KATIE MITCHELL

THE WOMAN, THE

MYTH, THE
LEGEND
The social, cultural and historical context in which the practitioner is/was working

•Katie Mitchell is female, British theatre director, born in 1964. She attended Oxford University, becoming President of the
University's Drama Society. She was able to study director training in many countries across Europe, such as Poland,
Georgia and Lithuania, in which she saw emphasis on the construction of behaviour to attend to time, place, intention
and obstacle. She has been creating theatre since 2008, and still works in present day, so she is a modern day practitioner.
Her works are influential, exploring outspoken feminist themes, which evoke many different responses by critics and the
public. In her theatre, Mitchell is known for her naturalistic, Stanislavskian approach to performance, which was
influenced by her time in Eastern Europe in her early career. She is clearly influenced by radicalism, pro Europeanism, her
gender and feminist attitude, which she states is in 'every inch of her work'. She focuses on the female perspective in her
theatre productions due to her feminist attitude and her desire to retell old stories from a feminist perspective to change
the response of the audience. This is shown in her feminist retelling of Hamlet, performed in 2016, from the female
perspective of Hamlet's daughter Ophelia, freed from Hamlet, which is clearly influenced by her own feminist views.
•
Theatrical purpose and practice
• Mitchell is not interested in creating conventional pieces of theatre with neatly defined beginning, middle and
ends. This is shown in her remake of Virginia Woolf's 'The Waves', where she intended to theatrically mimic
Woolf's stream of consciousness style of writing and place 'thought' on stage. To convey this, Mitchell created a
new language of theatre with her company, and used dance, sound and video to capture the inside of people's
minds. Through her productions, she hopes to put so much on stage that the audience is allowed to choose which
character to follow and 'how much magic to believe in.' Her mission is also to create different relationships with
the audience through her different pieces, with some creating challenging and uncomfortable relationships, and
others creating honest, intimate relationships. Her desire to influence in her work is demonstrated here when she
says: “I don’t believe in art for art’s sake,” she says. “That leads to vanity. The fundamental question one should
ask oneself is ‘What is my place of responsibility in the world community?’”
 Artistic
intentions

It could be said that Katie Mitchell's intention in

her theatre is to provoke heated debate and
create strong reactions. This is because of her
innovative, feminist approach to her work, and
recontextualising classics, which result in many
people being outraged, accusing her of 'smashing
up the classics', however with others being
devoted to her work. Her artistic intentions for
most of her works is to shift attention from the
male characters onto the experience of the female
characters, as the habit of audience is to look for
meaning in the male characters. She does this
through her use of live cinema, helping to focus in
on female interiority.
Innovative nature of their approach

Katie Mitchell's most innovative way of working is her use of multimedia and fragmenting the stage picture. In her
theatre, the camera becomes a live participant, with almost the same status as an actor on stage. Her use of projection
onto a screen that hangs above the stage allows focus on small details and give significance to elements that might
originally be overlooked. Mitchell’s work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the
stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television, and also incorporated
opera into some of her pieces, exploring live music.
Over the past decade Mitchell has created works in which performers use and manipulate cameras to project images onto
screens. Her first foray into multi-media work such as this was Waves, a stage version of Virginia Woolf’s novel for the
National Theatre, in 2006. However, Katie Mitchell has attracted criticism for some of the methods she employs, mainly
the way in which she takes total artistic control over every aspect of the play. This means that she also takes control of the
script, sometimes re-writing it completely, leaving her with many critics saying she has a 'disregard for the text'.
Images of multimedia in her
work
Working methods
• Even before her rehearsal, Katie Mitchell chiefly takes long and intensive psychological investigations into the characters,
deconstructing the text and taking an influence from Stanislavsky at analysing the characters in massive depth before the
production. She does this by organising facts and discoveries into lists of facts and questions. She says that ’organising
information like this encourages you to hold an objective relationship to the material and inhibits premature attempts to
interpret the play’. She then uses these facts and questions to make character profiles about each character, further exploring
them and allowing the actors to get a clear, deep analysis of their character. She also believes in building a relationship with each
part of her production team, spending time together 'establishing a common language’, working with them simultaneously with
the actors, allowing for a cohesive cast and production team. During rehearsals, she really gets to know her cast well, working
closely with them to establish the world that their characters are in.
Her depth in exploring the work before she performs it is shown in this quote from her construction of ‘The Seagull’, after receiving
criticism.
• “A lot of very careful thought went into understanding the material Chekhov had written; there were hours of labour, very seriously
intended.
Theatrical style and use of conventions

•Mitchell takes on a naturalistic style in her productions, which is added to by her use of multimedia, allowing for the
audience to focus on specified details of her choosing, with the use of filming on stage, or projecting on to a screen. This
also helps to fragment the stage picture and allow the audience to focus on the part of their choosing. Her naturalistic
style is shown in her set, with her using detailed and life-like sets, often decaying or historical buildings with domestic
rooms, with electrical ceiling lights and large windows. Furthermore, the costume she chooses are very life like - giving
the impression they are real clothes, not theatrical, as is the lighting which is very naturalistic, representing natural light
from windows and practical lights. The light levels are set to be very low, representing more life like light, in contrast to
bright theatrical lights that are usually used in theatre productions. In her production of Waves, Mitchell used sound
artists hidden behind the scenes to make the sound become visible and tangible, immersing the audience into the
daydream-like play. Naturalism is shown in her play the Seagull, where the clamour of everyday life is shown on stage in
combination to the naturalistic lighting and set to create the almost surreal feel to the piece.
Theatrical style and
use of conventions
Collaboration with/influence on
other practitioners

• Katie Mitchell has had a multitude of influence on other

practitioners, with her innovative approach being loved by many.
An example of that is Ivo Van Hove, who was influenced by
Mitchell to use multimedia in his production, but also by the actor
as an ensemble member, where you see her influence most
strongly. This means he has a regular ensemble that always
perform together, with different actors taking on different sized
roles in each production.
• She is very clearly influenced by Stanislavsky in her naturalistic
work, gained when she went to study in Russia in her early career.