“A Beginner’s Guide to Directing Theatre” by Robert Marsden

2025

Available to buy here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/beginners-guide-to-directing-theatre-9781350370517/ plus Amazon and Waterstones and others!

My latest book aims to be an accessible guide to the theatre directing process of text-based theatre, from the choice of the play through to an encounter with an audience.

Moving from how to choose a play to the opening night, A Beginner’s Guide to Directing Theatre takes the reader, via a step-by-step approach, through various techniques, practitioners, methodologies and exercises that could be applied to text-based theatre.

Through doing so, the reader explores:

– The differences between directing (the approach) and the director (the role), how that crosses over and ways to navigate this
– A range of practices, methodologies and techniques for the differing and diverse styles, genres, playwrights and movements. i.e. the ‘what’ of directing
– How to create inclusive, safe and diverse practices of casting and rehearsal methods


From here, readers will be able to know which practitioners and directing methodologies they may wish to employ and will understand where to head next.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: Introduction to directing
– What is directing?
– How this book is set out
– The role of the director: what is directing?
– The rise of the director
– Directing without the director
– Creativity, breakthroughs and building blocks
– Rehearsal and production analyses

PART TWO: Stages of directing
– Stage One: Choosing and establishing
– Stage Two: Creating and forming
– Stage Three: Building and Encouraging
– Stage Four: Shaping and layering – the final stages
– Stage Five: Delivering and entrusting

PART THREE: Interviews with leading theatre directors
– Tamara Harvey
– Holly Race Roughan
– Josie Rourke
– Roy Alexander Weise