ABSTRACT
Three main reasons emerge from Dodin’s account of why he dramatises prose fiction. Prose is ‘often richer than drama with the exception of Shakespeare and Chekhov who can hold their own’ (Novosibirsk, 15 December 1997). Prose has broad dimensions that playwrights tend to fear when writing their own plays. Prose is liberating for directors because they are not obliged to follow the theatrical rules that plays generally impose upon them. Consequently, instead of falling back on established ideas about the theatre and what it is supposed to be, directors are forced to look for it specifically in terms of the book in front of them: ‘You have to find the theatre in the book.’ All the productions discussed in this chapter were motivated by Dodin’s desire for a theatre able to transcend the boundaries set by a practice largely dependent on pre-existing plays.
