The Question of Skill: Directing and Acting in Contemporary Theatre

The Question of Skill offers a re-thinking of how theatre-making might be understood as a skilled craft and process, exploring how contemporary, professional contexts allow skill to emerge in a multitude of ways, often as a result of collective knowledge and collaboration.

The book argues that notions of skill tend to be uncritically accepted to suggest abilities that are learnt and applied or associated with a particular and stable set of techniques. But skill is, instead, never a neutral term but suggests processes, values and systems.

This study covers topics such as training, rehearsing and performing with a focus on the roles of the actor and director. As well as interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, especially drawn from cognitive studies, it also discusses examples of skill as virtuosic performance.

Throughout, the book draws on first-hand observations of international contemporary theatre-makers in rehearsal and performance, including the contemporary work of Katie Mitchell, Anne Bogart, Odin Teatret, the RSC, the National Theatre, and Encounter Productions. As well as diverse training, rehearsal and performance contexts, it includes Fevered Sleep’s Men & Girls Dance (2016), Simon Stone’s Phaedra (National Theatre, 2023) and Jan Fabre’s Mount Olympus: To Glorify the Cult of Tragedy (2015). It probes how theatre is made as an always skilled, human endeavour, and, in a post-Covid age, what the future may bring.

Adam Ledger is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has published widely on directing, rehearsal, and acting, including The Director and Directing: Craft, Process and Aesthetic in Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Odin Teatret: Theatre in a New Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and a major, co-authored book section on Eugenio Barba for the ’Great European Stage Directors’ series (Bloomsbury). He co-edited with Gianna Bouchard Making Interdisciplinary Performance: Processes and Practices in Collaboration (Bloomsbury, 2025). He is co-artistic director of The Bone Ensemble and has created performance internationally.