The Director as a Collaborator with Actors: An Inductive Method of Directing Used in Producing Commedia Dell\u27Arte

The performance goal of this creative thesis in directing was to form a company of actors who would perform in the historical theatre form of commedia dell\u27arte, a popular theatre of the Italian Renaissance. The director\u27s task was to collaborate with the actors using an inductive directing process which would place the burden of creating a viable performance on both the director and the actors. As a by-product of the directing process, the company created an original scenario used for performance. In using this directing process, the director was not to be prescriptive, telling the actors what to do. Instead, he would attempt to draw from the actors\u27 collective creativity a performance acceptable to both the director and the actors. The director reasoned that a directing method of this nature could be used for both scripted as well as non-scripted plays