The Brome Project

Extract from 'Directing Brome' ...

Working with Brome’s plays over a period of nearly four years, I often found myself wondering about my own role in the workshops. The brief was challenging and highly unusual, if not unique. From the outset it posed fascinating questions about the function of the director. Although I brought to the work extensive experience of directing theatre and running numerous theatre workshops with young people and adults, I had never undertaken anything quite like this. Directors often come to a play with a ‘vision’, embarking on a rehearsal process with a strong sense of how the play works for them and with an ‘interpretation’ of it. In some cases that interpretation may well be an imposition on the text, but even directors with the lightest of touches, who approach rehearsals as a process of genuine exploration, know what has drawn them to the play; they are likely to want to share their own responses to it, hoping that realising it in the theatre will reveal these aspects to others. Here, in the Brome Project, it was clear from the outset that interpretation, in the sense of a clear directorial line, was not only inappropriate, but highly undesirable. The brief was to tease out possibilities...

To read the rest of this essay go to Directing Brome

For further information about the project, see The Brome Online Project