“Directors and Designers: Is There a Different Direction?”

“Directors and Designers: Is There a Different Direction?”


Not until the twentieth and twenty-first century did design elements begin to incorporate architecture and the demand for more evolutionary design began to expand.
Designers have had difficulty in working with directors who have the "vision", and must compromise their own ideas/passions etc. to pacify the director's requests.

Director/designers were able to minimize this conflict by challenging the status-quo, and the text mentions Philip Prowse. He and his colleagues were able to push outside the norms and create uniquely important work that reflected their passion.

There was a great need for new development in the design field because realistic settings were quickly dying out in interest. In the early 1900s, designers began to break free and start collaborating creatively, coining the term "theatrical" to be 'descriptive, expressive and individualistic and decoration"- it began to be more about decorating.

From these collaborations, the role of a Stage Director emerged to help run the show. But ultimately a designer always had to work through a director.

Even though people who work together do not always get along, you still have a job to do and it is your responsibility to get the job done.

Often times, the director and the designer see the same concept in two completely different ideas

Designers have to watch how they talk to the directors. If they think they have a better way to use the space, they have to approach the director with “DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA…”

At this time, there was hardly anyone who was both a director and a designer.

The one exception was Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizen Theatre.

One designer said “The best thing that could happen for theater right now would be for him to hand the play writer, actors, and directors a blank stage and have them have a play with that.”

A stage director formed to help communicate between the director and designer, but all in all the designers were still not happy with the fact that they most of the time had to compromise their vision to make the director happy

The designer does not get to pick which director he wants to work with, or what play he wants to design for, he gets whichever director hires him and for whichever play it is for

There are basically no women in the profession at this time.

The American republic was sensitive to visual cues.

Around 1941, calling for bare stage with no scenery to give new life and revitalize.

Looking for new ways to find excitement that not finding anymore

A new breed of people came about known as stage directors

A shift from stock scenery to specific designers

Never a balanced relationship between directors and designers

Caused some artists to take into own hands to avoid directors

Master-slave relationship of directors

Metaphor of space: producers on top floor, artists in basement. How ranked in theater. Artists used.

Designer never allotted space in theater. No office.

Needed to end master/servant relationship, need partnership, but doesn’t work.