Peter Stein

Abstract

Peter Stein’s contribution to directors’ theatre is to have clarified the contradictions that inevitably confront a director working within the structure of a collective company today. His distinction is never to have sought to evade these contradictions but rather to have welcomed them. They have emerged in part from our account of other directors, but never so clearly as they appear in the experience of Stein. Schematically, they can be reduced to two fundamental contradictions, one internal and one external to the functioning of the theatre company. The internal contradiction is that of being the director within a democratically self-governing collective. His company, the Schaubühne, has a complex structure ensuring the maximum participation of each member in decisions of every kind. Yet Stein’s working methods are not collaborative in the same sense as Littlewood’s or Mnouchkine’s. He has always operated on the assumption that ‘scenic writing’ (the organisation by the director of action and design on stage) is as important as ‘dramatic writing’ (the playwright’s text).