Izzie Turner offers us a guide for students and teachers on the work of Katie Mitchell as a director.
Katie Mitchell is a powerhouse in the directing world. In 2008 she wrote her book, The Director's Craft (which this article will use as a common reference point). It was a hugely important contribution for creatives to refer to when tackling extreme naturalism in theatre. For students, teachers and emerging directors looking to find their own approach to rehearsals, or to understand Mitchell's process, this book offers an accessible look into the preparation and approaches of her directing.
Mitchell was born in 1964, beginning her creative career in smaller, off-West End theatres in London after graduating from Oxford, but soon began working alongside established companies such as Paines Plough and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Through her research and commitment to her craft, she is renowned for her ambitious and thought-provoking productions. What arguably makes Mitchell's work so nuanced is when she went on to develop her work in Russia, Poland and Lithuania.
She is known for her Stanislavskian approach to theatre, but she also has her own passions that she weaves into her work. Mitchell often puts a female perspective at the core of her productions, for example Alice Birch's Anatomy of a Suicide, staged at The Royal Court in 2017. More recently she has begun investigating staging productions concerning the climate crisis too, for example A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction at The Barbican in 2023. When it comes to the visuals and staging of her work, she is known for exploring the use of multi-media on stage, notably using microphones and live cinematic projections.
Her directing credits are hugely varied too, as she has staged and adapted a lot of classical texts, including the works of Chekov and Euripides, as well as working on contemporary texts, operas and revisited the controversial in-your-face-theatre of Sarah Kane. Below are a few points she discusses in The Director's Craft to help understand her approaches as a practitioner:
Rehearsal preparation
Mitchell's rehearsal preparation is extensive and thoughtful. Within the details of what she explains lies the goal to be as clear as possible about: The world of the play, character's emotions and timelines around the plot. She encourages her actors to focus on the psychology of a character, working from the inside out and reading into the subtext of the play to discover exactly what the character wants in any given moment.
A few examples of how Mitchell achieves the above:
- Writing out a detailed timeline that starts before the play begins, goes through the play until the end. This could include important events in character's lives, or things they reference in the play e.g. the death of a character's mother before the play begins.
- Making a list of things each character says about themselves and what others say about them to build a profile.
- Writing a list of non-negotiating facts within the play. What are the absolute truths that we are told?
Staging and blocking
Blocking can be tedious and aimless without the right focus, so Mitchell builds on her rehearsal preparation to bring all the details into building the world of the play with the actors in the room. Events are one of the big focuses for her. These are changes that affect everyone in the scene in a big or small way. It may be sudden or gradual. For example, all entrance and exits are events but identifying them can take a while to get the hand of. These are also referred to as units or beats in other practices. When these are identified it will give momentum to the scene for how the blocking should be explored.
A few other examples of how to approach the staging and blocking of a scene lie within the following exercises:
- Marking-up the locations where the play takes place is crucial, so the actors can begin building a world. Get them to discuss the smells, sounds and the layout of the space. If there are a lot of location changes, she suggests using bamboo sticks, or something that can be changed easily.
- There may be differing views on what the event is, or where it begins or ends. There is a simple way to keep on track: choose the event that is the most interesting to the dynamic of the play.
- When you get to the end of a scene, it is useful to improvise the off-stage events before you move on. If you don't have time, you can ask the actors to visualise what happened or ask them to talk about it with you. This helps build the life of a character for the actor.
Mitchell is a fabulous director to analyse, be inspired by and a great starting point to understand how to take the work of Stanislavski and adapt it into your own work.
Katie Mitchell in summary:
- Influenced by Stanislavski's methods
- Uses multimedia to support the set design in communicating a world and ideologies
- Passion for the female perspective and climate change
- Detailed and thoughtful script deconstruction on character's psychology, timelines and events.