Directing

In the early 20th century, some playwrights began writing anti-realistic dramas in reaction against the prevailing realistic style, and these dramas required new scenic and acting styles. British actor and theoretician Edward Gordon Craig proposed a virtually mechanical theatre where the director controlled every aspect of the performance, much as a puppet-master. Craig's extreme and novel vision, which diminished the actor's previously exalted role, greatly appealed to avant-garde directors of the 1920s, such as Max Reinhardt of Germany and Vsevolod Meyerhold of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The notion that the stage director, and not the writer or leading performers, was the creative source of theatrical entertainment grew throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as audiences and critics came to recognize the artistic authority of the director in the new art form of film-making. At the same time, the work of leading ensemble theatre companies was defined by the imaginative and stylistic precision of their directors. During this time, pioneering directors, inspired by Stanislavski, Meyerhold, and Reinhardt, dominated the stages of Europe and North America, and influenced the silver screen. These directors included Evgeni Vakhtangov, Alexander Tairov, and Nikolai Okhlopkov in Moscow (USSR); Erwin Piscator in Berlin; Jacques Copeau and Antonin Artaud in Paris; and George Abbott, Lee Strasberg, Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, and Rouben Mamoulian in New York.

A new generation of theatre directors arose after the end of World War II. Among the best-known and innovative of these directors are Joan Littlewood and Peter Brook; Roger Planchon and Ariane Mnouchkine; Bertolt Brecht and Peter Stein; Yukio Ninagawa; Jerzy Grotowski; Andrei Serban; Yuri Lyubimov; and Harold Clurman, Harold Prince, Julian Beck, Joseph Chaikin, José Quintero, and Julie Taymor. By the end of the 20th century the director was among the most respected of arts professionals, and individuals such as Sir Peter Hall have received national honours for their work.