The Ultimate Theatre Director Quiz

Theatre Director: A Summary

• A theatre director oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production, such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc.
• The director ensures the quality and completeness of theatre production and leads the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it.
• The director collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff to coordinate research and work on all the aspects of the production, which includes the Technical and the Performance aspects.
• The technical aspects include stagecraft, costume design, theatrical properties (props), lighting design, set design, and sound design for the production.
• The performance aspects include acting, dance, orchestra, chants, and stage combat.
• The director may also work with the playwright or a translator if the production is a new piece of writing or a translation of a play.
• Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration.
• The role of director originated in ancient Greece, where the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays.
• The modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
• Seminal works on directing and directors include Toby Cole and Helen Krich's 1972 Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modern Theatre, Edward Braun's 1982 book The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Growtowski, and Will's The Director in a Changing Theatre (1976).
• Because of the relatively late emergence of theatre directing as a performing arts profession, professional vocational training programs in directing can be seen mostly in the second half of the 20th century.
• Theatre directors learn their skills "on the job," and theatres often employ trainee assistant directors or have in-house education schemes to train young theatre directors.