‘Well, I’ve been sitting down a lot…’: Observations of rehearsing, adapting and performing…

Thursday 16th October, 5pm – 7pm, Grimond Lecture Theatre 3
ETRN Guest Lecture

Dr Adam Ledger, University of Birmingham

‘Well, I’ve been sitting down a lot…’:
Observations of rehearsing, adapting and performing

Patrice Pavis has recently called the contemporary director ‘a postmodern neo-subject’, a ‘limited company … whose powers are lost and dispersed’ (Pavis 2013, 279).  Set against this is the notion of auteur. Both of these positions tend to view the artist and/or final production as representative of directing. A complicating factor is that of the current interest in adaptation.

In order to move away from the fixity of definition around directors or their identification within a typology of work, I am interested to reflect on observation of rehearsal, particularly that of Katie Mitchell and Ivo van Hove. If rehearsal is a directorial mise en jeu, it must negotiate a set of collaborators, and offers a way to begin to consider the shifting performance aesthetics of each director.

My view from the seat – either (or both) in rehearsal and in the auditorium – includes two of van Hove’s productions, Scenes from a Marriage (2005; Barbican Centre, 2013) and TA’s latest production, an adaptation of the novel Fountainhead (Ayn Rand). I also include Mitchell’s version of Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams for the Burgtheater, Vienna (2014), and of Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper for the Schaubühne Berlin (2013), as well as the current Young Vic production of The Cherry Orchard.