Authoring Performance The Director in Contemporary Theatre

Provides a comparative approach to the internationally wide-spread phenomenon of the contemporary director- auteurin the theatre, urging a historical and theoretical exploration of the visions, methods, and stage idioms in the work of established artists. Sidiropoulou examines prominent examples of both older and more recent director-auteur work, aiming at re-asserting to its artistic and academic audience the value of balancing the established emphasis on the diegetic aspects of theatre with the ever-spreading varieties of dramatic de-"centering" and "dis-semination." This exciting work also poses questions of authorship, which necessarily imply the redefinition of the relationship between "playwright" and the director-playwright.

Avra Sidiropoulou is a lecturer at the graduate Theatre Studies program of the Open University of Cyprus. She has taught and directed at various universities and theaters internationally and is the Artistic Director of Persona Theater Company, based in Athens, Greece. She holds a PhD in the Theater of the Director-Auteur from the English Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; an M.F.A. in Directing from Columbia University; an M.Phil in American Literature from Cambridge University; and a Master's Degree in Text and Performance Studies from King's College, London. Recently, she contributed a chapter on women directors in Greece in International Women Directors (forthcoming, University of Illinois Press).

Introduction: Auteurism: New Theater for Brave New Worlds * The Rise of the Modern Auteur * Enter Artaud * Beckett’s Turbulence * Auteur On the Road * The Means As an End * Conquering Texts