‘The Thrill of Doing it Live’: Devising and Performing Katie Mitchell’s International ‘Live Cinema’ Productions

Abstract

This chapter focuses on some of Mitchell’s contemporary productions in the German-speaking theatre to discuss how novels are adapted into ‘live cinema’ as an intermedial practice. Through observation of rehearsal, the discussion assesses how Mitchell and her team not only devise the film, projected above stage level, but also the action required to shoot it as a live performance incorporating moving cameras. Mitchell’s work is, I suggest, simultaneously performed, adaptive process, and re-rendered outcome. There are, though, identifiable shifts in Mitchell’s rehearsal and performance choices from older work, affecting acting process, spectator engagement through an increased emphasis on the filmic, and how Mitchell’s multimedia devising may be complicated as an adaptive, authorial practice.