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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...