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34-602: Matthew Xia (born 1982) is a British theatre director , DJ (under the name DJ Excalibah), composer , broadcaster and journalist . Xia was born to a Scottish and English mother and Jamaican father in Waltham Forest , London , and was raised in Leytonstone and Newham . Xia's interest in theatre was encouraged when he joined the Theatre Royal Stratford East youth theatre. As

68-598: A Welsh theatre and Alexandra Burke stated in an interview "My mum used to buy The Stage all the time for auditions for me. That's how I got to go on [BBC TV talent show] Star for a Night with Jane McDonald ." Olivier Award-winning actor Sharon D. Clarke found her first role at Battersea Arts Centre through an audition advert in the paper. Lisa Scott-Lee revealed that pop band Steps were formed through an advert in The Stage . Sir Michael Caine stated in an interview with Steve Wright on BBC Radio 2 that at

102-411: A graduate programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their three-year residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques. As with many other professions in the performing arts, theatre directors would often learn their skills "on

136-744: A play after applying to a job ad in the paper. Harold Pinter gained his first job after responding to an advert and Kenneth Branagh landed the lead in The Billy Trilogy , in the BBC Play for Today series, after it was advertised in the paper. The creation of Internationalist Theatre was first announced in the Stage editorial in April 1981. Ricky Tomlinson responded to an ad for United Kingdom , another Play for Today , in 1981 and Sandi Toksvig landed her first television job playing

170-515: A show has opened (premiered before a regular audience), theatre directors are generally considered to have fulfilled their function. From that point forward the stage manager is left in charge of all essential concerns. The Stage The Stage is a British weekly newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry and particularly theatre. Founded in 1880, The Stage contains news, reviews, opinion, features, and recruitment advertising, mainly directed at those who work in theatre and

204-617: A video audition function. In May 2019, The Stage partnered with the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation and UK Theatre to launch Get Into Theatre, a website dedicated to theatre careers. In 1956, writer John Osborne submitted his script for Look Back in Anger in response to an advertisement by the soon-to-be-relaunched Royal Court Theatre . Dusty Springfield responded to an advertisement for female singers in 1958. Idris Elba got his first acting role in

238-665: A young actor he appeared in Tube Tale's Mouth directed by Armando Iannucci . Xia was on the Board at the Theatre Royal Stratford East for 10 years, as well as being Associate Director there in 2009/2010. Work here includes: I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky , Mad Blud , Re:Definition , Da Boyz (also musical director and composer), and as co-director Aladdin , Cinderella and The Blacks (also musical director and composer). Xia

272-463: Is also sometimes used to mean a stage director, most commonly in ballet . A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène . Post World War II , the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, became

306-735: Is an art form that has grown with the development of theatre theory and theatre practice. With the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices. Interpretation of the drama, by the late twentieth century, had become central to the director's work. Relativism and psychoanalytic theory influenced the work of innovative directors such as Peter Brook , Ingmar Bergman , Peter Stein , and Giorgio Strehler . Kimberly Senior, director of Disgraced on Broadway, explains her role as director by saying “I get to take things that were previously in one dimension and put them into three dimensions using my imagination and intellect and people skills.” Once

340-697: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe . In 2004, 96-year-old contributor Simon Blumenfeld was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest weekly newspaper columnist. The column continued until shortly before his death in 2005. The Stage Awards were launched in 2010. They are given annually and recognise outstanding organisations working in theatre and beyond in the following categories: London theatre, regional theatre, producer, school, fringe theatre, theatre building, unsung hero and international. In August 2013, The Stage launched The Stage Castings, an online casting service with

374-666: The Yale School of Drama produced a number of pioneering directors with D.F.A. (Doctor of Fine Arts) and M.F.A. degrees in Drama (rather than English) who contributed to the expansion of professional resident theaters in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major thesis production in the third (final) year. At the University of California, Irvine , Keith Fowler (a Yale D.F.A. and ex-producer of two LORT companies) led for many years

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408-616: The Stage: From Naturalism to Growtowski , and Will's The Director in a Changing Theatre (1976). Because of the relatively late emergence of theatre directing as a performing arts profession when compared with for instance acting or musicianship, a rise of professional vocational training programmes in directing can be seen mostly in the second half of the 20th century. Most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at drama schools or conservatoires , or at universities. In Britain,

442-456: The UK. His other broadcast work includes BBC Radio 1 , 6Music and Radio 4 . Xia has written for The Stage , Hip Hop Connection , The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian . Theatre director If the production is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director may also work with the playwright or a translator. In contemporary theatre, after the playwright ,

476-454: The birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays. Actors were generally semi-professionals, and the director oversaw the mounting of plays from the writing process all the way through to their performance, often acting in them too, as Aeschylus for example did. The author-director would also train the chorus , sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that

510-406: The director is generally the principle visionary, making decisions on the artistic conception and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies. Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece ,

544-563: The director was called didaskalos , the Greek word for "teacher," indicates that the work of these early directors combined instructing their performers with staging their work. In medieval times, the complexity of vernacular religious drama, with its large scale mystery plays that often included crowd scenes, processions and elaborate effects, gave the role of director (or stage manager or pageant master ) considerable importance. A miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 (pictured) bears one of

578-504: The earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, the proceedings of the staging of a dramatization of the Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia . According to Fouquet, the director's tasks included overseeing the erecting of a stage and scenery (there were no permanent, purpose-built theatre structures at this time, and performances of vernacular drama mostly took place in

612-696: The job"; to this purpose, theatres often employ trainee assistant directors or have in-house education schemes to train young theatre directors. Examples are the Royal National Theatre in London , which frequently organizes short directing courses, or the Orange Tree Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse on London's West End , which both employ resident assistant directors on a one-year basis for training purposes. Directing

646-637: The lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ) got his first professional job, working on a cruise ship, through a recruitment ad in the paper. Television presenter Ben Shephard auditioned for GMTV children's show Diggit following an advert in The Stage . While he did not get the part, he met Andi Peters , who subsequently hired him for the Channel 4 youth strand T4 . Charles Dance landed his first role in

680-432: The norm rather than the exception. Great forces in the emancipation of theatre directing as a profession were notable 20th-century theatre directors like Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , Vsevolod Meyerhold , Yevgeny Vakhtangov , Michael Chekhov , Yuri Lyubimov (Russia), Orson Welles , Peter Brook , Peter Hall (Britain), Bertolt Brecht (Germany), Giorgio Strehler , and Franco Zeffirelli (Italy). A cautionary note

714-412: The open air), casting and directing the actors (which included fining them for those that infringed rules), and addressing the audience at the beginning of each performance and after each intermission. From Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the actor-manager . This would usually be a senior actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing

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748-620: The part of Ethel in No. 73 after answering an ad in The Stage . Television presenter Maggie Philbin won her first major role, as a co-presenter of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop , after answering an advertisement in The Stage . A number of pop groups have recruited all or some of their members through advertisements placed in the newspaper, most notably the Spice Girls in 1994, Scooch in 1998 and 5ive in 1997. Lee Mead (the actor who won BBC One talent show Any Dream Will Do to gain

782-443: The performing arts. The first edition of The Stage was published (under the title The Stage Directory – a London and Provincial Theatrical Advertiser ) on 1 February 1880 at a cost of three old pence for twelve pages. Publication was monthly until 25 March 1881, when the first weekly edition was produced. At the same time, the name was shortened to The Stage and the publication numbering restarted at number 1. The publication

816-620: The price of the paper to one penny ; soon it became the only remaining title in the field. The newspaper has remained in family ownership. Upon the death in 1937 of Charles Carson's son Lionel, who had assumed the joint role of managing director and editor, control passed to the Comerford family. In 1959, the newspaper was renamed The Stage and Television Today , incorporating the Television Today pull-out supplement dedicated to broadcasting news and features. Derek Hoddinott, who

850-543: The repertoire of work, staging it and managing the company. This was the case for instance with Commedia dell'Arte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber and David Garrick . The modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen . The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on

884-695: The role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, and Germany would provide a platform for a generation of emerging visionary theatre directors, such as Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt . Simultaneously, Constantin Stanislavski , principally an actor-manager, would set up the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur

918-536: The tradition that theatre directors emerge from degree courses (usually in English literature) at the Oxbridge universities has meant that for a long time, professional vocational training did not take place at drama schools or performing arts colleges, although an increase in training programmes for theatre directors can be witnessed since the 1970s and 1980s. In American universities, the seminal directing program at

952-746: Was Associate Artistic Director at the Manchester Royal Exchange where he directed the Bruntwood Award-winning Wish List by Katherine Soper, Stephen Sondheim 's Into the Woods and Frankenstein adapted by April de Angelis . Xia was a member of the panel of judges for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2017 alongside: Alfred Enoch , Lucy Prebble , Russell T. Davies , Lyndsey Turner , Michael Oglesby , Phil Porter , and chair Kirsty Lang . He

986-611: Was Associate Director of the Everyman's opening ceremony. In 2013, he won the Young Vic ’s Genesis Future Director award with his production of Sizwe Banzi is Dead , which sold out its six-week run at the Young Vic and was then followed by a six-week national tour. He also directed the revival of Joe Penhall 's Blue/Orange for the Young Vic in 2015 starring David Haig , Daniel Kaluuya and Luke Norris . From 2014 to 2017 he

1020-696: Was a founding member of Act For Change , a trustee for Artistic Directors of the Future and has served on the boards of Rich Mix (2008-2012) and Creative Futures. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme bursary and took up the post as Director in Residence at the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Theatres, where he directed the premiere of Daniel Matthew's Scrappers and

1054-560: Was a joint venture between founding editor Charles Lionel Carson and business manager Maurice Comerford. It operated from offices opposite the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane . Carson, whose real name was Lionel Courtier-Dutton, was cited as the founder. His wife Emily Courtier Dutton later founded several theatrical charities. The Stage entered a crowded market, with many other theatre titles (including The Era ) in circulation. Undercutting their rivals, Carson and Comerford dropped

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1088-531: Was also a judge for the 2017 Alfred Fagon Award . Formerly a DJ on BBC Radio 1Xtra where he presented his show, 'Tales From the Legend' until 2005, in 2012 during the parade at the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony , he presented a mix of global music along with DJ Walde and Goldierocks . He has DJed at the Glastonbury Festival , Ministry of Sound , Fabric and clubs across Europe and

1122-473: Was introduced by the famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said "the only way to learn how to direct a play, is ... to get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, and direct." A number of seminal works on directing and directors include Toby Cole and Helen Krich's 1972 Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modern Theatre , Edward Braun's 1982 book The Director and

1156-454: Was the existing TV editor of The Stage , was retitled as editor of the Television Today supplement. The overall name and pull-out supplement remained until 1995, when broadcasting coverage was re-incorporated into the main paper. The name on the masthead reverted to The Stage , but in 2006, the paper introduced a blog concentrating on television, named TV Today . From 1995, the newspaper has awarded The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence at

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