Theatre practitioner

Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical performances and who produces a theoretical discourse that informs their practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor, or—characteristically—often a combination of these traditionally-separate roles.

The term is not ordinarily applied to theatre-makers prior to the rise of modernism in the theatre, instead describing theatre praxis from Stanislavski's development of his 'system', through Meyerhold's biomechanics, Bertolt Brecht's epic and Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre, down to the present day, with contemporary theatre practitioners including Augusto Boal with his Theatre of the Oppressed, Dario Fo's popular theatre, Eugenio Barba's theatre anthropology and Anne Bogart's viewpoints.

Works cited

* Counsell, Colin. 1996. "Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre". London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415106436.
* McCullough, Christopher, ed. 1998. "Theatre Praxis: Teaching Drama Through Practice". New Directions in Theatre Ser. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333649966. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0312216114.
* Milling, Jane, and Graham Ley. 2001. "Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal". Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0333775422.