The Theatre of Rupert Goold: Radical Approaches to Adaptation and New Writing
- Submitting institution
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The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- SGRO2
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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10.5040/9781350090767
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- ISBN
- 9781350090767
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
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- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘The Theatre of Rupert Goold: Radical Approaches to Adaptation and New Writing’ is an 80,000-word monograph and the first extensive study of the British theatre director Rupert Goold’s work. It provides insights into the director’s creative process rooted in a multi-layered investigation spanning five years. It draws on a range of research methodologies, including Grochala’s first-hand observation of the genesis of key productions — ‘The Effect’ (2012), ‘American Psycho’ (2016) and ‘The Hunt’ (2019), as well as auto-ethnographic reflection on her own contribution to the programming and circulation of Goold’s work with Headlong Theatre as an Associate Artist with the company (2012–16). This ‘insider’ knowledge gave Grochala unparalleled access to Goold’s collaborators, further shaping the methodological approach of the book, which draws on 39-hours of extensive interviews, not only with Goold, but with twenty-six of his collaborators — playwrights, designers, actors and other creatives. By comparing different accounts of Goold’s creative process and contextualising them in relation to important supplementary materials — press reviews and interviews, script-annotated DSM prompt books, stage-management, production and rehearsal notes, and archival footage of performances, drawn from sources held in archives such as Wiltshire Creative, Northampton Royal and Derngate, Headlong, the RSC and the V&A — Grochala’s research offers the most comprehensive and in-depth critical examination of Goold’s working methods to-date. It fundamentally challenges standard assumptions that position Goold as an auteur, showing how critical reception of the work tends to overlook the profoundly collective nature of his methods. It argues, instead, for an understanding of Goold’s directorial practice as more radically founded in collaboration and evidences this by interrogating the creative process in terms of the collective efforts of the cast and design teams that shape his productions. In this respect, it offers a distinctive account of creative agency in contemporary British theatre.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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