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44-575: Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and producer . Along with Bertolt Brecht , he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre , a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or the production's formal beauty . Erwin Friedrich Max Piscator was born on 17 December 1893 in

88-537: A Trotskyist intellectual, slightly reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin with his cane and bowler hat. As he died, the audience heard The Internationale sung. Piscator founded the influential (though short-lived) Piscator-Bühne in Berlin in 1927. In 1928 he produced a notable adaptation of the unfinished, episodic Czech comic novel The Good Soldier Schweik . The dramaturgical collective that produced this adaptation included Bertolt Brecht. Brecht later described it as

132-528: A monumental sculpture by Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi was dedicated to Piscator in central London. In the fall of 1985, an annual Erwin Piscator Award was inaugurated in New York City, the adopted home of Piscator's widow Maria Ley. Additionally, a Piscator Prize of Honors has been annually awarded to generous patrons of art and culture in commemoration of Maria Ley since 1996. The host of

176-465: A " montage from the novel". Leo Lania 's play Konjunktur (Oil Boom) premiered in Berlin in 1928, directed by Erwin Piscator, with incidental music by Kurt Weill . Three oil companies fight over the rights to oil production in a primitive Balkan country, and in the process exploit the people and destroy the environment. Weill's songs from this play, such as Die Muschel von Margate , are still part of

220-411: 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

264-471: A late second zenith. From 1962 on, Piscator produced several works that dealt with trying to come to terms with the Germans' Nazi past and other timely issues; he inspired mnemonic and documentary theatre in those years until his death. Piscator's stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy 's novel War and Peace has been produced in some 16 countries since 1955, including three productions in New York City. In 1980,

308-465: A play "about Pope Pius XII and the allegedly neglected rescue of Italian Jews from Nazi gas chambers." Until his death in 1966, Piscator was a major exponent of contemporary and documentary theatre . Piscator's wife, Maria Ley, died in New York City in 1999. Piscator's contribution to theatre has been described by theatre historian Günther Rühle as "the boldest advance made by the German stage" during

352-518: A private Munich drama school and enrolled at University of Munich to study German , philosophy and art history . Piscator also took Arthur Kutscher 's famous seminar in theatre history , which Bertolt Brecht later also attended. Piscator began his acting career in the autumn of 1914, in small unpaid roles at the Munich Court Theatre , under the directorship of Ernst von Possart . In 1896, Karl Lautenschläger had installed one of

396-427: 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. Nollendorfplatz Nollendorfplatz (colloquially called Nolle or Nolli ) is a square in the central Schöneberg district of Berlin , Germany. The place was named on 27 November 1864 after

440-465: A specific content (the specific content, the specific message determines the means and not vice versa!) has by now become largely obscured. So we are still standing at the starting blocks. The race is not yet on ... In 1931, after the collapse of the third Piscator-Bühne, Piscator went to Moscow in order to make the motion picture Revolt of the Fishermen with actor Aleksei Dikiy , for Mezhrabpom ,

484-944: A theatre company in Berlin at the Comedy-Theater on Alte Jacobsstrasse, following the Volksbühne ("people's stage") concept. In 1922–1923 they staged works by Maxim Gorky , Romain Rolland , and Leo Tolstoy . As stage director at the Volksbühne (1924–1927), and later as managing director at his own theatre (the Piscator-Bühne on Nollendorfplatz ), Piscator produced social and political plays especially suited to his theories. His dramatic aims were utilitarian — to influence voters or clarify left-wing policies. He used mechanized sets, lectures, movies, and mechanical devices that appealed to his audiences. In 1926, his updated production of Friedrich Schiller 's The Robbers at

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528-735: 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

572-590: The Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur 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

616-666: 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

660-487: The bombing of Berlin in World War II , the square today is shaped by the rebuilt U-Bahn viaduct and the facade of the historic Neues Schauspielhaus theatre, supplemented by numerous new buildings. The adjacent area in the south around Motzstraße is Berlin's most prominent gay village and site of the annual Lesbian and Gay City Festival . Nollendorfplatz has a long history as being a gay area which dates back to

704-511: The chorus , sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that 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

748-589: The left-wing Expressionist literary magazine Die Aktion . In summer 1917, having participated in the battles at Ypres Salient and been in hospital once, he was assigned to a newly established army theatre unit. In November 1918, when the armistice was declared, Piscator participated in the November Revolution , giving a speech in Hasselt at the first meeting of a revolutionary Soldiers' Council ( Soviet ). Piscator returned to Berlin and joined

792-433: 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 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

836-528: The 20th century. Piscator's theatre techniques of the 1920s — such as the extensive use of still and cinematic projections from 1925 on, as well as complex scaffold stages — had an extensive influence on European and American production methods. His dramaturgy of contrasts led to sharp political satirical effects and anticipated the commentary techniques of epic theatre. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Piscator's interventionist theatre model enjoyed

880-787: The Erwin Piscator Award is the international non-profit organisation "Elysium − between two continents" that aims to foster artistic and academic dialogue and exchange between the United States and Europe. In 2016, a Piscator monument was erected in his birthplace of Greifenstein-Ulm. Piscator's artistic papers are held by the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin (since 1966) and the Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Morris Library, since 1971). Theatre director If

924-664: The Piscator House. After World War II and the break-up of Germany, Piscator returned to West Germany in 1951 due to McCarthy era political pressure in the United States against former communists in the arts. In 1962 Piscator was appointed manager and director of the Freie Volksbühne in West Berlin . To much international critical acclaim, in February 1963 Piscator premièred Rolf Hochhuth 's The Deputy ,

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968-817: The Soviet film company associated with the International Workers' Relief Organisation. As John Willett wrote, throughout the pre-Hitler years Piscator's "commitment to the Russian Revolution was a decisive factor in all his work." With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Piscator's stay in the Soviet Union became exile. In July 1936, Piscator left the Soviet Union for France . In 1937, he married dancer Maria Ley in Paris. Bertolt Brecht

1012-616: 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,

1056-428: The basic facts of epic, i.e. political theatre", which at that time "was still meeting with widespread rejection and misapprehension." Three decades later, Piscator said that: The justification for epic techniques is no longer disputed by anyone, but there is considerable confusion about what should be expressed by these means. The functional character of these epic techniques, in other words their inseparability from

1100-444: The distinguished Preußisches Staatstheater in Berlin provoked widespread controversy. Piscator made extensive cuts to the text and reinterpreted the play as a vehicle for his political beliefs. He presented the protagonist Karl Moor as a substantially self-absorbed insurgent. As Moor's foil, Piscator made the character of Spiegelberg, often presented as a sinister figure, the voice of the working-class revolution. Spiegelberg appeared as

1144-406: 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 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

1188-696: 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

1232-439: The modern repertoire of art music. In 1929 Piscator published his The Political Theatre , discussions of the theory of theatre . In the preface to its 1963 edition, Piscator wrote that the book was "assembled in hectic sessions during rehearsals for The Merchant of Berlin " by Walter Mehring , which had opened on 6 September 1929 at the second Piscator-Bühne. It was intended to provide "a definitive explanation and elucidation of

1276-722: The newly formed Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He left briefly for Königsberg , where he joined the Tribunal Theatre. He participated in several expressionist plays and played the student, Arkenholz, in the Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg . He joined Hermann Schüller in establishing the Proletarian Theatre, Stage of the Revolutionary Workers of Greater Berlin . In collaboration with writer Hans José Rehfisch , Piscator formed

1320-420: 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 , 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

1364-488: The role of director (or stage manager or pageant master ) considerable importance. A miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 (pictured) bears one of 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

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1408-530: The small Prussian village of Greifenstein-Ulm , the son of Carl Piscator, a merchant, and his wife Antonia Laparose. His family was descended from Johannes Piscator , a Protestant theologian who produced an important translation of the Bible in 1600. The family moved to the university town Marburg in 1899 where Piscator attended the Gymnasium Philippinum . In the autumn of 1913, he attended

1452-668: 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 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

1496-529: The structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies. Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece , 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

1540-560: The theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, became 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

1584-536: 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

1628-526: The turn of the 20th century, perpetuated by The Berlin Stories of Christopher Isherwood , the writings of W. H. Auden , Klaus Mann , and many others. Within the gay community this part of Berlin is most famous for its leather and darkroom bars. It also plays a little role in the musical Cabaret by Joe Masteroff as the home of some of the characters. A memorial plaque at the U-Bahn station commemorates

1672-544: The village of Nollendorf ( Czech : Nakléřov ) near Petrovice in the present-day Czech Republic, a site of the 1813 Battle of Kulm where the united forces of the Sixth Coalition defeated a French army under Dominique Vandamme . The victorious Prussian troops were led by General Friedrich von Kleist , who in turn was elevated to a "Count of Nollendorf" by King Frederick William III . The adjacent Kleiststraße leads from Nollendorfplatz to Wittenbergplatz in

1716-596: The west. The extended square was laid out according to the Hobrecht-Plan of 1862, then part of a larger road link from Charlottenburg through Schöneberg to the Berlin district of Kreuzberg in the manner of a Parisian boulevard, named after victorious Prussian generals (therefore colloquially called Generalszug in German ). During the Wilhelmine era, in 1902, the first Berlin U-Bahn line ( Stammstrecke )

1760-483: The world's first revolving stages in that theatre. During the First World War , Piscator was drafted into the German army , serving in a frontline infantry unit as a Landsturm soldier from the spring of 1915 (and later as a signaller ). The experience inspired a hatred of militarism and war that lasted for the rest of his life. He wrote a few bitter poems that were published in 1915 and 1916 in

1804-598: Was inaugurated, which ran under Kleiststraße up to the elevated railway at Nollendorfplatz station , built according to plans designed by Cremer & Wolffenstein architects. During the Weimar Republic , the well-known gay nightclub Eldorado was located on Motzstraße . During 1932, the club was seized by the Nazis and used as the Sturmabteilung (SA) headquarters. This area was severely damaged by

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1848-473: 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

1892-633: Was invited by Alvin Johnson , the founding president of The New School , to establish a theatre workshop. Among Piscator's students at this Dramatic Workshop in New York were Bea Arthur , Harry Belafonte , Marlon Brando , Tony Curtis , Ben Gazzara , Judith Malina , Walter Matthau , Rod Steiger , Elaine Stritch , Eli Wallach , Jack Creley , and Tennessee Williams . Established in New York, Erwin and Maria Ley-Piscator lived at 17 East 76th Street, an Upper East Side townhome, sometimes remembered as

1936-487: Was one of the groomsmen. During his years in Berlin, Piscator had collaborated with Lena Goldschmidt on a stage adaptation of Theodore Dreiser 's bestselling novel An American Tragedy ; under the title The Case of Clyde Griffiths . With American Lee Strasberg as director, it had run for 19 performances on Broadway in 1936. When Piscator and Ley subsequently immigrated to the United States in 1939, Piscator

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