The Question of Skill

Directing and Acting in Contemporary Theatre

The Question of Skill cover

Description

The Question of Skill offers a re-thinking of how theatre-making might be understood as a skilled craft and process, exploring how contemporary, professional contexts allow skill to emerge in a multitude of ways, often as a result of collective knowledge and collaboration.

The book argues that notions of skill tend to be uncritically accepted to suggest abilities that are learnt and applied or associated with a particular and stable set of techniques. But skill is, instead, never a neutral term but suggests processes, values and systems.

This study covers topics such as training, rehearsing and performing with a focus on the roles of the actor and director. As well as interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, especially drawn from cognitive studies, it also discusses examples of skill as virtuosic performance.

Throughout, the book draws on first-hand observations of international contemporary theatre-makers in rehearsal and performance, including the contemporary work of Katie Mitchell, Anne Bogart, Odin Teatret, the RSC, the National Theatre, and Encounter Productions. As well as diverse training, rehearsal and performance contexts, it includes Fevered Sleep's Men & Girls Dance (2016), Simon Stone's Phaedra (National Theatre, 2023) and Jan Fabre's Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy (2015). It probes how theatre is made as an always skilled, human endeavour, and, in a post-Covid age, what the future may bring.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Question of Skill
Chapter 1: Training
Chapter 2: Skill and rehearsal
Chapter 3: Skill in performance
Chapter 4: Display and the virtuosic
Chapter 5: The future of skill
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Explore Methuen Drama
Published 02 Oct 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 256
ISBN 9781350300279
Imprint Methuen Drama
Illustrations 12 bw
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Adam J. Ledger

Adam Ledger is Professor of Theatre and Performanc…

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