Director’s Lab 2013

Directors’ Lab is a development initiative for Vancouver-based professional directors who want to get rigorous with the foundations of their craft, unhindered by production and scenographic considerations. Using an established text as a working model, the Lab focuses on the director’s preparation process, early stages of rehearsal and assessment and critique of the work. This year, master teacher Peter Hinton guided a panel of professional directors over five days through investigations and experimentations with Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. The Lab aims to provide ongoing training and mentorship to directors interested in script-based theatre practice.

Lab Facilitator Peter Hinton was the National Arts Centre’s Artistic Director of English Theatre from 2005 to 2012. In 2007, Mr. Hinton welcomed Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company to the NAC, with whom the NAC English Theatre partnered to produce the world premiere of Margaret Atwood’s stage adaptation of her novel, The Penelopiad. His selected directing credits for the NAC include Marie Clements’ Copper Thunderbird, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, William Congreve’s The Way of the World, Michel Tremblay’s Saint Carmen of The Main and Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. He was an associate artist at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival for seven seasons, directing The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s Universe, The Odyssey, The Duchess of Malfi, Into the Woods, and all three parts of his own verse trilogy entitled The Swanne. He spent five years as the Dramaturge in Residence at Playwrights Workshop Montreal and has been Associate Artistic Director at both The Canadian Stage Company and Theatre Passe Muraille. Mr. Hinton was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2009.