This week I focused on my research and learning about Katie Mitchell and her influences.
Here is some of what I learned:
Kate Mitchell Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King’s Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.
In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now-defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.
One of the sources that I investigated this week was an interview for Oxford, in which she explained her past and how she has pursued theatre in the midst of the pandemic. I learned that Mitchell has strong influences on visual art, as she originally wanted to a painter. Along with this, she is more fascinated with theatre abroad as she thought they were more diverse and less traditional. This mindset is actually a reaction to the events surrounding her childhood, particularly during 1974, where Peter Brooks was a prominent figure, along with tensions on driving out European influence in theatre
In this following week, I hope to learn more about her theories and find an aspect of theatre I would like to use in my solo project
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