Reviewed by: Directing in Musical Theatre: An Essential Guide by Joe Deer Kevin Calcamp Directing in Musical Theatre: An Essential Guide. By Joe Deer . Abingdon, UK : Routledge , 2014 ; pp. 288 . In Directing in Musical Theatre, Joe Deer offers a new textbook option for graduate and undergraduate courses that provides a comprehensive, articulate, and thorough account of how to effectively navigate the role of the director for a musical. Although it is geared toward musical theatre, this book will benefit any beginning director because it describes the roles and functions in a methodical, step-by-step process. Actors and designers may also benefit from Deer’s reflections and perspectives on the process of creating musical theatre. He astutely divides his book into the five phases of the director’s process: conception, collaboration, rehearsal, production, and performance. This approach allows for a chronological unfolding of the pragmatic steps a director takes when creating a musical, and a systematic approach for preparation and rehearsal. The book concludes with a wonderful series of appendices that provide sample documents, timetables, questionnaires, and a glossary of useful stage terms. Storytelling is the thematic core prevalent throughout the text. Deer emphasizes the director as storyteller in phase 1, “Conception.” There are two chapters here, “Preparing for Collaboration” and “Imagining the Chorus.” As is the case with all the chapters in the book, they are divided into smaller units. Each phase begins with a comprehensive timetable that guides the reader temporally through the production process. In “Preparing for Collaboration,” the author provides a detailed breakdown on how to gauge first impressions, perform script and character analyses, and establish and articulate style. He shrewdly clarifies that in storytelling, it is respectable and sometimes necessary to invoke the spirit of a prior production, but warns against copying or plagiarizing the work of other artists. In the next chapter, Deer highlights the chorus as storyteller and emphasizes its function as spectacle and as characters. The director is one of many storytellers in the production process. In phase 2, “Collaboration,” the author emphasizes the collaborative art of storytelling. Chapters on “Collaborative Partners” and “Directing the Design” encourage the director to be a collaborator and illuminate how to effectively communicate and share ideas. “Collaborative Partners” explores the functions of the choreographer, the musical director, and the designers, as well as how to work collaboratively with each and how to enable them to bring their skills, talents, and ideas to the table as co-interpreters. In “Directing the Design,” Deer accentuates the need to share your passion, clearly articulate your ideas, and to be open to and respect the ideas of the other artists whose work forms a portion of the whole. Deer transitions from his consideration of the collaborative processes to the realities of the rehearsal process in phase 3, “Rehearsal.” The two chapters in this section, “Auditions” and “Staging and Coaching,” assist the director in how to effectively tell a story with the actors. “Auditions” reviews the process for conducting a musical theatre audition. The author provides tips and suggestions to help make the process flow effortlessly. For example, to address the issue of multiracial and color-blind casting, Deer suggests that the director must first honor the character and the musical as a whole by asking two questions: Whether or not race or gender matter in the role? What might deviating from the traditional casting model do for or against the production? He encourages the director to make the choice that best serves the story. After casting, the rehearsal process begins, and Deer helpfully reminds the reader that staging a musical is not the same as staging a play. In “Staging and Coaching,” he stresses that the most important part of the musical is its songs, and it is here that staging and choreography must coalesce to both keep the heart of the show alive and pump life into the rest of the production. Staging, blocking, and coaching represent methods of storytelling that the director must use throughout the rehearsal process. Deer emphasizes the continued role of the director as storyteller as he moves from the rehearsal into phase 4, “Production,” which overviews the process from technical rehearsals to the final...