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Fifty Key Theatre Directors. Edited by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova. New York: Routledge, 2005; pp. xviii + 286. $22.95 paper.
Scholars writing about directors often focus on those whom they consider to be the great figures in the field; or, as David Richard Jones says in Great Directors at Work, "monarchs of the profession" (1). While a good number of these renowned directors' careers have been suitably recognized, many other significant artists, who are less well known, have not garnered the recognition they deserve. Fortunately, Fifty Key Theatre Directors, a new addition in the Routledge Key Guide series, goes some way toward rectifying this oversight.
With this study, editors Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevtsova offer a collection of short essays by eighteen scholars that provides a broader representation of directors and their variant crafts while at the same time giving its subjects more in-depth treatment than the typical biographical dictionary. Although many well-known "monarchs" are featured among its pages, the editors also include many more obscure (though equally noteworthy) figures. Throughout, they make room for the collaborator as well as the single-minded visionary, the democrat as well as the autocrat.
Miner and Shevtsova leave their selection...