Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 155
Eastern European theatre—particularly in Romania—produced many brilliantly original high-concept directors during
the cold war years because more straightforward plays displaying potentially liberal themes were discouraged by
political authorities during the Soviet era. Since the fall of the iron curtain, many of these directors have brought their
stylistic innovations to the world stage. Romanian-born director Andrei Serban is one of the most distinguished. Here,
the trial scene for his Parisian production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the Comédie-Française in 2001
combines words of the text on a blood-red back wall with an abstracted courtroom and its symbolically costumed
personnel: the Christian defendant Antonio in white; the Jewish plaintiff Shylock in black; and the imposter judge Portia
hatless and sporting a white tie beneath her black-and-pinstripe suit. © Laurencine Lot
results. These adapted productions are, and are intended to
be, controversial, of course, and audience members often
leave the theatre muttering something on the order of
“Shakespeare (or Williams) must be rolling in his grave!”
Nonetheless, the adaptation option has now become a clear
possibility for stage directors around the world.
CONCEPTUALIZING THE PRODUCTION
More has been written in modern times about this step
than about any other directorial task; entire books are
devoted to the creation of a central concept that focuses
and unifies an entire production. There are two different
sorts of directorial concept, however: the core concept
and the high concept. All plays require the first; not all
require the second.
The Core Concept The core concept is the director’s
determination of the most important of the many
images, ideas, and emotions that should emerge from the
play. This idea might seem overly limiting: Why should
there be only one core concept when every play, when
read, presents a multiplicity of important images, ideas,
and emotions? Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, for