A STUDY OF KATIE
MITCHELL
WHO IS KATIE MITCHELL?
• She is a Theatre • She has directed many plays,
Director, from such as Uncle Vanya and The
Reading in Cat In The Hat
Berkshire
• She began her career • She has been influenced
at King’s Head by practitioners, such as
Theatre in London Stanislavski and Siobhan
Davies
• She has worked for
• Her work has been
companies such as The
described as being “able
Royal Shakespeare
to polarise an audience
comapany and The Royal
like no other”
National Theatre
WHAT IS KATIE MITCHELL RESPONSIBLE FOR
AS DIRECTOR?
As a director, she is responsible for these nine key areas:
• Performers • Lighting
• Text • Sound
• Design (Set and Costume) • Music
• Movement (and Dance) • Video
• Creative
team
PRACTITIONERS WHO HAVE INFLUENCED KATIE
MITCHELL
Pina Bausch: Siobhan Davies: Contatin Stanislavski:
• She was a German Choreographer • A choreographer from London • He was a Russian Theatre
• She blended Movement, Sound • She founded the Siobhan Davies Practitioner
and Set with Performers Studios • He is well-known for focusing
• This style is now known as • She focuesed on the investigation on Naturalism and
Tanstheatre of movement within a pyschological realism
contemporary arts context
Pina Bausch Choreography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnUesmL-1CQ
Siobhan Davies Choreography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4ox8gvc-Y
WHAT ARE THE TECHNIQUES USED BY KATIE
MITCHELL?
Creating a A focus on the Biology of Use of Multimedia:
Backstory: Emotions:
• Mitchell helped her actors to • Mitchell asked her actors • Mitchell uses Multimedia
create a realisitic backstory for to enact scenes based on to support the set design
their characters primary emotions and in communicating the
• She would write timelines and themes world and themes of the
complete research to create a • She liked to focus play.
backstory for each character and particularly on fear. • She viewed the
the events in the play • She employed many multimedia as a live
• She would even meet with a devices to make the participant in the
pyschologist during the rehearsal audience experience the performance
process sometimes emotion and it’s physical • She also used it to pick
manifestations out a performer’s more
subtle details
NOW, LET’S TAKE 5 MINUTES…
I want you to write down a brief description of the backstory of your character. This is based on what you
already know upon looking at the script
Include things such as:
• Good memories from • Bad memories from
your character’s past your character’s past
• People from your • What your character used to
character’s past (Parents, do in the past (Job, school,
Siblings, etc) etc)
If you’re a part of the Production Team, I want you to write down a backstory for the events of
“Road” (What has happened in the past to lead to these events)
Afterwards, I will ask one of you to share your character’s
backstory and I will also ask you some questions about your
character as well
WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT EXERCISE?
The exercise was a demonstration of the process that Katie Mitchell went
through with her actors, in order to create a backstory for their character.
Katie Mitchell believed that by creating an in depth backstory, her
actors were able to have a greater understanding of their character’s
emotions and reasons for their actions
BIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS
When looking at particular scenes, Katie Mitchell wanted both herself
and the actors to understand the vast array of emotions that took place
within a scene, also known as looking at the “Biology of Emotions”.
This was a way of getting the audience to really experience the emotions
in the scene.
She also focussed on the Physical Manifestations of the character’s
emotions as well, as it heavily reflects what type of personality the
character has.
THINK OF A SCENE…
Think of a particular scene that contains your character and I
want to you to think about two things:
• What is your character’s primary emotion in that scene?
• How would your character display that emotion physically?
I am then going to ask two of you what you came up with for your
character…
MULTIMEDIA
Katie Mitchell was inspired by a performance she saw in Germany to use
multimedia in her productions. She would see multimedia as a live participant in the
show.
It was used by Mitchell to support the set design and communicating
setting and the themes and emotional feelings of the play
She also used it to pick out and emphasise the more subtle features of the actor’s
performance, such as facial expressions for example.
WHAT IS THE MAIN THING I HAVE LEARNT
ABOUT KATIE MITCHELL?
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT KATIE
MITCHELL?
