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Joan (Maud) Littlewood |
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Perhaps playmaker would be a better word than playwright or dramatist to describe Joan Littlewood, but certainly the word director is not adequate. In the cinema it is taken for granted that often the director not only collaborates with the writer but originates some of the crucial ideas and molds the film in such a way that the script, instead of determining the shape, must be accommodated in the spaces that are left for it. In the post-World War II theater, some directors, such as Mike Leigh, have evolved ways of working with actors which make the script into a by-product of improvisational rehearsal with professional performance being the main product, while other directors, such as Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor, have yoked the creativity of actors to scenarios in which the stage picture is usually more important than the words. Joan Littlewood has an important place in the growth of this theatrical counter tradition which has demoted the writer from having sole control over the spoken word.
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