Katie Mitchell: Feminist Director as Pedagogue

Abstract

An Actor Prepares relates the reciprocal dialogue between teacher–director and actor to offer a pedagogical enquiry that moves beyond methodology to focus on the learning exchange. In the first decades of the twentieth century teacher–directors, predominantly male, were responsible for developing theatrical pedagogies. In the twenty-first century, it is rare to focus on the director as pedagogue or attend to the complex learning exchange between director and actor. Furthermore, curriculums continue to be dominated by predominantly male lineages. Yet a focus on pedagogical approaches allows us to look behind methodologies, what an actor does, to consider how an actor learns. What might a gendered consideration of rehearsal practices reveal about the particular features of acting pedagogy? How do feminist interventions reconsider aspects of Stanislavski’s approach? I turn to the developed pedagogy of Katie Mitchell to examine her work as a form of écriture féminine which creates a post-Stanislavski schooling for actors. Applying a methodology for observing pedagogic practice in the rehearsal room that has been developed over four years of research I consider her approach, drawing upon two extended interviews, observations across four rehearsal processes and interviews with the actors involved. I reflect on her process through a gendered lens as an evolved form of method of physical action, which I re-orientate as a method of feminist action. The particular features of this pedagogy map Mitchell’s contribution to developing twenty-first century actor training from a feminist position.