war and social pretension. It was Shaw's first public success as a playwright when it premiered in London in 1894, and is currently enjoying an acclaimed revival at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, Surrey.

I'm joined by Shaw expert Ivan Wise, who is a previous editor of The Shavian, the journal of the Shaw Society.

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035 - Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker - The Play Podcast

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Timberlake Wertenbaker's award-winning play Our Country's Good tells the unlikely story of a group of convicts in the first colony in Botany Bay putting on a production of George Farquhar's Restoration Comedy The Recruiting Officer in 1789. Director Matt Beresford returns to talk us through the play.

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https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/keywords/greek-tragedy

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In this final episode, Katrina talks to Leo, Alice and Aimee about how Oxford has nurtured their passion for the ancient world, what connects Lizzo to Classics, and how understanding the past can be a force for good.

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Greek Theatre on Apple Podcasts

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Western theatre has its roots in the theatre of Ancient Greece and the plays that originated there. This collection features videos and workpacks about Greek theatre and productions of Greek plays staged at the National Theatre, including a series of videos on the 2012 production of Antigone starring Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker.

Western theatre has its roots in the theatre of Ancient Greece and the plays that originated there. This collection features videos and workpacks about Greek theatre and productions of Greek plays staged at the National Theatre, including a series of videos on the 2012 production of Antigone starring Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker.

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Western theatre has its roots in the theatre of Ancient Greece and the plays that originated there. This collection features videos and workpacks about Greek theatre and productions of Greek plays staged at the National Theatre, including a series of videos on the 2012 production of Antigone starrin...

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Greek Theater: Origin, Representatives, Features and Characteristics (crgsoft.com)

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Table Of Contents
We explain what ancient Greek theater is, what its structure and genres are like. Also, its general characteristics, authors and more.
What is the Ancient Greek Theater?

At first, Greek theater was limited to religious performances.

The Greek theater began in the 6th century BC. A. In Athens and was a pioneer in theatrical representations of massive summons. The first stagings were based on the religious ceremonies represented through tragedy and, over time, other genres such as comedy and satire were incorporated.

The theaters were built outdoors, yet they conveyed impeccable acoustics. They used to be established on the side of a hill, with a stage and a large back wall (the space for the actors to prepare), surrounded by steps in the shape of a semicircle, where the audience sat.

The first works were adaptations of religious rituals performed by a single actor. Later more actors, the music of a choir and the scenery were incorporated. Other genres emerged such as drama and comedy, which were very popular, along with tragedy. The Greek theater was of great influence for the Hellenistic and Roman theater, to later spread throughout the Mediterranean.

Origin of Greek theater

The annual festivals, called the Dionysian of Athens, were the forerunners of the theater.

The great Dionysians of Athens are considered the forerunners of the Greek theater. They consisted of annual festivals that lasted several days, in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and exuberance.

At these massive celebrations, people sang, danced, and drank wine. The great attraction was the dramatic representations made by some, such as the tragedies of Eurípedes, one of the most representative Greek poets.

Characteristics of the Greek theater

The same actor could use several masks to represent different characters.

The Greek theater was characterized by its works linked to the religious ceremonies of worship to the god Dionysus. The rituals consisted of the sacrifice of goats, songs called trag-dia and dances with masks, among others.

The plots of the tragedy were always inspired by episodes from Greek mythology, which used to be part of Greek religion. Only men could act and, the first works, consisted of a single actor who was shown disguised with a suit and a mask, to represent the gods.

Large masks with exaggerated features were an important icon of Greek theater. They were used because they were part of religious rituals, adapted to recreate theatrical works and also because they allowed the same actor to represent different characters.

The choir was one of the most important characteristics of the Greek theater. It was made up of a single group of men whose performance interacted throughout the development of the work, generating a particular climate in each instance. In addition, it fulfilled the role of entertaining and amusing the public by accompanying the dance of the actors.

The public was massive and was made up of people from various social strata. For this reason, there were preferential locations destined only for magistrates, priests and illustrious citizens who, in addition, had a better view of the stage.

Greek theater representatives

Sophocles was recognized for incorporating the chorus, scenography and acting technique.

Among the playwrights or authors representing the Greek theater, the following stand out:

Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC): He was considered the creator of the Greek tragedy and recognized for his innovation after incorporating a second actor (when the works were still performed by only one character). His scripts were based on themes from mythology, with characters of gods, demigods or superhuman beings who expressed themselves in bombastic and metaphorical language.

Sophocles (496-406 BC): It was very popular for incorporating various innovations, such as the chorus, set design and acting technique. Sophocles' works reflected the suffering of men exposed to the extreme situations that fate brings them and for the divine justice of the gods.

Euripides (484 - 406 BC): He was celebrated for his intelligent, realistic dialogue and for posing uncomfortable, thought-provoking questions to the audience. He devoted himself entirely to expressing problems and passions. In his scripts the flesh and blood heroes stood out.

Aristophanes (444 - 385 BC): It was the main exponent of the comic genre, also called ancient comedy or Aristophanic comedy. His scripts reflected a high cultural and artistic level, through sarcastic humor and harsh political, social and religious criticism, even criticism of Socrates and Euripides.

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Greek Theater: Origin, Representatives, Features and Characteristics

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Table Of Contents We explain what ancient Greek theater is, what its structure and genres are like. Also, its general characteristics, authors and more. At first, Greek theater was limited to religious performances. The Greek theater began in the 6th century BC. A.

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https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/directing-our-countrys-good-an-interview-with-max-stafford-clark

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Directing Our Country's Good: An interview with Max Stafford-Clark

In 1988 Max Stafford-Clark directed the Royal Court Theatre premiere of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Here, nearly three decades later, the British Library talks to Stafford-Clark about the genesis of the play, his experiences as its director and what it still has to teach us.

British Library:

In your own words, what kind of play is Our Country's Good?

Max Stafford-Clark:

Our Country's Good comes into the unknown story category. It's a play based on a number of incidents that really took place in the infant convict colony in Australia, where the liberal governor, Governor Arthur Phillip, whose name is enshrined in mountains, rivers, towns and many monuments in Australia, thought it would be a good idea for the convicts to put on a play. The Recruiting Officer was chosen partly because it was the only play they had two copies of, but it was also one of the most popular plays of the 18th century - second only to .

BL:

Where did you discover the story at the heart of Our Country's Good?

MS-C:

Thomas Keneally, the great Australian novelist who wrote Schindler's List, produced this book - The Playmaker - in which he imagined that the young second lieutenant Ralph Clark was in fact the producer/director of the play. In it he catalogues the convicts and their different crimes, the governor and the hostility of the officers to the idea of any kind of therapy or rehabilitation being offered to the convicts and the difficulty of actually getting the play staged.

Photographs of Our Country's Good (1988 premiere at the Royal Court Theatre)

Alphonsia Emmanuel and Jim Broadbent star as convict Duckling Smith and Midshipman Harry Brewer in the 1988 premiere of Our Country's Good.

BL:

What led you to develop an adaptation of The Playmaker?

MS-C:

It's a bit of a long story, but I was in New York directing Serious Money, Caryl Churchill 's play about the 'Big Bang' [the deregulation of the financial markets, implemented by Margaret Thatcher in 1986]. It had been a big success and after Christmas it transferred to Broadway. But it was quite clear that the financial markets were no longer a laughing matter. There'd been a kind of Black Monday and people had lost a lot of money. The play was doomed. If I rehearsed for more than an hour and a half a day it triggered huge overtime payments and I couldn't afford to use musicians or electricians. My Broadway career lasted five weeks exactly.

As I was forced not to work, I had time on my hands. I went to the big Barnes &Noble bookshop on 5th Avenue and I saw The Playmaker. I was attracted by the title and I knew that The Recruiting Officer had indeed been performed by a group of convicts. I bought a copy and found that I couldn't put it down. I had to limit myself to 20 pages a day.

Half-way through reading I realised that Restoration plays involve much smaller casts than Shakespeare. I thought, well, if you double that-with-that and omit that character,then perhaps we could stage it with just a cast of ten. So I had the idea of commissioning a play based on The Playmaker and producing The Recruiting Officer alongside it.

I came back to London not much richer than when I set off, alas, but with something even better than that - which was a good idea.

The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar

Dramatis personae - a list of the play's characters - from the first print edition of The Recruiting Officer.

BL:

When did you involve Timberlake Wertenbaker?

MS-C:

I approached Timberlake when I returned to London. Gradually, the play came together. Rewriting went on all through rehearsals, right up to the first preview and beyond.

BL:

Our Country's Good is often described as a 'historical play'. What's your take on this?

MS-C:

It is history and it is Keneally's fiction brokered by Timberlake's imagination. Even though most of the events and characters are certainly drawn from life and from history, it's an act of imagination.

BL:

What are the challenges of staging a historical play like Our Country's Good?

MS-C:

You're trying to recreate a lost world. With any historical play that visits the past, you have to animate and engage with your contemporary audience.

It's only recently that David Cameron's government withdrew access to books for prisoners, so the idea that prisoners could be rehabilitated through culture, through theatre or through reading, is something that is still vaguely contentious. [In November 2013 Chris Grayling, then Justice Secretary, introduced a ban on sending books to prisoners; this ban was declared unlawful by the High Court in December 2014 and subsequently reversed.]

BL:

How important was historical research to you, Timberlake Wetenbaker and the cast of Our Country's Good?

MS-C:

Research is hugely important in any play. Of course if you're doing a modern play - let's say about sexual abuse in professional football - then that's something you can research here and now. You can talk to lawyers, to football managers, to victims and you can find materials to assist with constructing your play. If you're staging a historical play then it's that bit more difficult to gain access to that world.

Our Country's Good brings an unknown story to life, or one that was certainly unknown in the 1980s. Robert Hughes's book The Fatal Shore was inspirational in this sense. What I hadn't anticipated was that convict history is a blur - or had been until that point to most Australians. They were taught Tudor kings and queens, but they were not taught about their own convict origins as it was considered too shameful to be part of a proper course of academic study.

Manuscript notes for Our Country's Good

Evidence of Timberlake Wertenbaker's research for the play: a list of 18th century criminal slang or 'cant'.

Usage terms © Timberlake Wertenbaker c/o The Agency (London) Ltd, 24 Pottery Lane, London W11 4LZ. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay

A list containing the names of convicts transported to Australia with the First Fleet, together with the date and length of their sentence. This page records a 'Mary Branham'.

BL:

You're famous for your workshop and rehearsal methods, which you first developed with Joint Stock in the 1970s. Can you tell us about some of the methods used in rehearsals for Our Country's Good?

MSC:

I certainly use improvisations a lot to fill in the back story. At the Royal Court, where we first rehearsed Our Country's Good, there is something called the sub-stage which is underneath the stage. It is not unlike the hold of a sailing ship. The actors were imprisoned down there for a day. They had to persuade their way out by seducing the officers who were also cast on the day.

For the actor playing the character of Sideway, who is in love with London, we sent him to London Bridge with a map of 18th-century London and told him to walk from there to St Paul's Church. When he came back into the rehearsal room he described his journey, but using only the buildings that he would have seen in the 18th century.

BL:

What are you trying to achieve through these methods?

MSC:

An imaginative penetration of what it would be like to have lived then and to have experienced that society.

Typescript rehearsal drafts of Our Country's Good, with stage notes by Max Stafford-Clark

This rehearsal draft of Our Country's Good reveals Max Stafford-Clark's annotations and 'actioning' technique.

Usage terms Timberlake Wertenbaker: © Timberlake Wertenbaker c/o The Agency (London) Ltd, 24 Pottery Lane, London W11 4LZ. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

Max Stafford-Clark: © Max Stafford-Clark. Published under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial No-Derivatives Licence.

BL:

What was the effect of doubling up the roles in Our Country's Good?

MS-C:

It was caused by economics, partly - but economics lead to aesthetics.

You're calling on the actors' versatility. You're saying, this is a play about the theatre and we're going to show you how actors can be different people. In the scene when the officers discuss the merits of the play, the whole cast are playing men. There was no attempt to disguise that.

It's playful. They're not called plays for nothing. It's being playful with the audience and with the actors as well.

Photographs of Our Country's Good (1988 premiere at the Royal Court Theatre)

This production photograph, from the 1988 premiere under Max Stafford-Clark's direction, captures a dynamic scene featuring players preparing for their performance. Jim Broadbent, who also played Midshipman Harry Brewer and Captain Campbell, is here portraying the convict John Arscott.

BL:

Do you have a favourite character?

MS-C:

Mary Brenham's story is amazing. She became pregnant by Ralph Clark and the daughter that was born of this illegitimate union was called Betsy Alicia, which was the name of Clark's wife back in Plymouth. That was a compliment, not an insult, by the way. Yet after his term of service ended, he never saw her or the child again. Keneally has just a very moving sentence where he writes, 'she went up country and disappears from history'. Nobody knows what happened to her.

But I also like Sideway, the pickpocket, because he's passionately in love with theatre. He's seen Garrick at Drury Lane. Sideway is not necessarily a bad actor, but he's an inappropriate actor. That's to say all acting is, is a language that communicates emotion over distance. For most young actors who leave drama school, their first performances will be in the upper rooms of pubs where intimacy and truth are important. During Garrick's own acting career, however, Drury Lane moved from 700 seats at the beginning of the century to nearly 3,000 at the end. That had a huge effect on acting in terms of voice and gesture.

Sideways is bringing his idea of Drury Lane acting into a tent that seats 60 people.

Illustration of Drury Lane Theatre

This illustration captures the Drury Lane Theatre as it looked towards the end of actor-manager David Garrick's career.

BL:

How did the political context of the 1980s feed into Our Country's Good?

MS-C:

The theatre itself was under threat. Mrs Thatcher believed in the reduction of the welfare state and that included theatre. I went to the Royal Court in 1979 and gradually through that next decade we had comparatively less and less funding. The attacks in Our Country's Good by officers like Ross, who are opposed to the theatre, therefore had avalidity and resonance. It was received by the audience as a defence of theatre.

BL:

Before Our Country's Good premiered, did you have any sense of how successful it might become?

If I had the racing page now for the three o'clock at Doncaster, I couldn't predict the winner but I could tell you four horses which definitely weren't going to win and I could probably pick four horses from which the winner would come. Theatre is less reliable than that.

During rehearsals, everyone was emotionally and physically exhausted. We were always one draft behind where we should have been. Ron Cook describes the first preview at the Royal Court where the cast took a curtain call. Back in the dressing room they heard this roar and they thought, 'God, is the theatre falling down, what's happened?' But it was the audience applauding and there was a standing ovation on the first preview.

I remember very well one particularly bad tempered and difficult afternoon in rehearsals. When we got to rehearse the last scene, which is set backstage in the convict dressing room, the Royal Court's costume designer, stage manager and people associated with the production stayed in the room to watch the actors playing actors. It was then that I thought, for the first time, we could be on to a winner here. This is something that people are really interested in. But its success was like a 33:1 horse suddenly emerging from the field and winning. It had been such a difficult birth.

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Directing Our Country's Good: an interview with Max Stafford-Clark | The British Library

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In 1988 Max Stafford-Clark directed the Royal Court Theatre premiere of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Here, nearly three decades later, the British Library talks to Stafford-Clark about the genesis of the play, his experiences as its director and what it still has to teach us.

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https://olioweb.me.uk/plays/?page_id=16

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By ROSEMARY HILL

I have for a long time wanted to direct 'Our Country's Good'. It's such a wonderfully uplifting play; poignant and extremely funny.

From the outset I decided I wanted to emphasise the Australian setting and heighten the Aboriginal element of the play. The set design and lighting were essential ingredients to this. I wanted a sense of the space of Australia, yet also the feeling that the convicts and the officers are all trapped. The space is threatening rather than liberating. I also wanted a feeling of heat and arid dryness. Here lighting and sound come into their own. So much can be achieved with all these elements and once the actors are out on that stage their performances are heightened. I won't say too much here about what the design looks like as our designer Alex will also shortly be writing a piece about his approach.

As far as my directorial method is concerned (and yes that sounds rather precious I know), the only way I can describe it is to say it is 'layering'. I feel that each time we rehearse we add more layers, starting with a very basic rough layer, and refining things as we progress.

The first thing I do before even the rehearsal room is visited is to read the text many times and make notes on characters, story, structure, themes and language. If a play is good I'll keep on finding things I missed in previous readings, and then I'll find out more when the actors point out things that I had missed or not considered. I do like an element of spontaneity so I never want to be too prescriptive. I have often been overruled by an actor and that's a good thing.

Rather than move to the text straight away with the actors though I like to explore the themes in workshops first. I prefer to hold workshop style auditions as I think they are far more revealing about what an actor can do than someone coming along with a prepared speech. It's more interesting too.

Having got this 'feel' for things I then move to a reading of the play with the whole cast and we'll further discuss character, themes etc together. The next layer is where we start to work on sections of the play, scenes or collections of scenes. The play has to be 'blocked'. I hate this term and would prefer to say we get the play on its feet. This first attempt at 'moving' the play is obviously another very rough layer. I can't work by having all moves mapped out, so I ask the actors to walk through a scene, even a very complicated one and just see what happens. It can often look very static and it can often look a mess, but it's an important process because the actors themselves get to know how the scene works and what the 'logistics' are and it's usually the actors who come up with all the solutions. I'm just there to have an overview and perhaps move things around slightly. Once we have this very rough blocking, I'll start to work more closely with characters on scenes, conversations and speeches. I feel I have to have this 'throughput' first though. I'll often just concentrate on another 'layer' perhaps a particular character or a feeling and let other things go, making a note to come back to it later when the next layer is added. It sounds like a very labour intensive process and it is, but it does yield results. Once we get to this stage we'll start to look at the text far more closely. Also one of my favourite ways of exploring character is by 'hotseating'. For anyone who has never used this technique, it's where a character is asked lots of questions to do with their life in the play, and beyond it, by an audience ( usually the other members of the cast) and they have to answer as their character would have done. It means that the actor really has to build up a believable picture for the character and think about how they got to the point they are at in the play.

I'll also let an assistant director take a scene away to add more layers and tweak things even more. This can only work though if the director can let things go slightly. It can also be difficult if the cast feel that the two directors are at opposite angles and one keeps changing what the other has done. There is also nothing more frustrating than two directors contradicting one another as a scene is being rehearsed. One has to be able to experiment and take wrong turnings without someone interrupting! That is not to say though that suggestions are not welcome, but I'm particularly keen that they should come from the cast as they find out more about their relationships on stage with other characters. Moves that have been in place for weeks can suddenly be changed because the actors have discovered a better way of doing things.

By the time we are well into rehearsals many 'layers' have been added and I'll still be using 'hotseating' and questioning. Often as a scene is being played, I'll suddenly stop and ask the character questions. It just keeps everything 'on the boil'. Theatre is live so things keep changing and being added and it's this that makes it so exciting.

Directing is a strange business and it can often look as if you are not doing very much as you let the actors find their solutions, but actually this is far harder than being totally prescriptive. However I do have to be honest and admit that the above is how I like to work but sometimes due to shortness of time I have been known to be a little bit prescriptive and even bossy! Heaven forbid!!!

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The Director's Approach - Our Country's Good

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By ROSEMARY HILL I have for a long time wanted to direct 'Our Country's Good'. It's such a wonderfully uplifting play; poignant and extremely funny. From the outset I decided I wanted to emphasise the Australian setting and heighten the Aboriginal element of the play. The set design and lighting were essential ingredients to this.

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https://arkalexandra.org/sites/default/files/OCG%20Directing%20Model.pdf

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https://literariness.org/2020/07/29/analysis-of-sophocles-antigone/#:~:text=Antigone%2C%20who%20has%20been%20described,on%20behalf%20of%20the%20dead.

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Within this single drama-in great part, a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state in general-Sophocles tells of the eternal struggle between the state and the individual, human and natural law, and the enormous gulf between what we attempt here on earth and what fate has in store for us all. In this magnificent dramatic work, almost incidentally so, we find nearly every reason why we are now what we are.

-Victor D. Hanson and John Heath,
Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

With Antigone Sophocles forcibly demonstrates that the power of tragedy derives not from the conflict between right and wrong but from the confrontation between right and right. As the play opens the succession battle between the sons of Oedipus-Polynices and Eteocles-over control of Thebes has resulted in both of their deaths. Their uncle Creon, who has now assumed the throne, asserts his authority to end a destructive civil war and decrees that only Eteocles, the city's defender, should receive honorable burial. Polynices, who has led a foreign army against Thebes, is branded a traitor. His corpse is to be left on the battlefield "to be chewed up by birds and dogs and violated," with death the penalty for anyone who attempts to bury him and supply the rites necessary for the dead to reach the underworld. Antigone, Polynices' sister, is determined to defy Creon's order, setting in motion a tragic collision between opposed laws and duties: between natural and divine commands that dictate the burial of the dead and the secular edicts of a ruler determined to restore civic order, between family allegiance and private conscience and public duty and the rule of law that restricts personal liberty for the common good. Like the proverbial immovable object meeting an irresistible force, Antigone arranges the impact of seemingly irreconcilable conceptions of rights and responsibilities, producing one of drama's enduring illuminations of human nature and the human condition.

Antigone is one of Sophocles' greatest achievements and one of the most influential dramas ever staged. "Between 1790 and 1905," critic George Steiner reports, "it was widely held by European poets, philosophers, [and] scholars that Sophocles' Antigone was not only the fi nest of Greek tragedies, but a work of art nearer to perfection than any other produced by the human spirit." Its theme of the opposition between the individual and authority has resonated through the centuries, with numerous playwrights, most notably Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, and Athol Fugard grafting contemporary concerns and values onto the moral and political dramatic framework that Sophocles established. The play has elicited paradoxical responses reflecting changing cultural and moral imperatives. Antigone, who has been described as "the first heroine of Western drama," has been interpreted both as a heroic martyr to conscience and as a willfully stubborn fanatic who causes her own death and that of two other innocent people, forsaking her duty to the living on behalf of the dead. Creon has similarly divided critics between censure and sympathy. Despite the play's title, some have suggested that the tragedy is Creon's, not Antigone's, and it is his abuse of authority and his violations of personal, family, and divine obligations that center the drama's tragedy. The brilliance of Sophocles' play rests in the complexity of motive and the competing absolute claims that the drama displays. As novelist George Eliot observed,

It is a very superficial criticism which interprets the character of Creon as that of hypocritical tyrant, and regards Antigone as a blameless victim. Coarse contrasts like this are not the materials handled by great dramatists. The exquisite art of Sophocles is shown in the touches by which he makes us feel that Creon, as well as Antigone, is contending for what he believes to be the right, while both are also conscious that, in following out one principle, they are laying themselves open to just blame for transgressing another.

Eliot would call the play's focus the "antagonism of valid principles," demonstrating a point of universal significance that "Wherever the strength of a man's intellect, or moral sense, or affection brings him into opposition with the rules which society has sanctioned, there is renewed conflict between Antigone and Creon; such a man must not only dare to be right, he must also dare to be wrong-to shake faith, to wound friendship, perhaps, to hem in his own powers." Sophocles' Antigone is less a play about the pathetic end of a victim of tyranny or the corruption of authority than about the inevitable cost and con-sequence between competing imperatives that define the human condition. From opposite and opposed positions, both Antigone and Creon ultimately meet at the shared suffering each has caused. They have destroyed each other and themselves by who they are and what they believe. They are both right and wrong in a world that lacks moral certainty and simple choices. The Chorus summarizes what Antigone will vividly enact: "The powerful words of the proud are paid in full with mighty blows of fate, and at long last those blows will teach us wisdom."

As the play opens Antigone declares her intention to her sister Ismene to defy Creon's impious and inhumane order and enlists her sister's aid to bury their brother. Ismene responds that as women they must not oppose the will of men or the authority of the city and invite death. Ismene's timidity and deference underscores Antigone's courage and defiance. Antigone asserts a greater allegiance to blood kinship and divine law declaring that the burial is a "holy crime," justified even by death. Ismene responds by calling her sister "a lover of the impossible," an accurate description of the tragic hero, who, according to scholar Bernard Knox, is Sophocles' most important contribution to drama: "Sophocles presents us for the first time with what we recognize as a 'tragic hero': one who, unsupported by the gods and in the face of human opposition, makes a decision which springs from the deepest layer of his individual nature, his physis, and then blindly, ferociously, heroically maintains that decision even to the point of self-destruction." Antigone exactly conforms to Knox's description, choosing her conception of duty over sensible self-preservation and gender-prescribed submission to male authority, turning on her sister and all who oppose her. Certain in her decision and self-sufficient, Antigone rejects both her sister's practical advice and kinship. Ironically Antigone denies to her sister, when Ismene resists her will, the same blood kinship that claims Antigone's supreme allegiance in burying her brother. For Antigone the demands of the dead overpower duty to the living, and she does not hesitate in claiming both to know and act for the divine will. As critic Gilbert Norwood observes, "It is Antigone's splendid though perverse valor which creates the drama."

Before the apprehended Antigone, who has been taken in the act of scattering dust on her brother's corpse, lamenting, and pouring libations, is brought before Creon and the dramatic crux of the play, the Chorus of The-ban elders delivers what has been called the fi nest song in all Greek tragedy, the so-called Ode to Man, that begins "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man." This magnificent celebration of human power over nature and resourcefulness in reason and invention ends with a stark recognition of humanity's ultimate helplessness-"Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain." Death will test the resolve and principles of both Antigone and Creon, while, as critic Edouard Schuré asserts, "It brings before us the most extraordinary psychological evolution that has ever been represented on stage."

When Antigone is brought in judgment before Creon, obstinacy meets its match. Both stand on principle, but both reveal the human source of their actions. Creon betrays himself as a paranoid autocrat; Antigone as an individual whose powerful hatred outstrips her capacity for love. She defiantly and proudly admits that she is guilty of disobeying Creon's decree and that he has no power to override divine law. Nor does Antigone concede any mitigation of her personal obligation in the competing claims of a niece, a sister, or a citizen. Creon is maddened by what he perceives to be Antigone's insolence in justifying her crime by diminishing his authority, provoking him to ignore all moderating claims of family, natural, or divine extenuation. When Ismene is brought in as a co-conspirator, she accepts her share of guilt in solidarity with her sister, but again Antigone spurns her, calling her "a friend who loves in words," denying Ismene's selfless act of loyalty and sympathy with a cold dismissal and self-sufficiency, stating, "Never share my dying, / don't lay claim to what you never touched." However, Ismene raises the ante for both Antigone and Creon by asking her uncle whether by condemning Antigone he will kill his own son's betrothed. Creon remains adamant, and his judgment on Antigone and Ismene, along with his subsequent argument with his son, Haemon, reveals that Creon's principles are self-centered, contradictory, and compromised by his own pride, fears, and anxieties. Antigone's challenge to his authority, coming from a woman, is demeaning. If she goes free in defiance of his authority, Creon declares, "I am not the man, she is." To the urging of Haemon that Creon should show mercy, tempering his judgment to the will of Theban opinion that sympathizes with Antigone, Creon asserts that he cares nothing for the will of the town, whose welfare Creon's original edict against Polynices was meant to serve. Creon, moreover, resents being schooled in expediency by his son. Inflamed by his son's advocacy on behalf of Antigone, Creon brands Haemon a "woman's slave," and after vacillating between stoning Antigone and executing her and her sister in front of Haemon, Creon rules that Antigone alone is to perish by being buried alive. Having begun the drama with a decree that a dead man should remain unburied, Creon reverses himself, ironically, by ordering the premature burial of a living woman.

Antigone, being led to her entombment, is shown stripped of her former confidence and defiance, searching for the justification that can steel her acceptance of the fate that her actions have caused. Contemplating her living descent into the underworld and the death that awaits her, Antigone regrets dying without marriage and children. Gone is her reliance on divine and natural law to justify her act as she equivocates to find the emotional source to sustain her. A husband and children could be replaced, she rationalizes, but since her mother and father are dead, no brother can ever replace Polynices. Antigone's tortured logic here, so different from the former woman of principle, has been rejected by some editors as spurious. Others have judged this emotionally wrought speech essential for humanizing Antigone, revealing her capacity to suffer and her painful search for some consolation.

The drama concludes with the emphasis shifted back to Creon and the consequences of his judgment. The blind prophet Teiresias comes to warn Creon that Polynices' unburied body has offended the gods and that Creon is responsible for the sickness that has descended on Thebes. Creon has kept from Hades one who belongs there and is sending to Hades another who does not. The gods confirm the rightness of Antigone's action, but justice evades the working out of the drama's climax. The release of Antigone comes too late; she has hung herself. Haemon commits suicide, and Eurydice, Creon's wife, kills herself after cursing Creon for the death of their son. Having denied the obligation of family, Creon loses his own. Creon's rule, marked by ignoring or transgressing cosmic and family law, is shown as ultimately inadequate and destructive. Creon is made to realize that he has been rash and foolish, that "Whatever I have touched has come to nothing." Both Creon and Antigone have been pushed to terrifying ends in which what truly matters to both are made starkly clear. Antigone's moral imperatives have been affirmed but also their immense cost in suffering has been exposed. Antigone explores a fundamental rift between public and private worlds. The central opposition in the play between Antigone and Creon, between duty to self and duty to state, dramatizes critical antimonies in the human condition. Sophocles' genius is his resistance of easy and consoling simplifications to resolve the oppositions. Both sides are ultimately tested; both reveal the potential for greatness and destruction.

24 lectures on Greek Tragedy by Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver.

Categories: Drama Criticism, Literary Criticism, Literature

Tags: Analysis of Sophocles' Antigone, Antigone Analysis, Antigone Criticism, Antigone Essay, Antigone Guide, Antigone Lecture, Antigone PDF, Antigone Summary, Antigone Themes, Bibliography of Sophocles' Antigone, Character Study of Sophocles' Antigone, Criticism of Sophocles' Antigone, Drama Criticism, Essays of Sophocles' Antigone, Greek Tragedy, Notes of Sophocles' Antigone, Plot of Sophocles' Antigone, Simple Analysis of Sophocles' Antigone, Study Guides of Sophocles' Antigone, Summary of Sophocles' Antigone, Synopsis of Sophocles' Antigone, Themes of Sophocles' Antigone, Tragedy

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Within this single drama-in great part, a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state in general-Sophocles tells of the eternal struggle between the state and the individual, human and natural law, and the enormous gulf between what we attempt here on earth and what fate has in store for us all.

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https://ancient-literature.com/greece_sophocles_antigone/

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"Antigone" is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, written around 442 BCE. Although it was written before ' other two Theban plays, chronologically it comes after the stories in "Oedipus the King" and "Oedipus at Colonus", and it picks up where ' play "Seven Against Thebes" ends. It deals with Antigone's burial of her brother Polynices ( Polyneices), in defiance of the laws of Creon and the state, and the tragic repercussions of her act of civil disobedience.

Dramatis Personae - Characters

ANTIGONE, daughter of Oedipus
ISMENE, daughter of Oedipus
CREON, King of Thebes
EURYDICE, wife of Creon
HAEMON, son of Creon
TIRESIAS, the blind prophet
GUARD, set to watch the corpse of Polynices
FIRST MESSENGER
SECOND MESSENGER, from the house
CHORUS OF THEBAN ELDERS

The action of "Antigone" follows on from the Theban civil war, in which the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, died fighting each other for the throne of Thebes after Eteocles had refused to give up the crown to his brother as their father Oedipus had prescribed. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles is to be honoured and Polynices is to be disgraced by leaving his body unburied on the battlefield (a harsh and shameful punishment at the time).

As the play begins, Antigone vows to bury her brother Polynices' body in defiance of Creon's edict, although her sister Ismene refuses to help her, fearing the death penalty. Creon, with the support of the Chorus of elders, repeats his edict regarding the disposal of Polynices' body, but a fearful sentry enters to report that Antigone has in fact buried her brother's body.

Creon, furious at this wilful disobedience, questions Antigone over her actions, but she does not deny what she has done and argues unflinchingly with Creon about the morality of his edict and the morality of her deeds. Despite her innocence, Ismene is also summoned and interrogated and tries to confess falsely to the crime, wishing to die alongside her sister, but Antigone insists on shouldering full responsibility.

Creon's son, Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, pledges allegiance to his father's will but then gently tries to persuade his father to spare Antigone. The two men are soon bitterly insulting each other and eventually Haemon storms out, vowing never to see Creon again.

Creon decides to spare Ismene but rules that Antigone should be buried alive in a cave as punishment for her transgressions. She is brought out of the house, bewailing her fate but still vigorously defending her actions, and is taken away to her living tomb, to expressions of great sorrow by the Chorus.

The blind prophet Tiresias warns Creon that the gods side with Antigone, and that Creon will lose a child for his crimes of leaving Polynices unburied and for punishing Antigone so harshly. Tiresias warns that all of Greece will despise him, and that the sacrificial offerings of Thebes will not be accepted by the gods, but Creon merely dismisses him as a corrupt old fool.

However, the terrified Chorus beg to reconsider, and eventually he consents to follow their advice and to free Antigone and to bury Polynices. Creon, shaken now by the prophet's warnings and by the implications of his own actions, is contrite and looks to right his previous mistakes.

But, a messenger then enters to report that, in their desperation, both Haemon and Antigone have taken their own lives. Creon's wife, Eurydice, is distraught with grief over the loss of her son, and flees the scene. Creon himself begins to understand that his own actions have caused these events. A second messenger then brings the news that Eurydice has also killed herself and, with her last breath, had cursed her husband and his intransigence.

Creon now blames himself for everything that has happened and he staggers away, a broken man. The order and rule of law he values so much has been protected, but he has acted against the gods and has lost his child and his wife as a result. The Chorus closes the play with an attempt at consolation, by saying that although the gods punish the proud, punishment also brings wisdom.

Although set in the city-state of Thebes about a generation before the Trojan War (many centuries before ' time), the play was actually written in Athens during the rule of Pericles. It was a time of great national fervor, and himself was appointed as one of the ten generals to lead a military expedition against Samos Island shortly after the play's release. Given this background, it is striking that the play contains absolutely no political propaganda or contemporary allusions or references to Athens, and indeed betrays no patriotic interests whatsoever.

All the scenes take place in front of the royal palace at Thebes (conforming to the traditional dramatic principle of unity of place) and the events unfold in little more than twenty-four hours. A mood of uncertainty prevails in Thebes in the period of uneasy calm following the Theban civil war and, as the debate between the two central figures advances, the elements of foreboding and impending doom predominate in the atmosphere. The series of deaths at the end of the play, however, leaves a final impression of catharsis and an emptying of all emotion, with all passions spent.

The idealistic character of Antigone consciously risks her life through her actions, concerned only with obeying the laws of the gods and the dictates of familial loyalty and social decency. , on the other hand, regards only the requirement of political expediency and physical power, although he too is unrelenting in his stance. Much of the tragedy lies in the fact that Creon 's realization of his folly and rashness comes too late, and he pays a heavy price, left alone in his wretchedness.

The play's Chorus of Theban elders generally remains within the general moral and the immediate scene (like the earlier Chori of Aseschylus), but it does also allow itself to be carried away at times from the occasion or the initial reason for speaking (an innovation later developed further by Euripides). The character of the sentry is also unusual for the time of the play, in that he speaks in more natural, lower-class language, rather than the stylized poetry of the other characters. Interestingly, there is very little mention of the gods throughout the play, and the tragic events are portrayed as the result of human error, and not divine intervention.

It explores themes such as state control (the right of the individual to reject society's infringement on personal freedoms and obligations); natural law vs. man-made law ( Creon advocates obedience to man-made laws, while Antigone stresses the higher laws of duty to the gods and one's family) and the related issue of civil disobedience ( Antigone believes that state law is not absolute, and that civil disobedience is justified in extreme cases); citizenship ( Creon's decree that Polynices should remain unburied suggests that Polynices' treason in attacking the city effectively revokes his citizenship and the rights that go with it - "citizenship by law" rather than "citizenship by nature"); and (for Antigone, the honour of the family outweighs her duties to the state).

Much critical debate has centred on why Antigone felt such a strong need to bury Polynices a second time in the play, when the initial pouring of dust over her brother's body would have fulfilled her religious obligations. Some have argued that this was merely a dramatic convenience of , while others maintain that it was a result of Antigone 's distracted state and obsessiveness.

In the mid-20th Century, the Frenchman Jean Anouilh wrote a well-regarded version of the play, also called "Antigone", which was deliberately ambiguous regarding the rejection or acceptance of authority, as befitted its production in occupied France under Nazi censorship.

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ANTIGONE - SOPHOCLES PLAY - ANALYSIS & SUMMARY - GREEK MYTHOLOGY

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"Antigone" is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles , written around 442 BCE. Although it was written before ' other two Theban plays, chronologically it comes after the stories in "Oedipus the King" and "Oedipus at Colonus" , and it picks up where ' play "Seven Against Thebes" ends.

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https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Theatre/

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Greek theatre began in the 6th century BCE in Athens with the performance of tragedy plays at religious festivals. These, in turn, inspired the genre of Greek comedy plays. The two types of Greek drama would be hugely popular and performances spread around the Mediterranean and influenced Hellenistic and Roman theatre.

As a consequence of their lasting popularity, the works of such great playwrights as Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes formed the foundation upon which all modern theatre is based. In a similar way, the architecture of the ancient Greek theatre has continued to inspire the design of theatres today.

The Origins of Tragedy

The exact origins of tragedy ( tragōida) are debated amongst scholars. Some have linked the rise of the genre to an earlier art form, the lyrical performance of epic poetry. Others suggest a strong link with the rituals performed in the worship of Dionysos such as the sacrifice of goats - a song ritual called trag-ōdia - and the wearing of masks. Indeed, Dionysos became known as the god of theatre and perhaps there is another connection - the drinking rites which resulted in the worshippers losing full control of their emotions and in effect becoming another person, much as actors ( hupokritai) hope to do when performing. The music and dance of Dionysiac ritual was most evident in the role of the chorus and the music provided by an aulos player, but rhythmic elements were also preserved in the use of first, trochaic tetrameter and then iambic trimeter in the delivery of the spoken words.

Plays were performed in an open-air theatre ( theatron) with wonderful acoustics and seemingly open to all of the male populace (the presence of women is contested). From the mid-5th century BCE entrance was free. The plot of a tragedy was almost always inspired by episodes from Greek mythology, which we must remember were often a part of Greek religion. As a consequence of this serious subject matter, which often dealt with moral right and wrongs and tragic no-win dilemmas, violence was not permitted on the stage, and the death of a character had to be heard from offstage and not seen. Similarly, at least in the early stages of the genre, the poet could not make comments or political statements through his play.

Due to the restricted number of actors each performer had to take on multiple roles where the use of masks, costumes, voice & gesture became extremely important.

The early tragedies had only one actor who would perform in costume and wear a mask, allowing him to impersonate gods. Here we can see perhaps the link to earlier religious ritual where proceedings might have been carried out by a priest. Later, the actor would often speak to the leader of the chorus, a group of up to 15 actors (all male) who sang and danced but did not speak. This innovation is credited to Thespis c. 520 BCE (origin of the word thespian). The actor also changed costumes during the performance (using a small tent behind the stage, the skēne, which would later develop into a monumental façade) and so break the play into distinct episodes. Later, these would develop into musical interludes. Eventually, three actors were permitted on stage but no more - a limitation which allowed for equality between poets in competition. However, a play could have as many non-speaking performers as required, so that plays with greater financial backing could put on a more spectacular production. Due to the restricted number of actors then, each performer had to take on multiple roles where the use of masks, costumes, voice, and gesture became extremely important.

Competition & Celebrated Playwrights

The most famous competition for the performance of tragedy was as part of the spring festival of Dionysos Eleuthereus or the City Dionysia in Athens. The archon, a high-ranking official of the city, decided which plays would be performed in competition and which citizens would act as chorēgoi and have the honour of funding their production while the state paid the poet and lead actors. Each selected poet would submit three tragedies and one satyr play, a type of short parody performance on a theme from mythology with a chorus of satyrs, the wild followers of Dionysos. The plays were judged on the day by a panel, and the prize for the winner of such competitions, besides honour and prestige, was often a bronze tripod cauldron. From 449 BCE there were also prizes for the leading actors ( prōtagōnistēs).

Playwrights who regularly wrote plays in competition became famous, and the three most successful were Aeschylus (c. 525 - c. 456 BCE), Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE), and Euripides (c. 484-407 BCE). Aeschylus was known for his innovation, adding a second actor and more dialogue, and even creating sequels. He described his work as 'morsels from the feast of Homer' (Burn 206). Sophocles was extremely popular and added a third actor to the performance as wells as painted scenery. Euripides was celebrated for his clever dialogues, realism, and habit of posing awkward questions to the audience with his thought-provoking treatment of common themes. The plays of these three were re-performed and even copied into scripts for 'mass' publication and study as part of every child's education.

Greek Comedy - Origins

The precise origins of Greek comedy plays are lost in the mists of prehistory, but the activity of men dressing as and mimicking others must surely go back a long way before written records. The first indications of such activity in the Greek world come from pottery, where decoration in the 6th century BCE frequently represented actors dressed as horses, satyrs, and dancers in exaggerated costumes. Another early source of comedy is the poems of Archilochus (7th century BCE) and Hipponax (6th century BCE) which contain crude and explicit sexual humour. A third origin, and cited as such by Aristotle, lies in the phallic songs which were sung during Dionysiac festivals.

A Greek Comedy Play

Although innovations occurred, a comedy play followed a conventional structure. The first part was the parados where the Chorus of as many as 24 performers entered and performed a number of song and dance routines. Dressed to impress, their outlandish costumes could represent anything from giant bees with huge stingers to knights riding another man in imitation of a horse or even a variety of kitchen utensils. In many cases the play was actually named after the Chorus, e.g., Aristophanes' .

The second phase of the show was the agon which was often a witty verbal contest or debate between the principal actors with fantastical plot elements and the fast changing of scenes which may have included some improvisation. The third part of the play was the parabasis, when the Chorus spoke directly to the audience and even directly spoke for the poet. The show-stopping finale of a comedy play was the exodos when the Chorus gave another rousing song and dance routine.

As in tragedy plays, all performers were male actors, singers, and dancers. One star performer and two other actors performed all of the speaking parts. On occasion, a fourth actor was permitted but only if non-instrumental to the plot. Comedy plays allowed the playwright to address more directly events of the moment than the formal genre of tragedy. The most famous comedy playwrights were Aristophanes (460 - 380 BCE) and Menander (c. 342-291 BCE) who won festival competitions just like the great tragedians. Their works frequently poked fun at politicians, philosophers, and fellow artists, some of whom were sometimes even in the audience. Menander was also credited with helping to create a different version of comedy plays known as New Comedy (so that previous plays became known as Old Comedy). He introduced a young romantic lead to plays, which became, along with several other stock types such as a cook and a cunning slave, a popular staple character. New Comedy also saw more plot twists, suspense, and treatment of common people and their daily problems.

Legacy

New plays were continuously being written and performed, and with the formation of actors' guilds in the 3rd century BCE and the mobility of professional troupes, Greek theatre continued to spread across the Mediterranean with theatres becoming a common feature of the urban landscape from Magna Graecia to Asia Minor. In the Roman world plays were translated and imitated in Latin, and the genre gave rise to a new art form from the 1st century BCE, pantomime, which drew inspiration from the presentation and subject matter of Greek tragedy. Theatre was now firmly established as a popular form of entertainment and it would endure right up to the present day. Even the original 5th-century BCE plays have continued to inspire modern theatre audiences with their timeless examination of universal themes as they are regularly re-performed around the world, sometimes, as at Epidaurus, in the original theatres of ancient Greece.

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Greek theatre began in the 6th century BCE in Athens with the performance of tragedy plays at religious festivals. These, in turn, inspired the genre of Greek comedy plays. The two types of Greek drama...

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https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/backstage/greek-theatre

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The theatre of Ancient Greece flourished between 550BC and 220BC. A festival honouring the god Dionysus was held in Athens, out of which three dramatic genres emerged: tragedy, comedy and the satyr play.

Western theatre has its roots in the theatre of Ancient Greece and the plays that originated there.

This collection features short films about Greek theatre and productions of Greek plays staged at the National Theatre.

In Search of Greek Theatre

Step inside the National Theatre's Archive for this video collection on Greek tragedy, featuring Dr Lucy Jackson (Assistant Professor Greek Literature, Durham University) and Erin Lee (Head of Archive, National Theatre).

The Mohn Westlake Foundation supports nationwide Learning programmes for young people.

Nationwide learning is supported by Buffini Chao Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Tim and Sarah Bunting, Behrens Foundation, Cleopatra Trust and Milton Grundy Foundation.
Find out more about supporting our work

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Greek theatre video collection | National Theatre

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The theatre of Ancient Greece flourished between 550BC and 220BC. A festival honouring the god Dionysus was held in Athens, out of which three dramatic genres emerged: tragedy, comedy and the satyr play. Western theatre has its roots in the theatre of Ancient Greece and the plays that originated there.

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https://forum-theatre.com/what-are-the-characteristics-of-greek-theatre/

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https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Our-Countrys-Good-and-the-Recruiting-Officer-Audiobook/1529127769?source_code=M2M14DFT1BkSH082015011R&&ipRedirectOverride=true&overrideBaseCountry=true&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqbeA_9HH_AIV2OvtCh1cNwwXEAMYASAAEgKkIfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

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Our Country’s Good and the Recruiting Officer

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Check out this great listen on Audible.com. A BBC Radio double bill of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s award-winning drama about a group of 18th-century Australian convicts and their attempts to stage a play, plus the Restoration comedy that the prisoners put on. Australia, 1789: A young lieutenant...

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https://www.connotations.de/article/verna-foster-convicts-characters-and-conventions-of-acting-in-timberlake-wertenbakers-our-countrys-good/

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Verna A. Foster - Convicts, Characters, and Conventions of Acting in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good

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Published in Connotations Vol. 7.3 (1997/98) Few plays endorse the social and cultural value of theatre as explicitly as Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good. Like Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, on which it is based, Our Country's Good recounts an historical event, the first production of a play in Australia: The Recruiting Officer, performed by convicts in Sydney Cove in 1789.

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https://www.bl.uk/works/our-countrys-good

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Our Country's Good (1988) overview

Timberlake Wertenbaker's 1988 play Our Country's Good is a celebration of the humanising power of theatre.

The play is an adaptation of Thomas Keneally's 1987 novel The Playmaker. Set in the first Australian penal colony and based on real events, the play sees a naval officer stage George Farquhar's 1709 comedy The Recruiting Officer using prisoners as his cast.

The Royal Court's then artistic director Max Stafford-Clark first raised the idea of adapting the book when he himself was directing a version of The Recruiting Officer. Wertenbaker spent a year engaged in research for the play. During this time she and Stafford-Clark went to see a play performed by long-term inmates at Wormwood Scrubs. The play is full of questions about the purpose of the prison system, redemption, art and society.

Each of the play's short scenes is titled. The first scene takes place in the hold of a convict ship bound for Australia in 1787. Naval officer Ralph Clark watches a convict being flogged and counts the lashes. In the next scene, as the title explains, 'A lone Aboriginal Australian describes the arrival of the first convict fleet in Botany Bay on January 20, 1788.'

Governor Arthur Phillip and a group of officers discuss the purpose of prison: should it be to punish or to rehabilitate? A decision is taken to hang two men for theft. Midshipman Harry Brewer ends up haunted by his role in these men's deaths. Clark suggests the possibility of doing a play with a convict cast, hoping to get the governor to notice him. There is some protest that this would be inappropriate in a prison colony, but the counter-argument is made by Phillip: 'The theatre is an expression of civilization'.

The convicts who audition include Robert Sideway, a pickpocket, and hardened criminal Liz Morden. The convicts begin rehearsals - these are some of the play's funniest scenes - but there are various interruptions and escape attempts. Phillips exhorts Clark to continue with the play. Liz Morden is sentenced to death for stealing food. She will not speak in her own defence, but Philips advocates for her.

Throughout the play, Wertenbaker shows the different personal relationships that have formed in the insular world of the colony, between Harry and Duckling, Clark and Mary. By the end of the rehearsal process Sideway is planning to start his own theatre company and some of the other convicts plan to act in it. Another convict, John Wisehammer, writes a prologue for the play.

Wertenbaker's play ends with the beginning of Clark's production. The cast listens in trepidation as the actors say their lines and the first speech is met with applause.

Key productions of Our Country's Good

Our Country's Good is constructed with the idea of doubling in mind, so that the actors play both the convicts and the jailers. It requires only ten actors to play all 22 roles, and is often performed with costume changes occurring on stage. Nadia Fall's 2015 revival for the National Theatre was unusual in that it didn't employ doubling.

Premiering at the Royal Court in 1988, Our Country's Good won Wertenbaker an Olivier award. It transferred to the West End and Broadway. On the 25th anniversary of the first production, Stafford-Clark directed a new version for Out of Joint and the Octagon Theatre, Bolton.

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Timberlake Wertenbaker's 1988 play Our Country's Good is a celebration of the humanising power of theatre. The play is an adaptation of Thomas Keneally's 1987 novel The Playmaker. Set in the first Australian penal colony and based on real events, the play sees a naval officer stage George Farquhar's 1709 comedy The Recruiting Officer using prisoners as his cast.

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https://setdesignandtech.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/a-design-from-start-to-finish/

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TTU Our Country's Good Costume Designer Interview

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Timberlake Wertenbaker's "Our Country's Good."  Set design by Josafath Reynoso

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Nov 29, 2013 - Timberlake Wertenbaker's "Our Country's Good."  Set design by Josafath Reynoso

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https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/ralph-clark-journal-kept-friendship-during-voyage-botany-bay-and-norfolk-island-and

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3. Ralph Clark - Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England, 9 March 1787 - 31 December 1787, 1 January 1788 - 10 March 1788, 15 February 1790 - 2 January 1791, 25 January 1791 - 17

Ralph Clark - Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England, 9 March 1787 - 31 December 1787, 1 January 1788 - 10 March 1788, 15 February 1790 - 2 January 1791, 25 January 1791 - 17

Ralph Clark, 2nd Lieutenant of Marines (promoted First Lieutenant in February 1789 in New South Wales), had undertaken the voyage to New South Wales in the hope of gaining promotion.

Clark was attached to the Friendship, one of the convict transports for female prisoners. His journal covers the voyage out and first weeks in Australia, from 13 May 1787 till 10 March 1788. Then there is a gap until 15 February 1790, just before he leaves for Norfolk Island on board the Sirius, until 19 November 1791, then 6 January until 17 June 1792, the homeward voyage on the Gorgon.

Transcription of Ralph Clark's journal

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Ralph Clark - Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England, 9 March 1787 - 31 December 1787, 1 January 1788 - 10 March 1788, 15 February 1790 - 2 January 1791, 25 January 1791 - 17

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You are here: Home Stories Ralph Clark - Journal kept on the Friendship during a voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island; and on the Gorgon returning to England, 9 March 1787 - 31 December 1787, 1 January 1788 - 10 March 1788, 15 February 1790 - 2 January 1791, 25 January 1791 - 17 Ralph Clark, 2nd Lieutenant of Marines (promoted First Lieutenant in February 1789 in New South Wales), had undertaken the voyage to New South Wales in the hope of gaining promotion.

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Phillip

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Arthur Phillip, (born October 11, 1738, London, England-died August 31, 1814, Bath, Somerset), British admiral whose convict settlement established at Sydney in 1788 was the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent.

Phillip joined the British Navy in 1755, retired in 1763 to farm for 13 years in England, then served with the Portuguese Navy against Spain (1776) and with the British Navy against France (1778). In 1786 he was assigned the duty of founding a British convict settlement in New South Wales, and the following year he set sail with 11 ships.

As the first governor of New South Wales, Phillip struggled with rebellious convicts and troops and-until the middle of 1790-with the threat of famine; but he successfully created a permanent community. Despite his conciliatory policy toward the native Aboriginal peoples, he failed to establish peace between the settlers and the natives. He returned to England in 1792 because of poor health, but he saw further action at sea (1796-98) and was promoted to admiral in 1814.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Arthur Phillip | Biography, Australia, & Facts

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Arthur Phillip, British admiral whose convict settlement at Sydney in 1788 was the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent. As the first governor of New South Wales, he struggled with rebellious convicts and troops. Learn more about Phillip's life and career.

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https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/first-fleet-arrives-sydney-cove

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware this website contains images, voices and names of people who have died.

Exile or opportunity?

1788: Captain Arthur Phillip establishes a convict settlement at Sydney Cove

1788: Captain Arthur Phillip establishes a convict settlement at Sydney Cove

State Library of New South Wales FL3268277

Use the following additional activities and discussion questions to encourage students (in small groups or as a whole class) to think more deeply about this defining moment.

Questions for discussion

1. What, if any, have been the long-term effects of convict transportation on Australian society?

2. Do you agree with the National Museum of Australia that the arrival of the First Fleet is a defining moment in Australian history? Explain your answer.

Image activities

1. Look carefully at all the images for this defining moment. Tell this story in pictures by placing them in whatever order you think works best. Write a short caption under each image.

2. Which 3 images do you think are the most important for telling this story? Why?

3. If you could pick only one image to represent this story, which one would you choose? Why?

Finding out more

1. What else would you like to know about this defining moment? Write a list of questions and then share these with your classmates. As a group, create a final list of 3 questions and conduct some research to find the answers.

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National Library of Australia, MAP NK 276

In a snapshot

The arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in January of 1788 marked the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia. The fleet was made up of 11 ships carrying convicts from Britain to Australia. Their arrival changed forever the lives of the Eora people, the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land in the Sydney area, and began waves of convict transportation that lasted until 1868.

Can you find out?

1. Who were Australia's first convicts? Why were they transported to Australia?

2. How did Governor Arthur Phillip manage the colony of New South Wales?

3. What were the main ways Aboriginal people were affected by the arrival of Phillip and the First Fleet?

Why was a convict colony set up in Australia?

Britain used transportation to distant lands as a way of getting rid of prisoners. After Britain lost its American colonies in 1783 the jails of England were full. The British decided to begin transporting prisoners to Australia, which had recently been claimed for the British Crown by Lieutenant James Cook.

Prisoners (also known as convicts) were transported for many reasons but mainly for crimes that we might consider to be minor today, such as stealing. Convicts who were transported were usually poor, often from the large industrial cities and were mostly from England (with a large minority from Ireland and Scotland).

The First Fleet of 11 ships, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, set up a convict settlement at Sydney Cove (now Circular Quay) on 26 January 1788. This was the beginning of convict settlement in Australia.

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National Museum of Australia

Who was Australia's first governor?

Captain Arthur Phillip was an experienced naval officer who became first governor of the colony of New South Wales. He faced many challenges in the early years of settlement. He was prepared to punish people who broke the rules, but also rewarded convicts and free settlers who behaved well.

Almost straight away, the new colony faced starvation. The first crops failed because of the lack of skilled farmers, spoilt seed brought from England, poor local soils, an unfamiliar climate and bad tools. Phillip insisted that food be shared between convicts and free settlers. The British Officers didn't like this, nor the fact that Phillip gave land to trustworthy convicts. But both actions meant that the colony survived, and they began an attitude of fairness that is still prized in Australia today.

Research task
Research the sorts of people who travelled on the 11 ships that made up the First Fleet. How many convicts (male and female), free settlers, crew, marines, officials and children were on board?

What effect did the First Fleet have on Australia's first peoples?

The arrival of the First Fleet immediately affected the Eora nation, the traditional Aboriginal owners of the Sydney area. Violence between settlers and the Eora people started as soon as the colony was set up. The Eora people, particularly the warrior Pemulwuy, fought the colonisers. This conflict was mainly over land and food.

Phillip was speared during a meeting with Eora at Manly in 1790, but he recovered and continued as the colony's first governor for two more years. He returned to England in 1792 with two Indigenous men: Bennelong, who later returned to Australia, and Yemmerrawannie, who died in England.

Thousands of Eora people died as a result of European diseases like smallpox.

What were the long-term effects of the First Fleet?

The First Fleet was the beginning of convict transportation to Australia and was followed by many other fleets of convict ships. When this ended in 1868, over 150,000 convicts had been transported to New South Wales and other Australian colonies. Most convicts stayed in Australia after serving their sentences, and some became well-known, important people within the Australian colonies.

Convict settlement continued to have devastating effects on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the decades after 1788. Thousands died in conflicts with settlers and from diseases, and many more suffered from the loss of cultural traditions and languages.

Read a longer version of this Defining Moment on the National Museum of Australia's website.

What did you learn?

1. Who were Australia's first convicts? Why were they transported to Australia?

2. How did Governor Arthur Phillip manage the colony of New South Wales?

3. What were the main ways Aboriginal people were affected by the arrival of Phillip and the First Fleet?

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The First Fleet arrives at Sydney Cove | Australia's Defining Moments Digital Classroom | National Museum of Australia

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The arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in January of 1788 marked the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia. The fleet was made up of 11 ships carrying convicts from Britain to Australia.

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https://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/history-5-first.html

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The First Fleet

Period Covered - 1st September 1786 to 30th June 1790

The Preparation

On 1st September, 1786, the British Government placed the first of a series of advertisements in the London The Morning Herald for the hiring of the required shipping. The offer was first taken up by William Richards Junior, a little-known Navy broker. Born in Dover in 1735, Richards was son of a tailor who, by the 1780s, was one of London's wealthier sons. He had business interests in America which appear to have commenced from a ship brokering business he established during the American Revolution. He lived on Queens Row, Walworth, and promoted himself as a 'prominent' shipbroker, mostly for the Navy.

No other tenders were received from merchants, indicating that London's commercial class was not excited by the new opportunity to explore and develop trade opportunities in the Pacific in spite of the bonus of having the outward voyages paid for by government. In time, 8this attitude was to change as, by 1789, Calvert and Co. agreed to in ship convicts to Australia and mounted half the Second Fleet and half the Third Fleet. Richards, who would be paid almost £54,000 for organising the First Fleet, wrote a wonderfully excited letter to William Pitt when forwarding his tender.

As a shipping enterprise, the First Fleet quickly lapsed into virtual chaos, due in no small part to opportunism, aggression, badly-directed energy, budgetary illogic and a lack of involvement by the British East India Company, which had the expertise to handle the task with ease had it chosen to assist in the project. As the Government had previously given the Company a monopoly on trade in the Far East, the enterprise could have been logically and profitably organised with the creation of a convict colony at New South Wales as a major element in an organised opening-up by Britain of new commercial and strategic opportunities in the Pacific.

By using more naval expertise than it did and the goodwill of sensible shipping contractors, the government could have created the perfect environment for and an excellent opportunity to create a successful new Pacific colony. Instead, jealousy, pomposity, protectionism and negativity on the part of the East India Company saw to it that this was not to be Alexander Dalrymple continued his opposition to the Botany Bay penal settlement. He found out about the scheme long before it became law, possibly through contacts at the Blackheath Golf Club, where he played. He believed it would invade the monopoly charter of the East India Company, so with the East India Company out of the equation, it was left to private merchants to supply the vessels for the first fleet. At the time, whaling was big business, and it is known that numerous companies involved in whaling had actively supported the exploration of the South Pacific, obviously with a view to setting up establishing business operations there. Three whaling investors, two being aldermen, placed ships in the First Fleet, though William Richards remained the main contractor.

The Form of Government for the New Colony

The task of managing the fledgling penal colony of New South Wales was assigned to Arthur Phillip, a little known naval captain engaged in survey work for the British Admiralty at the time of his appointment. Born in London on 11th October, 1738, Phillip, a laconic, retiring and even lonely man, was the son of the language teacher, Jakob Phillip, from Frankfurt, Germany. Phillip had begun his arduous apprenticeship at Greenwich Hospital, a training school for the sons of seamen. His training culminated in two years of service at sea under Captain Redhead on the Fortune. Phillip first saw action in May 1756 aboard HMS Buckingham against the French off Minorca. His at-sea military service continued until 1763 when Phillip, then a lieutenant, began 12 years of enforced retirement on half pay, during which time he worked his farm at Lyndhurst in Hampshire. Upon his new appointment, Phillip's salary was doubled to £1000.

During his enforced retirement, Phillip had sought and was granted permission to serve on a Portuguese ship during Portugal's war with Spain . He gained a wealth of experience at this time, his duties including the successful transportation from Lisbon to Brazil of some 400 convicts. This, his farming experience and the fact that a near neighbour was the Treasurer of the Navy, Sir George Rose, are widely believed to be the major contributing factors in his selection for the post of Governor of the colony of New South Wales.

Phillip had little to do with formulating the structure of management of the men and women of the new colony. This was the Secretary of State Nepean's responsibility and he tossed around a number of options, including a judicial system of government and the one which was finally adopted, a military government.

With an Act of Parliament thought necessary, a bill was drawn up in January 1787, by which officers of the army or navy could be empanelled. A procedure for granting land was developed and a surveyor to administer this was appointed (a retired German military man, Augustus Alt). Between October 1786 and April 1787, Phillip's commission was written, and more and more Phillip's role began to look like that of a day-to-day administrator. It read:

. . . We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage and experience in military affairs, do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales, extending from the northern cape or extremity of the coast called Cape York, in the latitude of 10 degrees 37' south, to the southern extremity of the said territory of New South Wales or South Cape, in the latitude 43 degrees 39' south, and all the country inland and westward as far as the one hundred and thirty-fifth degree of longitude, reckoning from the meridian of Greenwich, including all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean, within the latitude aforesaid of 10 degrees 37' south and 43 degrees 39' south, and of all towns, garrisons, castles, forts and all other fortifications or other military works, which now are or may be hereafter erected upon this said territory. You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of Governor in and over our said territory by doing and performing all and all manner of things thereunto belonging, and we do hereby strictly charge and command all our officers and soldiers who shall be employed within our said territory, and all others whom it may concern, to obey you as our Governor thereof; and you are to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as you shall receive from us, or any other your superior officer according to the rules and discipline of war, and likewise such orders and directions as we shall send you under our signet or sign manual, or by our High Treasurer or Commissioners of our Treasury, for the time being, or one of our Principal Secretaries of State, in pursuance of the trust we hereby repose in you.
Given at our Court at St, James's, the twelfth day of October 1786, in the twenty-sixth year of our reign.
By His Majesty's Command
SYDNEY.

Lord Sydney, now back in Government, had remained interested in the idea of a Botany Bay settlement, and was more willing to spend money on the project than other cabinet ministers. An old-fashioned Whig, he disliked the idea of convicts being made to be slaves of government and had voiced his opposition to the hulks when they were first introduced in 1776. Phillip on the other hand determined to regard the convicts as servants of the crown until their full terms had expired and expected to make numerous convicts independent of government control soon after the settlement had been established.
v Who owned the 'rights' to the convict's labour was another matter in need of settlement. With the First Fleet and subsequent convict shipping, the government paid for the transportation, temporarily assigning the 'properties' into the custody of the shipping contractors , their agents and ships' captains, during the period of transportation. In theory, at the destination, the Governor would receive the individually listed 'properties', verifying them against a list of names which contained information on the duration of each convict's sentence. Upon receipt of them, the Governor then had the right to exercise the labour of the convicts. Phillip, however, was not given information on the duration of all sentences, so the transportation of many such convicts was legally ineffectual. Needless to say, with no one there to argue the point, the plan continued and Phillip was left to sort out any problems as and when they arose. That the Government did not how many man-years of convict labour had been sent to NSW reflects the ad-hoc way the venture had been planned. This information should have been the basis for all planning, right down to the size of the food supply necessary for the colony, not to mention equipment needed.

The Ships of the First Fleet

Lady Penrhyn

(convict transport) - 333 tons. built on the Thames in 1786 for alderman Curtis and skippered by Master William Sever. 114 ft long and 31 ft at the beam, the Alexander was skippered by Master Duncan Sinclair. Her First Fleet voyage was her maiden voyage and after it she was bought by Wedderburns. Lady Penrhyn, after whom the ship was named, was the wife of Lord Penrhyn, who spent 30,000 pounds in 1790 in an unsuccessful attempt to control the port of Liverpool. Richard Pennant, Baron Penrhyn, was the chairman between 1777-1783 of a powerful lobby group of West Indies merchants and planters. Lady Penrhyn sailed with 101 female convicts. The crew strength is believed to have been 32. Also on board were around 11 marines and officials, including a stowaway. On 5th May 1788, the Lady Penrhyn returned to England in the company of Scarborough and Charlotte via China, where a cargo of goods was picked up to help cover the cost of the voyage. After returning to England, Lady Penrhyn was put on the London - Jamaica run for which she had been built. Lady Penrhyn was captured in 1811 in the West Indies.

Alexander

(convict transport) - 452 tons. She was the second largest ship in the fleet, a brig that had been built in Hull in 1783. She was chartered from William Walton & Co. for the trip to Australia. The crew strength for the voyage to Australia is not known, but given the size of the vessel, it is likely to have been around 40. The ship also carried around 26 marines to guard the convicts on board, along with officials for the colony. After its arrival at Sydney Cove, the Alexander remained in Sydney until the 14th July, when she sailed for England via Batavia under the command of Lieutenant John Shortland in the company of Borrowdale, Friendship and Prince of Wales. Little is known of her after her return journey. She disappeared from records in 1808.

Charlotte

(convict transport) - 335 tons. 105 ft long and 28 ft at the beam. Built on the Thames in 1784, she carried 88 male and 20 female convicts. The crew strength was around 30. Also on board were marines and officials, believed to number 27. On 5th May 1788, the Charlotte returned to England in the company of Scarborough and Lady Penrhyn via China, where a cargo of goods was picked up to help cover the cost of the voyage. Skippered by Master Thomas Gilbert, Charlotte's return to England saw her transferred to the London - Jamaica run until she was sold to a Quebec merchant in 1818 prior to being lost off the coast of Newfoundland that same year.

Memorial to HMS Sirius, Portsmouth, England, from which the First Fleet sailed

Sirius

(man-o'-war) - 612 tons. Skippered by Captain John Hunter. The flagship of the First Fleet, the Sirius was built in 1780. She was bought by the Navy, refitted and re-named HMS Berwick in 1781. In 1786 she was badly burnt in a fire, rebuilt and renamed 'Sirius'. She carried 20 guns and had a ship's compliment of around 180 men. Sirius remained as at Sydney until October 1788 when she sailed to the Cape of Good Hope to obtain food supplies for the starving colony. After returning to Sydney she was wrecked off Norfolk Island on 14th April, 1790. The anchor of the Sirius is on public display in Macquarie Square, Sydney.

Scarborough

(convict transport) - 430 tons. Built in Scarborough in 1782 and named after her town of origin. Sailed with both 1st and 2nd fleets. The crew strength was around 35. Also on board were around 25 marines and officials. Being a large vessel, the Scarborough carried 208 male convicts. On 5th May 1788, the Scarborough returned to England in the company of Charlotte and Lady Penrhyn via China, where a cargo of goods was picked up to help cover the cost of the voyage. She came back to Port Jackson with more convicts as part of the Second fleet. Apart from the Sirius and Supply, she was the only other ship from the first fleet to return to Australian waters. She was skippered by Master Kohn Marshall.

Friendship

(convict transport) - 278 tons. A brig built in Scarborough in 1784. Carried 21 male and 21 female convicts. The crew strength was around 20. Some 33 marines and officials were also on board. At 75 feet in length, she was one of the light we ight ships of the fleet and was skippered by Master Francis Walton. After its arrival at Sydney Cove, the Friendship remained in Sydney until the 14th July, when she sailed for England via Batavia in the company of Borrowdale, Alexander and Prince of Wales. During the return voyage to England, scurvy was so rife there was insufficient crew to man her and she was subsequently scuttled in the straights of Macassar. The survivors were transferred to the Alexander.

Prince of Wales

(convict transport) - 350(?) tons. Built on the Thames in 1786, she was the 2nd largest ship in the fleet. The crew strength was around 25. Also on board were around 44 marines and officials. This ship carried only one male convict and 49 female convicts. Prince of Wales was skippered by Master John Mason. After its arrival at Sydney Cove, the prince of Wales remained in Sydney until the 14th July, when she sailed for England via Batavia in the company of Borrowdale, Friendship and Alexander. After her return voyage to England, she operated in English waters until 1797 when her registration was transferred to Fort Royal, Martinique, after which little is known.

Borrowdale

(Supplies, equipment and livestock) - 375 tons, 75 ft long, beam 22ft. Built in 1788 at Sunderland.Skippered by Master Readthorn Hobson, the Borrowdale had a crew strength of around 24. The Borrowdale is not known to have carried any convicts or other passengers. She is believed to have been named after the supplier of hats and female clothing for the first fleet. After its arrival at Sydney Cove, the Borrowdale remained in Sydney until the 14th July, when she sailed for England via Batavia in the company of Alexander, Friendship and Prince of Wales. Very little is known about this ship and it disappeared from the records after the return voyage to Engl and.

Fishburn

(Supplies, equipment and livestock) - 378 tons. Built in 1780 in Whitby. She had a crew of around 30 and was skippered by Master Robert Brown. It is not known to have carried any convicts or other passengers. The Fishburn, in the company of the Golden Grove, left Port Jackson for England on 19 November, 1788. Like the other store ships, The Fishburn disappeared from all records after returning to England from her epic voyage.

Golden Grove

(Supplies, equipment and livestock) - 331 tons. Built in 1780 in Whitby. She had a crew of around 20 and was skippered by Master Sharp. It is believed to have not carried any convicts, but did carry other officials for the colony. This ship had the distinction of carrying the Reverend Richard Johnson - the first chaplain to the colony - and his wife. The Golden Grove, in the company of the Fishburn , left Port Jackson for England on 19 November, 1788.After returning to England to work the London - Jamaica run, the Golde dn Grove disappeared from records after 1804.

Supply

(armed tender) - 670 tons. The smallest vessel of the fleet (70 feet long), the Supply arrived first. Her crew consisted of 42 men and she also carried 12 marines and officials. Skippered by Captain Henry Bull, Supply led the fleet most of the way because of her speed. Little is known of this brig's early history, but it is believed she was built in America in 1759 and was commissioned by the Admiralty in October 1786. After her first fleet voyage, the Supply returned to England where she was renamed Thomas & Nancy. Records indicate she carried coal on the Thames until around 1806.

The bay in Portsmouth, England, from which the First Fleet sailed

The Departure

"... at 4am fired gun and made the signal to weigh, weigh'd and made sail, in company with the Hyaena frigate Supply armed with tender, six transports and three store ships, at 9 fired a gun and made the sign'l for the convoy to make more sail. With thee words the logbook of HMS Sirius recorded the departure of what we know today as The First Fleet. The eleven ships of the fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip left Portsmouth, England early on Sunday 13th May 1787 bound for a virtually unknown shore eight months and half a world away. The escort vessel, HMS Hyaena stayed with the fleet until it was clear of the English channel and into open waters.

3 June 1787: Arrival at Teneriffe in the Canary Islands three weeks after leaving England. Fresh water and vegetables were taken on at Santa Cruz on Teneriffe, the first port of call. Marine Captain Watkin Tench recorded: "During our short stay we had every day some fresh proof of his Excellency's esteem and attention, and had the honour of dining with him, in a style of equal elegance and splendor".

2 August, 1787: Arrival at Rio de Janeiro. Captain Arthur Phillip recorded: "Stormy seas were succeeded by warm weather and favourable winds. Land was sighted on 2 August 1787, and by 6 August the even ships in the Fleet were anchored in the harbour at Rio de Janeiro".

13 October 1787: Arrival at the Cape of Good Hope. By dark all eleven ships were anchored in Table Bay. Whilst in port, provisions were loaded. Corn was in short supply, but cattle and other supplies were found to be plentiful, and taken on board. The convicts were treated to the luxury of fresh meat and vegetables. On 12 November 1787 the Fleet set sail for their final destination, Botany Bay.

18 January 1788: arrival of Supply at Botany Bay.

The Move From Botany Bay to Sydney Cove

19th January 1788, the day on which the all the ships of the First Fleet came to anchor in Botany Bay, would have been the day on which Governor Arthur Phillip founded the colony of New South Wales at Botany Bay were it not for the fact that what he saw there was quite different to what Joseph Banks had described Botany Bay as being. Phillip found few trees, the meadows Banks had waxed lyrical about were in fact marshlands, the vegetation of which was dry and had turned brown under the hot summer sun. The river to the north of the bay (Cooks River) was swampy and uninviting, and it was Phillip's view that an alternate site had to be found and found quickly. He decided to disregard his instructions and sail north in search of a more suitable site at either Broken Bay or Port Jackson, which Cook had not entered, but had marked on his map as being a safe harbour. Phillip found Port Jackson to be '... one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in perfect security.'

He spent the best part of a day traversing the harbour's southern shore before selecting what he named Sydney Cove as the site for the new colony. It was almost a case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Nestled between two rocky headlands, it provided a safe anchorage for his ships with deep water close to the eastern shore. The cove had a small stream flowing into it and a forest of large trees covering the hillside that were sufficiently far apart to allow easy access on foot. The size of the trees and the lush undergrowth indicated to Philip that the soil was fertile and the new colony would have plenty of timber for fuel and building. He could not have been further from the truth. The trees were to prove almost impossible to chop down, within a year the gardens he would establish there would fail and a few years hence the stream would deteriorate into a string of stagnent pools.

Had he sailed around just one more headland, he would have discov ered a far more suitable place to bring 'a thousand sail of the line (to) ride in perfect security, the giant harbour within a harbour that is Walsh Bay, Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour, Johnstons Bay, Blackwattle Bay, Rozelle Bay and White Bay. Within a generation, the settlement Phillip was about to establish would outgrow Sydney Cove as its port and would re-establish the majority of its maritime activities in these large sheltered bays beyond Sydney Town. Though its ability to grow crops would have been on a par with Sydney Cove, Cockle Bay also had a stream to provide fresh water, but had the added advantage of ample clay to allow the immediate production of bricks, something the sandy valley behind Sydney Cove lacked. Without the benefit of hindsight, Phillip made his choice, went ashore, raised the King's colours and claimed the land for Britain - Cook had already done this some 18 years previous, but on this occasion, the western boundary of New South Wales was extended beyond Cook's claim, doubling the size of the area of British sovereignty. Phillip signaled the rest of the fleet to enter the harbour and over the course of the next week, the 777 convicts and convicts' children, 252 Marines, 20 officers and 443 seamen were brought ashore at Cattle Point (later Bennelong Point) to start their new life in the Antipodes.

Founding of the Colony of New South Wales, 1788

A New Start For The Convicts

The majority of the British parliamentarians who passed the laws which brought the penal colony at Sydney Cove into being had seen it as nothing more than an 'out of the way' repository for England's unwanted criminals and a solution to a problem that otherwise wasn't going to go away. But many supporters in the British community at large saw the idea of a penal colony in New South Wales from a different perspective. Those in church circles, joined by the likes of William Wilberforce who by this time had entered parlia ment and was actively lobbying for social reform, saw the act of transportation to New South Wales as a chance to bring freedom of sorts to these poor wretches and give them a far better chance to make something of their lives than that facing them in Britain's penal system.

The common belief in the middle and upper classes was 'once a criminal, always a criminal'. Criminal activity was believed to be genetic, a state of being one is born with that no amount of reformation can change. A new line of thought, based on Christian principals of forgiveness, salvation and the restoration of hope, which were enjoying a revival among the working class of England at the time, said that, given the right environment and encouragement, law breakers could become law-abiding citizens. Its proponents believed that the transportees' involvement in the creation of a new home and a new environment fo pr themselves would instill the convicts with new hope and a self respect that they would otherwise never experience. They looked to the future and a day when these people would no longer be convicts but free men with families, homes and jobs. They has the foresight to see that irrespective of what the British Government thought or did, the days of the settlement on Sydney Cove as a convict outpost would always be numbered, and its growth into a thriving community such as the American colonies had become was inevitable. The man entrusted with the task of teaching the Christian principles of salvation, hope, love and forgiveness to the convicts was Rev. Richard Johnson, a 31-year old Evangelical Anglican minister. Johnson had been carefully selected by a group of influential Christian leaders including Wilberforce and Rev. John Newton, a reformed slave trader and the au mthor of the hymn 'Amazing Grace'. Newton had been strongly influenced by the preaching of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement.

Johnson (1753-1827), born in Welton, Yorkshire, had taken his holy orders in 1786, the year he was appointed chaplain to the settlement at New South Wales. He arrived on HMS Sirius, accompanied by his wife, Mary (Burton), who he had married on 4th December, 1786. Johnson was already a successful farmer, having growing citrus fruits, grapes, vegetables, wheat, barley and tobacco on his own land. Johnson was a man with a deep sense of calling. Aware that the First Fleet organisers had only included one solitary prayer book in the list of provisions for the new colony, he ensured there was no shortage of Christian reading material by including in his personal baggage 100 Bibles, 400 Testaments and 500 Psalters, 10 ]0 Osterwald's 'Necessity for Reading the Scriptures', 25 'Plain Exhortations to Prisoners', 200 'Sermon on the Mount', 200 'Exercises Against Lying', 50 Woodward's 'Caution to Swearers' and 200 'Christian Soldiers'. These were distributed by Johnson on the occasion of the first church service in Australia. In his tenth year as Colonial Chaplain Johnson applied for leave for health reasons. He finally left for England on the Buffalo in 1800, but would never return. As a sign of respect to the Aborigines, to whom he showed great compassion, Johnson gave his daughter who was born in New South Wales an aboriginal name, Milbah.

Gov. Phillip had decreed that the whole colony should attend the first service which was held in a clearing on Sunday, 3rd February 1788 near where the head office of Westpac Banking Corporation stands in George Street. Standing under a tree in circumstances similar to Jesus of Biblical times when He gave the Sermon on the Mount, Johnson delivered his message based on Psalm 116 verse 12: 'What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?' At first it would seem an odd scripture around which to base an address to a group of convicts who had just been dumped unceremoniously in a hot, inhospitable land on the other side of the world. But as Johnson read on, the appropriateness of the words became clearer in the message of hope and salvation he proclaimed: 'The cords of death entangle me ... I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: 'O Lord save me!' For you, O Lord have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.' Johnson reminded his convict audience that they had been sav ed from the death-ridden prisons of Britain, and that in spite of the tears and heartache they were all feeling, they had been given the chance of a new life in a new land and should seize the opportunity before them. He read on: 'How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord'.

In the main, Johnson's sermon fell on deaf ears. His lot was not to be an easy one. Though Phillip may have privately supported the principles Johnson taught, he was reluctant to be seen by those under his authority as supportve of the chaplain's strong evangelical stance. Many of the military were already proving to be a handful by openly defying Phillip's authority. Johnson was left very much to his own devices to the point where he could not even get official assistance in the construction of a church. He eventually built it himself with convict help out of his own money at a cost of 67 pounds, 12 shillings and 11 pence halfpenny. Richard Johnson Square on the corner of Bligh and Hunter Streets marks the spot where it stood for four years until it was burned down by a group of convicts who rebelled against being forced to attend services there. Being Chaplain to the colony, Johnson's official duties included 'the appropriate observance of religion and good order among the inhabitants and to take steps for the due celebration of public worship' as circumstances would permit. This included the reading of the Book of Common Prayer to the colonials every Sunday and Holy Day in both Sydney and Parramatta. Though attendance by all convicts was compulsory, Johnson rarely had a full congregation. His efforts were hampered by soldiers who not only opposed his views and resented being forced to attend the services, they often walked out mid way through his sermons and barred convicts who wanted to attend church from entering.

Johnson's duties included recording birth, deaths and marriages in the colony. The first child he baptised was William Tilley on the voyage out aboard Lady Penrhyn on 20th April 1787. The first burial was James Bradley on board the "Alexander" on 3rd February 1787, and the first marriage was between William Parr and Mary MacCormick, performed on the site of his church on 10th February 1788. Within the first month of settlement, he had officiated at 14 weddings. In the first 5 years he conducted 226 baptisms, 220 marriages and 851 burials. Among his other duties were executing laws against Sabbath breaking, swearing, stealing and profanity. He loathed the times when his duties required him to act as magistrate or to officiate at hangings, as on these occasions he was seen by the convicts as being part of the establishment ruling over them rather than the friend helping them, something he so much desired to be.

The Township of Albion

In spite of the odds stacked against him, Governor Phillip was a forward thinking person who very much shared the belief that Sydney Cove's days as a convict outpost were numbered and it would be only a matter of time before it grew into a thriving community. From the time he first stepped ashore, every act was performed with this in mind and every decision made was a step towards ensuring it happened. The Governors who immediately followed Phillip had other things on their minds and none shared his vision until the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie in 1810 when Sydney would again come under the influence of a Governor who saw the potential of the settlement as a community rather than a prison and was prepared to take on the powers that be to make sure it was realised.

Phillip's far-sighted dream for the penal colony was documented in his 'Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, the official account of the founding of the colony of New South Wales which he wrote for the Colonial Secretary Lord Sydney in July 1788'. To Phillip, the creation of a town for the residents to live in and take pride in as their home as opposed to a prison to stop them escaping was his primary goal. 'The aim,' he wrote, 'is to preserve a kind of uniformity in the buildings, prevent narrow streets and exclude many inconveniences which a rapid increase of inhabitants might otherwise occasion hereafter'. He recommended the name Albion for the settlement - Sydney at that time was only the name of the cove on which the settlement had been established. Albion was the old Roman name for England because the sandstone heads of Port Jackson reminded him of the white chalk cliffs seen when approaching England. He planned to officially bequeath the name Albion at a ceremony to commemorate the laying of the first stone of his new government house, on the King s birthday, 4th June 1788. But the ceremony was postponed, and Phillip never got around to the naming.

The streets of Albion were to be a uniform 200 ft wide to allow for the 'proper circulation of air' and that building allotments be of a standard 60 by 150 feet. Phillip's suggested name was never adopted and the name of the cove around which the settlement grew up came into use more by a 6ccident than by design as the name of the settlement. Augustus Alt, selected before the First Fleet sailed as the colony's first Surveyor General, was assigned an assistant, Lieutenant Dawes, and was given the task of laying out the town in accordance with Phillip's plan. It incorporated a town centre set in a grid pattern on the western hillside above where the tank stream entered the cove. Alt's plan of Sydney Cove dated July 1788 and drawn by Dawes shows a main street running in a south-easterly direction from the eastern shoreline of Sydney Cove where the Tank Stream entered the cove, to the top of the rise where York and Jamison Streets now meet. This street, running through the centre of the grid, was to be a grand avenue which when looked down would give a panoramic view across the waters of Sydney Cove to Bennelong Point. What a majestic sight that would have been today had Phillip's plans been implemented.

Due no doubt to more pressing tasks placed on Phillip's shoulders such as the establishment of order in what was little more than a bush camp, not to mention the lack of manpower, most of Phillip's ideas never got beyond the planning stage. Apart from Lang Street, which has the honour of being the oldest (and first) street in Sydney, and for that matter Australia, none of the streets on Alt's map eventuated. Instead, a rough path trodden down by convicts taking water from the stream to the hospital became the colony's main thoroughfare, and after a succession of name changes, widenin gs, straightenings and modifications, became George Street.

A walkway which lead from the soldiers' barracks to a small bridge across the stream continued up the hill on the other bank in front of the government tents and huts to the top of the next ridge. It became Bridge Street. The area set aside by Phillip for government offices on its southern side is still occupied by Government buildings today. Phillip also reserved a large area beyond the ridge to the east of the settlement as a common. This area remained set aside but undeveloped until the arrival of Governor Macquarie who, during his tenure, established The Domain, The Botanical Gardens, Hyde Park and Moore Park. All are part of the land that had been allocat ed for public space by Phillip in 1788.

Map of Sydney Cove, 1788

Building Sydney

The first thing Phillip did after bringing the men ashore was to organise the building of shelters and the planting of vegetables and cereal crops. He quickly found out that this was not going to be an easy task. The few axes that they brought with them were quickly blunted as their blades hit the hard timber of the local trees with a deadening thud. The wood was found to be quite unsuitable for building construction. Furthermore, there were only a handful of people who had any idea about building. Those responsible for organising the First Fleet had given little thought to the type of manpower and the kinds of tools they would need to be able to erect a settlement in the Australian bush.

Of the 1,530 people in the First Fleet, there were just a handful of experienced carpenters, one stonemason, one brickmaker, three plasterers and five bricklayers. The majority of the rest of the convicts were city dwellers who knew nothing of farming or building construction. There were no architects, no designers, no surveyors. Lieutenant William Dawes had learnt a little about building and engineering from his father in Portsmouth, England, and gave what assistance he could. Parramatta's town centre, based on the British symmetrical grid pattern in which streets ran at right angles to each other, was drawn by Dawes, and is the only sur Gviving legacy of his contribution towards the creation of the new colony. Because of the lack of experienced manpower, the buildings constructed in the settlement's formative years were rudimentary in design and built for functionality rather than architectural detail. The majority started to collapse before they were completed and had to be replaced once people with skills in construction entered the work force.

The first dwellings were tents brought out from England that were strung between the trees in an area roughly bounded by Loftus Street, Bridge Street, Grosvenor Street, Gloucester Street and Argyle Street. A prefabricated building of timber and oiled canvas which the first fleeters brought with them was erected on a rise beyond the east eastern bank of the stream. It became a temporary government house, but it was neither wind or water proof. Mud daub huts quickly replaced the tents. The huts were rudimentary in design and construction, and in all probability the campsites of the local aboriginal tribes would have given them a few hints as to the available materials and how best to utilise them had they bothered to observe them. The straight, long trunks of cabbage tree palms, found in abundance in the valleys beyond the colony, were cut and split into lengths for wall panels. These were attached to timber frames made from locally cut she-oak. Mud was daubed over the panels to keep out the wind and rain. Gangs of convicts were assigned to the gathering of reeds from nearby Rushcutters Bay (hence its name) which were used in the creation of thatched roofs, and the cutting of timber, though shingles made from she-oak were later substituted. Most huts were single room dwellings, rectangular in shape, between three to five metres square.

When clay deposits to the south of Sydney Cove were discovered, a rudimentary brickworks was established and the construction of brick buildings commenced. Mortar for the bricks was made from a crushed oyster shell mixture which was in plentiful supply. Shell fish were an integral part of the local Aboriginal's diet, and the mounds of discarded oyster shells left at various sites around the harbour including Bennelong Point became an important resource. When the shell deposits ran out, lime mortar made by fellow convicts at the Norfolk Island penal settlement replaced the local product.

Brickfields, in the vicinity of Haymarket, is the name given to the locality where the first clay deposits were found and brickmaking was commenced during the first months of colonial settlement. A violent storm hit Brickfields Hill in August 1788. In the storm a kiln collapsed o, thousands of half dried bricks were destroyed and the huts of the Brickfields Hill community disintegrated. Brickfields has the distinction of being the first area away from the main cove settlement to be cleared and developed. The track beaten through the bush from Sydney Cove to Brickfields became George Street. Hay and Quay Streets follow the path of the satellite settlement's first water supply, a small creek which flowed into Long Bay (later known as Cockle Bay) from marshes which would eventually be drained and cleared to make way for Central Railway Station. It was from Brickfield that Australia's first major cross country thoroughfare, Parramatta Road, was to make its way to Rose Hill (later called by its Aboriginal name, Parramatta), the colony's first inland settlement.

While the soft sandstone of the Sydney basin was a natural canvas for the art of the native population, to the new settlers it was an ideal raw material for the construction of buildings, and in abundant supply. The first fleet's lone stonemason, Samuel Peyton, a Londoner who was transported for larceny, was put to work training a number of unskilled convict labourers in his craft. He established the first quarry on what was to be known as Bennelong Point, and over a period of some 40 years, the hillside was slowly chiselled away to create the sheer rock face that lines the eastern shore of Sydney Cove today. When more stonemasons arrived with the second fleet, quarries were established in Kent Street in The Rocks, on George Street near Cornwall Lane and later at Cockle Bay. By the 1860s, Pyrmont would become the main source of sandstone for Sydney and whilst its quarries left deep scars on the area's landscape, its stone was used to create some of Sydney's finest 19th century buildings.

Parramatta settlement

Gov. Phillip was quick to establish law and order in the fledgling colony. On 7th February, 1788, he mustered the colony to hear Judge Advocate Geoege Collins read Phillip's commission and letters and documents pertaining to the establishment of criminal and civil courts. The colony's first criminal court sat on 11th February, with Collins presiding and 3 naval officers and 3 marines acting as members. Three convicts were brought to trial and all were found guilty. One received 200 lashes for hitting a marine; one received 50 lashes for stealing some firewood; the third was put in irons and marooned on Pinchgut Island in Sydney Harbour for a week for stealing bread.

The first sitting of the Court of Civil Jurisdiction (the Civil Court) took place on 1st July 1788 when convicts Henry Kable and his wife were awarded 20 in damages from Duncan Sinclair, the master of the convict transport Alexander, who was held reponsible for their not receiving clothing belonging to them. This court was the main tribunal for dealing with civil claims until 1814 when a Supreme Court was established to deal with civil matters only. The Court of Civil Jurisdiction was empowered to deal with such matters as disputes over the ownership of land, breach of contract, trespasses of the person, nuisance, defamation, negligence, wills, probate and intestate administration. No jury was allowed and a judge advocate, with two "fit and proper persons" appointed by the governor, adjudicated.

The first farms of Sydney

During the colony's first year, attempts to grow cereal crops were made at various locations around Sydney but most of these plants withered and died, having being planted in the middle of a hot, humid Sydney summer. Records indicate the first prod Fuce garden was planted on Garden Island, which gave the island its name. Here, the crew of HMS Sirius planted seeds to grow fruit and vegetables so that they would become self sufficient and not have to draw on the limited suppliess brought out with the First Fleet. Crews of the other ships are believed to have established similar gardens for themselves at other locations at this time though there is no record of how successful they were.

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Period Covered - 1st September 1786 to 30th June 1790 The Preparation On 1st September, 1786, the British Government placed the first of a series of advertisements in the London The Morning Herald for the hiring of the required shipping. The offer was first taken up by William Richards Junior, a little-known Navy broker.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pw9cpdYTnw

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13th May 1787: The First Fleet departs for Australia

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https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/first-fleet-sets-sail-australia

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On May 13, 1787, a group of over 1,400 people in 11 ships set sail from Portsmouth, England. Their destination was a vaguely described bay in the continent of Australia, newly discovered to Europeans. In a stunning feat of planning and navigation, nearly all of the voyagers survived and arrived in Botany Bay several months later.

A wide variety of people made up this legendary "First Fleet." Military and government officials, along with their wives and children, led the group. Sailors, cooks, masons, and other workers hoped to establish new lives in the new colony.

Perhaps most famously, the First Fleet included more than 700 convicts. The settlement at Botany Bay was intended to be a penal colony. The convicts of the First Fleet included both men and women. Most were British, but a few were American, French, and even African. Their crimes ranged from theft to assault. Most convicts were sentenced to seven years' "transportation" (the term for the sending of prisoners to a usually far-off penal colony).

The First Fleet departed from Portsmouth, then briefly docked in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The ships then crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where they took on huge stores of supplies. Then the fleet sailed back across the Atlantic to Cape Town, South Africa, where they took on even more food, including livestock. The main portion of the journey was across the entire Indian Ocean, from Cape Town to Botany Bay-they traveled about 24,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) throughout the entire journey.

Botany Bay was not as hospitable as the group had hoped. The bay was shallow, there was not a large supply of freshwater, and the land was not fertile. Nearby, however, officers of the First Fleet discovered a beautiful harbor with all those qualities. They named it after the British Home Secretary, Lord Sydney. The day the First Fleet discovered Sydney Harbor is celebrated as Australia's national holiday, Australia Day.

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May 13, 1787 CE: 'First Fleet' Sets Sail for Australia | National Geographic Society

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On May 13, 1787, a group of over 1,400 people in 11 ships set sail from Portsmouth, England. Their destination was a vaguely described bay in the continent of Australia, newly discovered to Europeans. In a stunning feat of planning and navigation, nearly all of the voyagers survived and arrived in Botany Bay several months later.

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/katie-mitchell-brings-beauty-and-the-beast-to-the-national-8pl22hnz3tr?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0uKGvcvH_AIVxrHtCh1x-wANEAMYASAAEgK2f_D_BwE

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At 8am, the theatre director Katie Mitchell was daubing leaf-green paint on to her daughter's face. Five-year-old Edie was to play a narrating tree in the school production about Postman Bear. Mitchell watched a run-through - "It was very, very beautiful" - before arriving at the National Theatre to oversee a rehearsal of her own show, Beauty and the Beast.

Motherhood has hardly slowed Mitchell down: when she directed her adaptation of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she breastfed Edie, then a baby, during rehearsals. For 20 years she has been overhauling the classics: stripping back Chekhov's The Seagull in 2006 to revive its original shock value; turning The Waves, a novel with no dialogue and no action, into a multimedia production; and

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Katie Mitchell brings Beauty and the Beast to the National

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At 8am, the theatre director Katie Mitchell was daubing leaf-green paint on to her daughter's face. Five-year-old Edie was to play a narrating tree in the school production about Postman Bear. Mitchell watched a run-through - "It was very, very beautiful" - before arriving at the National Theatre to oversee a rehearsal of her own show, Beauty and the Beast.

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http://www.theheroinecollective.com/katie-mitchell/

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

She was born in Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King's Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.

In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.

Her numerous theatre credits include 2071 and Night Songs for the Royal Court, The Cherry Orchard for the Young Vic, The Trial of Ubu for Hampstead Theatre, Henry VI Part III (to date her only Shakespeare production) for the RSC and A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Seagull at the National Theatre. She has also directed opera, working with the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. An exponent of Stanislavski techniques and naturalism, her style was strongly influenced by the time she spent working in Eastern Europe early in her career. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.

Mitchell's work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television with work including The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Turn of the Screw. In 2011, together with video maker, Leo Warner, Mitchell devised an immersive video installation called Five Truths for the Victoria and Albert Museum which explored the nature of truth in theatrical production.

She has also experimented with incorporating video into live theatre. Over the past decade Mitchell has created works in which performers use and manipulate cameras to project images onto screens. Her first foray into multi-media work such as this was Waves, a stage version of Virginia Woolf's novel for the National Theatre, in 2006. More recently she employed these techniques in her 2013 production of Miss Julie for Berlin's Schaubühne Theatre to great critical acclaim.

In recent years Mitchell has offered British audiences little opportunity to see her work. Instead she has concentrated on directing what have been described as some of her most ambitious productions in Continental Europe. She has worked on a variety of projects, mostly in Germany and France, including an opera based on Neil Gaiman's story Coraline, a stage version of two novels by Romanian Nobel laureate, Herta Müller, and a feminist retelling of Hamlet.

Is her recent distancing from British theatre a result of the vehement reactions her work has provoked here? Possibly not. But she has often attracted harsh criticism not only for the work itself but also for the methods she employs, chiefly the way in which she takes total artistic control over every single aspect of the production. This control also extends to the script and the approach has left Mitchell facing accusations of having a disregard for the text.

However, it is also precisely this individuality, this intense and visionary directorial style, which inspires such admiration and praise for her art. Mitchell is seen in many quarters of the industry as a highly skilful auteur whose painstaking hard work, attention to minute detail and willingness to take huge risks has created some incredibly beautiful and unique productions. She has even been described by her champions as Britain's greatest living theatre director and in 2009, she was awarded an OBE for her services to drama.

Whether critic or devotee, no one can deny the tremendous influence and impact Mitchell has had on contemporary theatre. "I don't believe in art for art's sake," she says. "That leads to vanity. The fundamental question one should ask oneself is 'What is my place of responsibility in the world community?'"

©The Heroine Collective 2015 - Present, All Rights Reserved.

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BIOGRAPHY: Katie Mitchell - Theatre Director - The Heroine Collective

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

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https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/sites/default/files/katie_mitchell_masterclass_-_dtc_notes.pdf

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Making theatre, for everyone. Find out what's on near you - In theatres, In cinemas, or online.

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jan/14/british-theatre-queen-exile-katie-mitchell

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atie Mitchell provokes strong reactions. Some think of her as a vandal, ripping apart classic texts and distorting them to her own dubious purpose. Others consider her to be the most important British director of theatre and opera at work today - indeed, among the greatest in the world. Her critics characterise her as high-minded and humourless, a kind of hatchet-faced governess intent on feeding her audiences with the improving and bleak. Others, though, talk about her gentleness, empathy and swiftness to burst into a joyous and slightly dirty laugh. One theatre professional told me that some agents only reluctantly put forward actors for Mitchell's productions because of her fearsome reputation; and yet there are actors who have worked with her for 30 years.

But if Mitchell is indeed Britain's greatest living theatre director, audiences in this country have not had many chances in recent years to see her most ambitious work. In 2015, she did not open a single production in the UK. Instead, Mitchell has been largely directing in Germany and France, crisscrossing the continent by train, always working on five or six projects at once: the Handel opera Alcina, a version of Stanisław Lem's novel Solaris, a production of Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor, another of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, a theatre version of two novels by the Romanian Nobel laureate Herta Müller, a new opera based on Neil Gaiman's story Coraline, an adaptation of a French novel (she was agonising over whether to choose Duras, Yourcenar or de Beauvoir) and a feminist rewriting of Hamlet seen from the point of view of Ophelia's bedroom. (Somewhat outrageously for a British director, Mitchell has only ever directed one Shakespeare play and has no intention of ever doing so again.)

When occasionally she comes to a pause in London, Mitchell works in a featureless room up a narrow, low-ceilinged staircase in a row of old warehouses near Elephant and Castle. Her friend and fellow director, Richard Jones, once described her to me as "Edwardian" - and there is something starched and straight-spined in her bearing, an impression that is amplified by the precision and care with which she speaks, and her severity of dress. When I visited her at the studio on a balmy day in the spring of 2015, she was wearing plain black lace-ups, black culottes and a black T-shirt, and the only colour about her was her blue eyes. She projects a sense of zeal and focusthat can make one's own ways feel casual and slipshod. But there is no froideur about her, nor indeed any braggadocio.

Mitchell arouses criticism in Britain chiefly through the manner in which she takes complete artistic control of every aspect of the work, including the script - assuming the mantle of an auteur. Her speciality, the Telegraph's critic once wrote, "is smashing up the classics". Michael Billington, the Guardian's critic, once accused her of "director's theatre at its most indulgent". (The phrase comes from the German Regietheater - and "director's theatre" is considered an especially Germanic affliction.) He told me that while he admires Mitchell's seriousness of purpose, her "delightful" manner and some of her work, he strongly resists her "placing herself above the text". The problem with director-dominated productions, he argued, was that the experience of seeing them became all about "what Katie did next" rather than about the expression of the ideas of the writer. He added: "I believe that the director is there to realise the author's intentions with the best performers available."

When Mitchell talked about the reaction, in 2006, to her production for the National Theatre of The Seagull, the one that got her labelled a "vandal" - some felt that the text had been changed so much that it could no longer be thought of as Chekhov at all - she seemed a little wistful and self-searching. There was a feeling of having been misunderstood. "To make a text written however many hundred years ago live now in a way that to a director is satisfactory - sometimes cutting can be a way of doing that, or making certain dramaturgical choices. It's not so culturally normal to do that in Britain, but it's culturally normal in Holland or Germany," she said. "A lot of very careful thought went into understanding the material Chekhov had written; there were hours of labour, very seriously intended. It is very difficult when there is a feeling that a travesty has been created when you have handled it so carefully. That wasn't what one was aiming to do. But I wonder if that says more about those who said it than it does me?"

What enrages some British critics is precisely what many others admire about Mitchell: the fact that she stamps such a strong authorial mark on her work, that her style is as recognisable as Van Gogh's or Picasso's. "Katie dares to bring a text on stage in a very personal way. You could put me in a theatre and ask me, 'Who has done this?', and I would immediately say, 'Katie Mitchell'," said Ivo van Hove, the revered artistic director of the Dutch theatre company Toneelgroep Amsterdam. "There is a personality behind the work. It is not middle-of-the-road theatre, well done." Benedict Cumberbatch, who acted in her production of Martin Crimp's The City at the Royal Court in 2008, told me Mitchell was "a real European master craftswoman: an auteur who takes risks and continually creates beautiful work".

"She is a zealot," Richard Jones said. "She doesn't do generically imagined productions - and there are a lot of generic directors about. The British in particular want sentiment, and so do a lot of actors. She just doesn't do that. She doesn't render pulsating masterpieces into Downton Abbey. She's much more important than anyone else, and I don't think people get that."

What, precisely, does a theatre director do? It is hard for audiences to know: after all, she departs the scene at just the point that the public are invited into the room. The director's job, seen at its broadest, is to create an intellectual and imaginative framework for the action of the play. The text, the design, the lighting, the sound, the music - and the acting - all play their roles in creating this world. David Lan, the artistic director of the Young Vic theatre in London, once told me: "The art of directing is to make actors do exactly what you want - while making them think that they came up with it themselves." But there are as many ways of being a director as there are directors. Mitchell has herself written a book about the job. In its foreword, Sir Nicholas Hytner, then the artistic director of the National Theatre, observed: "In the British theatre, most directors become directors by saying, 'I am a director!' and hoping that someone will believe them."

There are many ways of being a director, but there is no doubting when one is in the presence of a work by Katie Mitchell. "When Dante was writing the Inferno, it was said that his pages were charred," Lan said. "I don't know whether Katie's scripts are singed, but they should be." Dark material is a hallmark of Mitchell's productions, as if she wants to lead us to the ghastly depths of human behaviour and force us to understand it: the idea of her directing a comedy is as unthinkable as her directing a Broadway show.

Her actors convey a sense of minutely observed, psychologically accurate naturalism. In her shows, actors do not declaim: if they are anxious or frightened, they stumble anxiously or fearfully over their words, to the detriment, sometimes, of audibility. That fear or anxiety, too, is strongly embodied: physical language does much of the work. Mitchell's actors never look out beyond the stage to address the audience directly, for that would be to suggest that the theatrical illusion is not complete. The lighting is also naturalistic, to the detriment, sometimes, of visibility. She takes pleasure in a certain kind of set: a slightly dilapidated 19th-century interior, often designed by Vicki Mortimer, with whom she has worked for three decades. She tends to choose plays that happen in one place, over a fixed period, and so scene changes are the exception rather than the rule. Watching, it is as if one is spying on real life as it unfolds in real time.

Over the past decade, Mitchell has also developed an entirely new way of working. In parallel with her naturalistic productions, she has collaborated with the film-maker Leo Warner to create works in which performers manipulate cameras and props so that images (often extreme close-ups) are projected on to a screen. Describing her multimedia production of Strindberg's Miss Julie for the Schaubühne in Berlin, the critic Andrew Haydon - who has also written about Mitchell for academic publications- said that it was "like watching a Merchant Ivory film being made in front of your eyes".

Such characteristics might help one spot a Mitchell production, but hardly convey what it is like to see one. Live theatre is the most fleeting of art forms. It is made and remade for its audience. Afterwards, it exists only in the memory. Eleven years ago, I saw Mitchell's production of Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides' play set on the brink of the Trojan war. The set was a characteristic shabby-grandiose interior. Men with clipboards hurried about grimly, full of warlike self-importance. Into this world arrived, with a kind of magnificent inappropriateness, a flock of society women expecting a wedding. (Agamemnon, the Greek commander, had summoned his wife, Clytemnestra, and daughter, Iphigenia, on the pretext of a marriage for the girl; in reality he intended to sacrifice her to the gods to secure a fair wind.) Suitcase after suitcase arrived with this feminine retinue. There was a collision of frippery and horror that produced a sense of enormous anxiety.

From time to time, the chorus broke into fragments of dance that recalled the choreography of the German dance-theatre artist Pina Bausch, an important and lasting influence on Mitchell. As Iphigenia (quivering, terrified) was killed, a tremendous blast of wind rushed through the set, hurling the men's officious paperwork into the air. There were more women than men on the stage - which is still rare in theatre - and the work had quite clearly been directed by a woman, focusing its attention on the confusion, fear and strength of the female characters. I remember feeling discombobulated, even irritated, by the production at the time. But to this day I find sharp shards of it lodged in my memory: it kept working on me.

To achieve the particular psychological exactitude she requires, Mitchell looks outside the British theatre tradition, using techniques that derive from the theories of the late 19th-century Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky (which also later shaped the principles behind "method" acting). The playwright Simon Stephens recalled his surprise and bewilderment when Mitchell, directing the debut of his play Wastwater at the Royal Court in 2011, sent him 225 questions about the script before rehearsals had even begun.

Wastwater has three scenes, each centring on a dialogue between a different man and a woman, each played out in a different location on the margins of Heathrow airport. "Say the first scene was between Charlotte and Simon having coffee," Stephens recalled. "The kind of questions would be, 'How many cups of coffee has Simon already had this morning? How long was the walk that Charlotte took to get here? How late was she? How anxious was she about being late? What was the temperature of the changing room that Simon was in at the swimming pool?' I was thinking, 'This is all bollocks.'" He filled out the questionnaire with increasing impatience, sometimes with joke answers.

On the first day of rehearsal, Stephens expected to begin with a read-through of the play - an almost universal convention, and in the case of a new work, a nice boost to the writer's ego. But no. "Katie and her assistant director had compiled a 50-page document based on my answers, detailing the buildup to these three scenes," Stephens said. "So we sat and read these 50 pages - which of course included my joke answers - the equivalent of 'Simon's had 24 cups of coffee.'"

The actor Angus Wright, who was in that production, admitted that for some actors, Mitchell's way of working "can seem quite arid and precise" - there is a lot of sitting down with a pencil and paper before an actor gets to try something out. But she wants the actor to step out into a world that is complete - "in which you know where you have just come from, the car you travelled in, how you walked into the room from the front door." Cumberbatch said that working with her was like attending an "acting gym" - an "all-consuming process" that involved everything "from analysing the script and breaking it down, to defining character through research and improvisation". It is not a process for everyone: "It's a schooling in acting, so you have to want to go along with that". But, he said, "I adored the experience."

The German actor Julia Wieninger, another of Mitchell's regular collaborators, recalled that the cast of Martin Crimp's The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, a free adaptation of Euripides' Phoenician Women, were asked to conduct extensive research into bronze age Thebes. "How was it built? Where were its seven gates? How far away was the invading army?" Having gathered such information, she and fellow actors improvised together to build character biographies and shared backstories. Saying the actual lines was a final touch applied to an already elaborately constructed edifice.

The eventual production, however, bore no signs of Thebes's seven gates or the bronze age. It was set in another rundown 19th-century interior; all the characters were dressed in modern, black clothes. The chorus of young women were absolutely in control of the protagonists (a reversal of the usual power dynamic in Greek drama). The women appeared to be forcing the terrified main characters to say their lines, to repeat and relive actions that had been played out before. Sometimes the chorus would "rewind" - perform a series of actions in reverse, sometimes almost a whole scene, which was both dazzling to watch and deeply strange. Seeing the work in Hamburg one drizzly December night, I was mesmerised and excited. The friend I was with was enraged, finding it obfuscatory and bewildering.

Mitchell has a problem with Shakespeare: an "aversion", she said. We had met on a chilly winter evening in London, after she had finished a day rehearsing Beckett's Happy Days, a production destined for Hamburg. Had it not been for the regular explosion of Mitchell's laughter - Stephens calls it her "Sid James laugh", after the lascivious cackle of the Carry On actor - she would have seemed as unwaveringly serious as an abbess.

She loves reading Shakespeare's plays - "they are fantastic poems with lovely moments of naturalistic live action". But directing them? For a start, they are too long. Then there's the difficult language, alien to modern ears. Then there's the weight of each play'sperformance history: the very British sense that there is a finite set of respectable ways for classic works to be directed. "The texts themselves and the history of their productions have got muddled," she said. "So if you try to scrape the barnacles off, say, a Chekhov and give it a bit of a zing that it might have had when it was first radically produced, they get very, very, upset."

It is perhaps odd, then, that Mitchell began her career at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was 23; Adrian Noble had recently taken over as artistic director. She began by assisting directors such as Deborah Warner and later directed Ibsen, Strindberg, Euripides and Beckett.

The one Shakespeare she tackled was Henry VI Part 3. It was 1994; she was 29. The play was well-received, but afterwards, she recalled, John Barton, the great Shakespearean director, took her aside and said, "'You know, it's not bad work, but every single character is miscast, the narrative is not clear and every single line of verse is mauled. Oh, and you didn't really do the battles. But other than that...'." Looking back on her RSC years, she became melancholy. "Maybe I just started off in the wrong field," she said. "Maybe entering the world of mainstream British theatre at all was a wrong turning."

She told me this one afternoon in June, in Aix-en-Provence, where she was directing Handel's Alcina. It was the end of the day's rehearsals and she had returned to her rented flat, in the hills above the town. After swimming lengths in her landlord's pool, she put on a blue sundress - the only time I saw her out of "uniform".

Mitchell, who is 51,grew up in Hermitage, a village in Berkshire. Her mother was a cook and her father a dentist with artistic yearnings - "someone who was always searching for something". (He later became a handpress printer, and experimented with the self-sufficiency movement.) The family watched Bergman and Antonioni films on BBC2. She started directing at boarding school at 16: among her first productions was Harold Pinter's 1981 radio play, Family Voices. At 17, she founded her own company and took Tom Stoppard's absurdist play After Magritte to Edinburgh. When I suggested this conveyed unusual drive, she bridled slightly. "I just liked doing it. I liked the organisation of it."

After graduating from Oxford, she wrote to Peter Brook, the director of Bouffes du Nord in Paris, and the presiding deity of British theatrical avant-gardeists. (His radical 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in a white box and eschewing period dress, remains a key moment in theatre history.) "He was the god. He was the big British director out there in Europe," she said. He sent back a handwritten letter, and she headed to Paris. "I remember the nerves of it. I remember his blue eyes. I wanted to be his assistant - not a chance, of course." (Things have come full circle: she will make her debut at the Bouffes in 2018.)

That evening, she went to the Châtelet theatre to see one of Pina Bausch's most famous dance-theatre works, Nelken (Carnations). Bausch, who died in 2009, was one of the most influential theatre-makers of the 20th century. With her company Tanztheater Wuppertal, she conjured a dark, magical, intense world, rooted in the language of dance but with its own singular idiom. Nelken took place on a stage strewn with thousands of pink flowers, and patrolled by Alsatian dogs.

"I just sat and cried: first because it was so beautiful, and second because it was made by a woman, and I hadn't seen much work made by a woman," Mitchell recalled. "The metaphors, the selection of images, the interaction between men and women, the fragments of narrative: the gender politics were very certain, very strong, very definite. There was no male gaze in the work. And it was very violent, you know - and very poetic." Years later, invited to dine with Bausch, Mitchell surreptitiously fished one of her lipstick-stained cigarette ends out of the ashtray - she still has it.

While at the RSC, Mitchell did all she could to learn from eastern Europe. In 1989, as the Soviet empire collapsed, she travelled around Poland, Georgia and Lithuania, learning from the artists she sought out. In St Petersburg, she observed Lev Dodin, the head of the Maly theatre, as he trained directors. "What he put them through! The first-year students had been to the zoo to look at animals, and they were doing a physical re-enactment of them. This guy was standing on one leg being the flamingo he'd seen. He was being annihilated. Dodin would say: 'Is your bird hungry? Is it conscious or not conscious? Is it cold or hot?' It was so rigorous, so thorough. He was watching everything. He was like a hawk."

After a stint as an associate director at the Royal Court in the 1990s, Nicholas Hytner, then the new artistic director of the National Theatre, invited her to join him. During her first years as an associate director, she found him extremely supportive, she said - especially in stiffening her resolve to make her first foray into multimedia in 2006 with Waves, a version of Woolf's novel.

But over time, their relationship become "dysfunctional", she said. In 2011 she made the last of her 13 productions there. "It took several years for it to become clear," she said of the period before her resignation, "but in retrospect I think there was a dislike [from Hytner] of the work I was making and a desire to rechannel my creative energies into safer territory for his repertoire, like children's shows, until suddenly it seemed that was all that I was doing."

In 2005, Mitchell had a little girl, Edie. "My career wasn't in very good shape during the early period of Edie's childhood, and it was very hard." (Mitchell and Edie's father did not remain together.) "The childcare comes in at over £30,000 a year, and my earnings would never be at £30,000 a year. I had to try to double my earnings. One of the hardest things Nick Hytner said to me was, 'You're only making work for money.' I looked at him and thought: just even begin to understand what territory you're heading into to with a woman in this situation. It was a startling moment."

Hytner told me that the early productions she made at the theatre - including Chekhov's Three Sisters, Waves and Iphigenia at Aulis - were "among the best and most beautiful I've ever seen". But, he said, "I regret very much that with some of Katie's work, we disagreed about certain basic principles - audibility and visibility of the action, for instance - and our professional relationship suffered."

It was as things were becoming difficult at the National, however, that an unexpected invitation came from Europe - from the then artistic director of the Schauspiel theatre in Cologne, Karin Beier. At first, Mitchell demurred. "I said, 'Karin, it's too difficult: I can't read anything, I don't know anything about the language or the country, how on earth can I direct actors?" And she said, 'Oh come on, Katie, it's a favour, we're old friends.'"

The play was Wunschkonzert (Request Programme), a 1970s one-woman play by Franz Xaver Kroetz about the last five hours in a woman's life: the character listens to a request show on the radio, and, at length, commits suicide. Mitchell directed with the help of a literal translation. In the show, black-clad men surrounded the solitary single female figure, filming her total despair. The radio music was produced by a string quartet, placed in a glass box. Mitchell felt liberated: she was being asked to go further than she dared, not rein herself in. Wunschkonzert won the ultimate theatrical accolade in the German-speaking world: a slot at the Theatertreffen, the Berlin drama festival, where the best productions of the year are celebrated. More invitations flooded in. It is in Germany, now, that she feels she can make - is pushed to make - her most radical, her most feminist, work.

What makes Germany different from Britain in its relationship to the theatre, she said, was history, particularly the history of the 20th century. "You have to go back to Auschwitz," she said. "It is not a matter of aesthetics." In other words, an impulse to question and deconstruct on the German stage has arisen from the great jagged scar of the second world war. Any sense of theatrical heroism, or of authority, including the authority of a text, is ideologically questionable. It is a cultural difference between two closely intertwined nations that goes deep. As Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, remarked in a recent BBC documentary on Germany: "The British tend to use their history to comfort themselves ... the Germans use it as a challenge to behave better in the future."

* * *

In June, I spent two days watching Mitchell work on Alcina, which she was preparing for the annual opera festival at the Grand Théâtre of Aix-en-Provence. (She was commuting to France, as always, by train: she eschews flying for environmental reasons, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of European rail connections.) The story - involving disguises, potions, magic rings, enchantments, knights and witches - is based on the romantic epic Orlando Furioso, by the 16th-century Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto. The bones of it are that Alcina and her sister Morgana are enchantresses who preside over a magical island, where they transform passing male visitors into rocks, animals, plants or waves.

In the studio, the performers were working in a rough approximation of Chloe Lamford's two-storey set, yet another lived-in 19th-century interior. Mitchell sat erect, facing the performers as they repeated fragments of the action. She was flanked by the assistant director, Dan Ayling, and choreographer Joseph Alford; beyond them radiated, in a long row, the stage manager, designer, lighting designer, costume designer, music staff and their various assistants - plus a piano and harpsichord standing in for the orchestra. In the dimness, a dozen laptop screens glowed.

Watching Mitchell and her team at work I felt as if I had been transported to a factory floor in which something was being made with immense precision, but through often opaque and arcane processes. There was a curious contrast between the ordinariness of much of the work (solving small logical problems, requiring many repetitions of fragments of action) and the otherworldly power of the principals - soprano Patricia Petibon and countertenor Philippe Jaroussky - in full voice. Mitchell hardly ever got up from her seat; nor did she ever raise her voice. When she issued an instruction she would tell Ayling, who, like an NCO would repeat the instruction at greater volume, and spring up, clutching his vocal score, which bristled with sticky notes.

Mitchell did not herself follow a score, as if the printed page would impede her scrutiny of the performers. She would often hoot with laughter - "Oh my days!" - or speak terrible franglais - "Now, put on les gants!" (The cast was a mix of French, German, Polish, British and Serbian nationals.) She was always scrupulously gentle and polite: one of her instructions to the actors playing Alcina's staff began, "Now, lovely servants..." She never said that anything was "good" or "bad", but rather, "clear" or "unclear". Anna Prokohova, who sang Morgana, said: "She beats the operatic pathos out of you. She wants you walk through a door like you would really walk through a door; pick up a pencil like you would pick up a pencil." Naturalism and opera are uneasy bedfellows. Mitchell was aware that requesting "that someone put on makeup while they are singing a difficult coloratura sequence is a really big ask".

The production was unswervingly feminist. Alcina and Morgana ruled a realm designed to further their sexual pleasure. Their desire was portrayed without judgment. Male visitors to the island were put through a magical device (a contrivance resembling the baggage-security machine at Eurostar terminals) that turned them into stuffed animals. "People tend to duck the magic factor of the opera and play it out as a romantic comedy," Mitchell said, "or play the romantic side of things and not look at the feminist side of things, which is that two women run something that is very efficient, that pleasures them." As Le Monde's critic gleefully pointed out, there was " un cunnilingus dès la deuxième scène " - cunnilingus right from the second scene.

Over the past 30 years, Mitchell told me, she has attended innumerable meetings to discuss why there are "a lot of women at the beginning of their careers [in theatre] and none, really, or only a very few, at the top". Slowly, slowly, there have been signs of change: more women running theatres. "But there is something much more subtle," she said, "and that is what we see on our stages: how women are represented, how relationships between men and women are represented. In opera, you feel that sometimes people can go and watch representations of women that are frankly antediluvian and that is seen as acceptable because it is tucked into this thing called opera. But for me it isn't acceptable." The same goes for theatre. Her production of Strindberg's Miss Julie, for the Berlin Schaubühne, was seen entirely through the eyes of its apparently least important character, the put-upon servant Kristin. "She wrestled a misogynist text to the floor and put bullets in the back of its head," said Haydon.

At lunchtime, Mitchell, Ayling, Alford and Lamford went to a local bistro for lunch. The calm spell of the rehearsal room was lifted. Mitchell put on sunglasses and greedily soaked up the sun. It turned out that there were numerous tensions - most of which had been invisible to me - that required careful handling. One singer had complained that his costume was too hot ("I will die if I wear a jacket to the end of act three", he had announced) - meaning a possible redesign, with budgetary consequences. Another was refusing to sing if the air conditioning was switched on. Another, who had a virtuosic aria to sing during a complicatedly choreographed sex scene, had been despondent, almost tearful, after a run-through. All these troubling matters were addressed away from the rehearsal room - the job of which was to provide an atmosphere that was "light and efficient and precise", Mitchell said. "As a director you have a role that is very simple: to say whether it's clear or not. That is the job: to watch in detail and make sure it is precise for the audience, second by second."

A great deal of Mitchell's worldview is set out in her book, The Director's Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre, which describes, step by step, her way of working. It can seem at times almost amusingly plodding ("ask your stage management to buy tea, coffee and biscuits for the first days of rehearsals"). It is characteristically clear and patient in its tone, even if some readers regard its lengthy instructions for the making of a production as impossibly demanding. She frequently teaches, and a generation of young theatre directors - including Lyndsey Turner, Lucy Kerbel and Carrie Cracknell - have assisted her and learned at her side.

According to Turner (who recently directed Cumberbatch as Hamlet at the Barbican in London) Mitchell's methodology is deeply liberating because it demystifies directing by showing "that there are steps you can take to narrow the gap between the play as it exists in your imagination and the work you'll eventually see on stage". This aspect of Mitchell's project is quietly political: directing is shown to involve a set of skills that can be acquired and polished - rather than, as Turner put it, "having been to a certain kind of university, the ability to talk about plays in a certain way, or the possession of bucketloads of charisma."

Turner said that it is a habit of hers to go round to Mitchell's place in south London after her shows "for a bottle of wine and a debrief, when she will slowly tease out every choice made, every punch pulled, every challenge ducked... she understands your blind spots, your weaknesses, your affinities. She reveals patterns in your work, and gives you the courage to break bad habits."

At the close of 2015, Mitchell was gearing up for another big artistic move: film. She and writer Duncan Macmillan are making a short - a thriller with a central female role, for Warp Films and Film4. They are hungry to work on a full-length feature. It is a logical consequence of Mitchell's multimedia work: she will be able to make a perfected object that can exist in the way she intended, for ever, without the mess of live performance. In 2014 she was obliged, because of a cold, to watch previews of her production of The Cherry Orchard at the Young Vic on a monitor outside the auditorium: Simon Stephens cheekily told me he thought this was her "happy place". He also observed that the only pop reference he had ever heard her invoke was Joy Division - whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, performed as if the audience did not exist.

If 2015 was a barren year for Mitchell in Britain, 2016 will be different. She will return to the National Theatre, under its new artistic director Rufus Norris, to direct Cleansed, by Sarah Kane. Her production of The Forbidden Zone - a multimedia work about war, which she created with Duncan Macmillan and the filmmaker Leo Warner for the Salzburg festival - will travel to the Barbican. A new "functioning, fruitful" relationship with the Royal Court under its artistic director Vicky Featherstone will be cemented with the British premiere of Ophelias Zimmer, her feminist version of Hamlet (with writer Alice Birch and designer Chloe Lamford). Her production of Lucia di Lammermoor will reach the stage of the Royal Opera; in October, she will become a visiting professor of opera at Oxford.

If Mitchell is, as Haydon calls her, "the king in exile", then the king is coming home. But then, some trace of her has always been here. Mitchell once told me about sitting on the tube with Sam Mendes - her exact contemporary and almost polar opposite in both career and approach. "I said, 'Just imagine, Sam, imagine what it is like as a woman reading Hamlet - when you consider where the women are placed in the play, what happens to them, what women readers might feel about that, about their absence.' Then I said, 'I look across at you and imagine what it might be like to be a man reading Hamlet, with so many male characters and male experiences being expressed, scene after scene after scene.' He smiled wryly at me. He was always very patient with me." Among their generation of directors, it is Mendes who has become the global superstar. But Mitchell has arguably achieved something more difficult. "She is," Turner said, "reshaping the culture."

* Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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Katie Mitchell, British theatre's queen in exile | Charlotte Higgins

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The long read: Her champions regard Katie Mitchell as Britain's greatest living stage director - but her critics see a vandal smashing up the classics. After staging her most ambitious work in Europe, can she make a triumphant return home?

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/berkoff

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Dramatising the latest watercooler story doesn't guarantee you box-office success. The stiffest competition may come from reality's own high drama

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https://www.iainfisher.com/berkoff/steven-berkoff.html

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"The place you came from and live in govern your future, your taste and your ethics" (Steven Berkoff interviewed by Malcolm Dickson in Gorbals 1966, 2018)

L eslie Steven Berks was born on 3 August 1937 in Stepney, London, "a small flat in 104 Whitechapel Road, London" (Steven Berkoff, Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent, 2010).
Childhood

from Berkoff's birth certifcate

His family background was Jewish Russian and his grandparents fled Russia for Britain in the 1890s.

A five-year-old Berkoff (from Daily Mail 20 Feb 2009- click on image for link)

His parents were Alfred (who called himself Al and is sometimes listed as Abraham) who was a tailor with a shop in Leman Street, London and Pauline (who called herself Polly). He had a sister Beryl. Al changed the family name from Berkowitz to Berks. Steven later changed it again to Berkoff.

Polly Berkoff, mother. Berkoff dedicates his diary "In memory of my beloved mother Polly" (photo from They Shall Not Pass DVD).

During the Second World War he, like most children, was evacuated from the bombing of London to the relative safety of Luton in 1942. After the war the mother and children moved for a few months to Nyack, New York, staying with relatives.

An extract from the Manifest of Alien Passengers, tourist class, on the Queen Elizabeth ship from Southampton 26 Oct 1947. Mother Pauline Berks, sister Beryl and Leslie (Steven) aged 10 are listed. The father did not travel.

And returning on the Queen Mary leaving 10 Feb and arriving in Southampton. Berkoff (Leslie Berks) is listed as a student (meaning a schoolchild). Their address in London is given as 145a Cannon St. Rd. Sister Beryl did not travel back until later.
They returned to join the father in Anthony Street in London. Berkoff was educated at the Raines Foundation and Hackney Downs Grammar School, which was also Harold Pinter's old school. Berkoff had an unhappy childhood " not getting anything I wanted was becoming awfully familiar" (from Delinquent ). His relation with his father was very strained "not having a caring or loving Dad didn't help" ( Delinquent p104). When in 1952 he stole a bike he was sentenced to spend a short while in borstal (children's prison).

Steven Berkoff and his parents (from the short film Battle of Cable St- Steven Berkoff looks back at the Battle of Cable St, BBC Inside Out, 1 Nov 2011, click here).

A s a teenager he had a number of relationships " ...back in 1999 he revealed that he had a daughter, then three years later blurted out the existence of a second one..." (Nick Curtis in The Evening Standard 10 Aug 2007 here). In the article Berkoff is quoted as saying "... One is called Mylea and the other is Sarah. I am in touch with both of them, one more than the other, which has been quite lovely and nourishing for both of us. They are both in their thirties and have very nice husbands and children."

Jobbing Actor
He studied at City Literary Institute from 1957-1958 and the Webber Douglas Academy 1958-1959. He then went to the Laban School of Dance in Morely College.

Later he went to the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris- "The aim of the school is to produce a young theatre of new work, generating performance languages which emphasise the physical playing of the actor. Creative work is constantly stimulated, largely through improvisation" (The Moving Body, Jacques Lecoq with Jean-Gabriel Carasso and Jean-Claude Lallias, 1997 trans David Bradby 2000, I-2).

Berkoff says "I realised that what [Lecoq] was doing was making all the actors an intrinsic part of the play! Not just, as you used to go to the RSC and see them holding spears. With Lecoq, all actors were part of it, you see, because they used movement, like drawing on a canvas, you're part of it"(interview by Malcolm Dickson in Gorbals 1966, 2018).

Berkoff was a struggling actor, with roles in provincial theatres and bit part in British films. His first role in a film was in 1959's The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw- in Tales from an Actor's Life Berkoff says " sharing the scene with none other than the glorious, the sexy, the cute, Jayne Mansfield" and his role was "just flopping around the set like grimy drunken cowboys" (Berkoff leaning on the bar to the right of Mnsfield).

His first role on stage was in 1959 in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge as Louis, performed in the Finsbury Park Empire in London.

Finsbury Park Empire, demolished in 1960. Photos from Cinema Treasures click here.

In 1965 his acting in Albee's Zoo Story brought him critical acclaim.

Emerging Director and Playwright
In 1968 Berkoff formed the London Theatre Group and started his career with adaptations of Kafka and Poe such as Metamorphosis (at the Roundhouse, London in 1969), The Trial and The Fall of the House of Usher.

East was his first original play to be performed and established him as a major talent. He is now performed over the world, and at the yearly Edinburgh Fringe Festival he is the most performed playwright after Shakespeare.

Relationships
He has married twice, firstly to Alison Minto in 1970 when he was 32. In Meditations on Metamorphosis he says "Decisions for me in those days were a matter of life and death. My wife, designer and painter Alison Minto, helped me to conceive the set" (The Independent 2 Aug 1999).

Marriage certificate Berkoff and Alison Minto, 13 Jan 1970. The father is named as Abraham.

His second marriage was to to Shelley Lee in 1976 when he was 39. On the certificate for his marriage his profession is given as Actor/ Director, Lee is listed as a dance choreographer. His father is listed as Abraham Berks whereas on other documents he is Alfred Berks.

Marriage certificate Berkoff and Shelley Lee, 21 Aug 1976. The father is named as Alfred.

Berkoff currently lives in Limehouse, London in an apartment on the Thames with his partner the classical pianist Clara Fischer - she can be seen as the motorist who has an argument with Berkoff in his film Decadence. Berkoff says "its lovely to listen to her. When she plays its phenomenal. (Ginny Dougary in The Times 21 Mar 2009).

Pushing Boundaries

Berkoff also has a film career appearing in major roles in Rambo, Beverly Hills Cop (below, image from DVD), Octopussy and more recently The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as well as works by Kubrick- Barry Lyndon and A Clockwork Orange (below image from DVD) and Antonioni.

Berkoff claims he is now in semi-retirement (conversation with Iain Fisher in 2006), but for example in 2006 he appeared in six films/ tv episodes, acted both in his own plays and on a solo tour with Shakespeare's Villains and did commercial voiceovers.
Thanks to Michelle Cussens for the genealogy research.

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"The place you came from and live in govern your future, your taste and your ethics" (Steven Berkoff interviewed by Malcolm Dickson in Gorbals 1966, 2018) L eslie Steven Berks was born on 3 August 1937 in Stepney, London, "a small flat in 104 Whitechapel Road, London" (Steven Berkoff, Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent, 2010).

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https://podbay.fm/p/in-the-psychiatrists-chair/e/1406379600

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http://totaltheatre.org.uk/archive/features/berkoff-berkoff

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Berkoff on Berkoff | Total Theatre Magazine Print Archive

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It was with some trepidation that I arrived at Steven Berkoff’s impressive Docklands office. He does seem to cause unease in the public mind. Anecdotes I’d heard about him were vague and their provenance difficult to trace, but the general opinion seemed to be that Berkoff is not a nice man: a bully…

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/18/bertolt-brecht-arturo-ui-revival

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t's that man again: Bertolt Brecht. His early play, In the Jungle of Cities, is being revived at London's Arcola, and later this month he's back in the West End, as Jonathan Church's Chichester production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui moves to the Duchess. It's a production that won lots of praise when first seen last year, not least for the comic demonism of Henry Goodman's performance as the eponymous Chicago racketeer who provides a metaphor for Adolf Hitler. But, for all its dazzling energy, I suspect the production will raise all the old arguments about Brecht's standing today. Is he still an irresistible force or simply a chapter in theatrical history whose reputation has declined with the collapse of eastern European communism?

In weighing up the pros and cons, one has to start with a basic fact: as both a practising dramatist and visionary theorist, Brecht changed the face of modern theatre. Just to take Britain alone, I'd argue that the historic visit by Brecht's Berliner Ensemble to London in 1956 did more than any other single event - even than the premiere of Waiting for Godot a year earlier - to shake us out of our rooted complacency. The spare Brechtian aesthetic had a profound influence on the newly founded English Stage Company at the Royal Court, and the realisation of what a permanent company could achieve shaped the creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 and the National theatre in 1963.

Directors, designers and dramatists were all influenced by Brecht's idea of an epic theatre in which narrative replaces plot, the spectator is turned into an observer rather than someone implicated in the stage action, and each scene exists for itself alone. Above all, Brecht's belief that drama should present moral and political ideas through action left its stamp on a huge range of plays, from Serjeant Musgrave's Dance by John Arden, Luther by John Osborne and Saved by Edward Bond in the 1950s and 60s, through to Fanshen by David Hare and Destiny by David Edgar in the 1970s. As David Edgar once said: "Brecht is part of the air we breathe."

Bertholt Brecht: his plays have acquired renewed relevance. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Lest you think I exaggerate Brecht's influence, I turned up a catalogue to an exhibition, Bertolt Brecht in Britain, mounted at the National Theatre in 1977. Among other things, it includes a checklist of annual productions. In 1972 you find 15 professional Brecht productions in the UK ranging from Arturo Ui in Belfast and Bradford to Mother Courage and Her Children in Watford and Canterbury, and a West End revival of The Threepenny Opera with a cast that included Vanessa Redgrave and Barbara Windsor. There were 77 amateur productions including a staggering 36 - many staged by students - of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. For good measure, BBC Television also presented Arturo Ui starring the formidable Nicol Williamson.

All this is unimaginable today. Few regional theatres have the financial resources, even if they had the will, to mount a Brecht play. The right-wing thought police would, I suspect, quickly be on the case if any school put on a Brecht show. And there is about as much likelihood of BBC doing a prestigious Brecht television production as there is of it presenting a play by Sophocles, Shaw, Ibsen, Chekhov or any of the great classic dramatists. Even in academia Brecht is much less central than he used to be: a friend told me that a supposedly comprehensive undergraduate theatre course devotes roughly two hours a year to him.

Yet, even if Brecht is out of fashion, his legacy is all around us. Stephen Unwin, in his excellent A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht, points to one key example in the growth of documentary drama. The kind of work staged at London's Tricycle theatre under Nicolas Kent, starting with Half the Picture in 1993 and taking us up to Gillian Slovo's examination of the London riots in 2011, fulfilled many of Brecht's theatrical criteria. This was work that, in Brecht's definition of epic theatre, offered the spectator a picture of the world, forced him or her to take decisions. It appealed to reason rather than feeling. Even the performance style made it clear that actors were representing, rather than identifying with, particular characters.

Kindred spirits ... the recent Chimerica shows the Brechtian influence at play. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

I also sense the Brechtian influence at work in some of the big plays on public themes that have emerged in recent years. They may eschew the Brechtian visual approach, but they engage with the issues of our times in ways he would have understood. In Enron (2009), Lucy Prebble traced the fall of the Texan energy giant to show how capitalism depends on con-tricks and illusions. In 13 (2011), which many critics myopically repudiated, Mike Bartlett argued that popular protest was now a bigger force for change than entrenched political parties. And in the 2013 play Chimerica, Lucy Kirkwood boldly invites us to compare and contrast China and America: it is a work that genuinely activates thought in that its apparent conclusion that America tolerates dissent while China punishes it is brought into question by the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.

Brecht may be out of fashion in the self-regarding world of immersive and site-specific theatre, where everything depends on the minor shocks and sensations felt by the individual spectator: however good such shows may be, you generally come out of one by Punchdrunk or Shunt wanting to change your clothes instead of the world. But Brecth's legacy is still too pervasive and potent for him ever to be entirely invisible.

We are also learning how to do him without the pedagogic reverence that for years put people off. Jonathan Church's excellent Arturo Ui ushers us into a Chicago speakeasy where we listen to the seductive sounds of a jazz trio. And Roxana Silbert's modern-dress Royal Shakespeare Company production of A Life of Galileo earlier this year used a text sensibly trimmed by Mark Ravenhill and seemed vitally connected to a world in which a liberally intentioned pope found himself trapped by institutional conservatism.

Brecht is too big a force to ignore. One of his prime assets is that he wrote great parts for actors. Recently, I happened to mention to Alexei Sayle that he would be a natural to play Azdak, the justice-dispensing village rogue in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and his eyes lit up at the prospect: an antipodean Brecht scholar, incidentally, has pointed out to me that the near-hanging of Azdak is a direct reference to Nanki-Poo in the Mikado and that Brecht, as a great admirer of Gilbert and Sullivan, toyed with doing his own version of HMS Pinafore!

But I'd like see our theatre go beyond revivals of Galileo, Mother Courage, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Person of Szechwan. I'd be fascinated to see St Joan of the Stockyards, with its Salvation Army heroine, Paul Dessau choruses and parodies of Goethe and Schiller. Brecht may not be as fashionable as he once was. But, in a theatre that tends towards narcissistic introspection, his ability to engage with the world and instruct delightfully seems to me more urgently important than ever.

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Bertolt Brecht: irresistible force or forgotten chapter in theatrical history?

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t's that man again: Bertolt Brecht. His early play, In the Jungle of Cities, is being revived at London's Arcola, and later this month he's back in the West End, as Jonathan Church's Chichester production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui moves to the Duchess.

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https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/brecht-interruptions-and-epic-theatre

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Bertolt Brecht wanted his work to revolutionise theatre's bourgeois values and bring about social and political change. Robert Gordon introduces the aesthetic principles and techniques that Brecht believed could achieve these aims, and explores how they operate in some of his best-known plays.

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https://www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/bertolt_brecht_timeline.html

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He attends Arthur Kutscher's theatre seminar.

He has a son (Frank) with his girlfriend, Paula Banholzer.

He has a son (Stefan) with the actress Helene Weigel.

Brecht's political film, Kuhle Wampe, named after an area of Berlin where the unemployed live in shacks, premieres in Moscow. It is banned from theaters in Germany.

The Mother, Brecht's adaptation of a Maxim Gorky novel, opens in Berlin with music by Hanns Eisler.

An English version of The Threepenny Opera opens at the Empire Theatre on Broadway. It closes after only 12 performances.

He has a child with Ruth Berlau, but the baby does not survive.

September 30

A revival of The Threepenny Opera opens at the Theater de Lys on Broadway. This time, it enjoys a run of 2,611 performances.

Browse Bertolt Brecht: Essential Reading List

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He attends Arthur Kutscher's theatre seminar. He has a son (Frank) with his girlfriend, Paula Banholzer. He has a son (Stefan) with the actress Helene Weigel. Brecht's political film, Kuhle Wampe, named after an area of Berlin where the unemployed live in shacks, premieres in Moscow. It is banned from theaters in Germany.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkUlMzUMxTc

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-828KqtTkA

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An introduction to Bertolt Brecht | National Theatre

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGLavvUup_Y

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Actors discuss Part 2: Stanislavski, vulnerability in a rehearsal space and their organic process

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpEGXrDSXo8

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Western Australia Edith Cowan University Written

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Actors discuss Part 1: Stanislavski's method of physical actions

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Feature length doco Director and Actor - Passions, Process and intimacy with Dalip Sondhi is now available to order here: http://www.artfilms.com.au/Detail.aspx?ItemID=4802 Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtnk_4UEpsI&list http://www.alucinorproductions.com Alucinor Productions, Video Production Perth, Western Australia Edith Cowan University Written by Patrick Marber Directed by Dalip Sondhi The Director and cast of Closer discuss Stanislavski, Chekhov, the method of physical actions, score of actions, action - emotional memory and their rehearsal process Shot and Cut by Dean Butler Alucinor Productions Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Alucinor-Productions-379120801022 Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlucinorP Tumblr: http://alucinor-productions.tumblr.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alucinor_productions/ BLOG: http://www.alucinorproductions.com/blog.html

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https://www.masterclass.com/articles/stanislavski-method

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Stanislavski Method: Acting Guide to the Stanislavski Method - 2024 - MasterClass

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Theater practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski’s acting technique is one of the world’s most famous and influential forms of dramatic instruction.

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https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/the-definitive-guide-to-the-stanislavsky-acting-technique-65716/

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https://www.nickdunning.com/blog/antonin-artaud-acting-techniques-2022

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Antonin Artaud Acting Techniques 2022

Dark, disturbing and powerful, Artaud's acting techniques are not for the faint hearted.

First developed back in the 1920s by Antonin Artaud a French playwright, actor and theatre director, Artaud believed that performance should shock and surprise the audience and so enable them to face their own fears.

He called his techniques the "Theatre of Cruelty" and believed that action and surprise in a theatre performance or film was the most important aspect of drama and more important than plot or the spoken word. Imagine sitting in a theatre waiting for that to begin?

Antonin Artaud was a contemporary of Berthold Brecht, and like Brecht, he believed that theatre was essentially bourgeois; despite that, the two men were poles apart. Artaud's aim was that the performance should make the audience look deep into their own fears, where as Brecht acting techniques are all about the message, which requires the audience to look outside themselves at society, to examine the political state of affairs in a nation.

Antonin-Artaud-Techniques can be shocking and powerful...

Artaud acting techniques can be shocking and powerful. The aim is to cause heightened emotions in the audience by whatever means possible, especially shock. The characters often express themselves in a way to deliberately confuse the audience and an Artaud performance often does not have a storyline but various themes running through at the same time.

The aim of an Artaud performance is to cause a real experience of discomfort and confusion in the audience that causes them to think and become involved as participants, not onlookers.

Artaud-acting-techniques often require the use of noises, grunts, screams - the dialogue is often minimal and requires that the actor looks inside to his or her own primal emotions in order to create the role. It is often an exhausting rehearsal process :-)

The Theatre of Cruelty has had a profound effect upon modern theatre and film and although Artaud is often seen as highbrow and "art house," but his influence can be seen in many modern productions.

Artaud was a wild character. He was heavily influenced by surrealism and had a life long addiction to opiates, including heroin. He had repeated spells inside mental institutions and his personal life makes for interesting reading. He visited Ireland in 1937 because he believed he had a wooden walking stick that once belonged to St Patrick and ended up being deported back to France in a straitjacket later the same year. So take care before you buy a walking stick in Ireland...

Despite his mental illnesses. Artaud-acting-techniques, explained in this book are acclaimed today as being extremely influential on modern acting styles and will help you in your own performance.

Here are several of Antonin Artaud's most famous acting techniques

1. The use of Visual poetry- the use of mime, gesture, physical theatre and dance to communicate rather than the use of simple words.

2. Creating a dream world- The use of rituals, masks, traditions and striking costumes often influenced from Bali, India and elsewhere. No scenery just symbolic props. When all of the above is combined with music, light etc. the subconscious and emotions of people will be affected to create this dream like state. (love this!)

3. Highly skilled actors- actors must totally commit to the role and use their voice, and the body to perform emotionally in their work and convinced of the truth of it. Connected. Committed.

4. High level audience interaction- The action would take place all around the audience rather than be isolated to a confined stage to make the audience feel part of the action. Inclusion.

5. The Plague- Act with jerky, bizarre movements as if you have the plague, and might infect the audience. Others may include-

6. Assaulting the audience- using lights, sound, music, images (Technology now can also use film) to shock the audience into confronting themselves. Shock and Awe.

7. Stimulate the five senses. In any way possible.

8. Deliberate cruelty- attack the emotions designed to shock and totally involve them.

9. Use of violent, terrifying and shocking action and images.

Want to join my facebook group for free?

Or...do you want to take your career to the next level?

Or..do you really want to change things and fly with the eagles?

Recommended Reading List on Artaud - Click and see:-)

1. I'm a huge fan of Susan Sontag - good enough for me ha ha x

2. This is more about his philosophy and it's applcation.

3. More general, super easy to understand.

FAQ's about Antonin Artaud

I hate SPAM. I will never sell your information, for any reason.

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Dark, disturbing and powerful, Artaud's acting techniques are not for the faint hearted. First developed back in the 1920s by Antonin Artaud a French playwright, actor and theatre director, Artaud believed that performance should shock and surprise the audience and so enable them to face their own fears.

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https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/antonin-artaud-and-the-theatre-of-cruelty

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYFz5_abtE8

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK_vZuLYHcw

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Antonin Artaud and the Theater of Cruelty: Crash Course Theater #43