Curricula in Question: Directing textbooks and shifting paradigms

Abstract

Despite the central role of the director in theatrical production and the role of colleges and universities in the USA in teaching directing (at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels), the instruction in directing in the US has largely been ignored by scholars. Historians such as Oscar Brockett, Burnett Hobgood and Anne Berkley have studied the history of theatre education in the college curriculum, providing a context for more specialised study of individual disciplines such as directing. When analysed comparatively, the texts written to teach directing provide evidence of the shift in paradigms of instruction, illuminating the changing approaches to teaching directing in the USA. This historical, critical study of directing textbooks aims to identify major shifts in directing pedagogy at mid-century in the US, when the debates over the goals of theatre education became a catalyst for change. Although textbooks provide the main body of evidence, excerpts from interviews with professors of directing add experiential data about changing pedagogical approaches and help clarify the current path of directing pedagogy and a recommendation for future training.