ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book addresses Mitchell’s work on early modern plays and explores her engagement with Chekhov’s naturalistic dramas. It investigates Mitchell’s productions of Greek tragedy, theorising her early work as three distinct rooms that, in practice, she constantly moved between. The book discusses Mitchell’s work with two living playwrights who have become close collaborators: Alice Birch and Martin Crimp. Not only does Mitchell stage their premieres, she also commissions them to revise and reshape source texts in work made in and toured across France, Germany, and Britain. Although Mitchell first directed opera in 1996, she has over the last decade produced a major transnational output with premieres at houses in Aix, Paris, Berlin, London, Glyndebourne, Amsterdam, and Salzburg, cementing her international reputation. Her interventions in this highly conservative tradition are read productively alongside Mitchell’s theatre works, shaped as they are by the same concerns.
