Authoring Performance The Director in Contemporary Theatre

Providing a comparative approach to the internationally wide-spread phenomenon of the contemporary director-auteur in the theatre, Authoring Performance urges 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 "dissemination." 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 Lecturer of Theatre Arts at the Open University of Cyprus. She is a stage director, playwright, theatre scholar, and artistic director of Persona Theater Company, based in Athens, Greece. She holds a PhD in the Theatre of the Director-Auteur from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and has studied at Columbia University, Cambridge University, and King's College, London, UK.

Introduction: Auteurism: A New Theatre for a Changed Perception of the World
1. The Rise of the Modern Auteur
2. Enter Artaud
3. Beckett's Turbulence
4. Auteur on the Road
5. The Means as an End
6. Conquering Texts
Afterword
Appendix: Six Case Studies