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

166 Chapter 6 The Director
Director Sebastian Nübling’s 2010 staging of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Munich
Kammerspiele put the play in a modern setting yet maintained the author’s realistic and powerfully focused
struggle between the rough and tumble world of Stanley (Steven Scharf, standing), his wife Stella (Katja Buerkle,
in blue) and his boldly tattooed, poker-playing friends, who are shown in complete contrast to the isolated and
affected Blanche (Wiebke Puls) at lower right. The stage picture clearly reveals the social discords inherent in
Nübling’s directorial concept. © Sebastian Hoppe
on the floor. The actual sets, costumes, and props will be
designed and built in shops available for those purposes.
Sound, lighting, and special effect cues will be created
and eventually worked into the rehearsals. The acting
will be coached, detailed, and drilled into the actors’
muscle memories. While these elements may change in
previews (performances before opening night that give
the artistic team the chance to finalize the production), or
even during the run of the play, the foundation of the play
becomes established, first and foremost, in rehearsal.
The director’s ability to maintain both leadership and
creative inspiration through this period becomes more
crucial with each passing day. From the time of that first
company meeting, the director controls the focus and
consciousness of the entire cast and staff. As the head of
an ambitious and emotionally consuming enterprise, the
director will be the repository of the company’s collective
artistic hopes—and the focal point for the company’s
collective frustration, anxiety, and, on occasion, despair.
The director is the company’s shield against the intrusions
of an outside world, as well as the spokesperson
for the enterprise to which the company has collectively
dedicated itself. Directorial power or influence cannot
be substantially altered by any attempt the director may
make to cultivate or repudiate it—it simply comes with
the job and with the need for every theatrical company
to have focus and, quite literally, direction. The manner
in which the director uses that power, and the sensitivity
with which she or he brings the production into being,
determines the nature of each director’s individual brand
of artistry.
Staging Positioning the actors on the set and having
them move about in a theatrically effective manner is the