Concise and practical, Fundamentals of Directing is a distillation of Ric Knowles’s twenty-five years of experience as a director, teacher of directing, and dramaturge across Canada. Organized to reproduce the chronology of a play’s rehearsal, the book moves through the various stages of the directorial process, from selecting a project through auditioning; working with designers, actors, and technicians; to coordinating the work of the full company through tech week to closing night. It also, and uniquely, includes important appendices on the work of directors in devised theatre and new-play development.

Ric Knowles is of anglo-Scottish heritage, and is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph, editor of Canadian Theatre Review, and past editor of Modern Drama (1999â??2005). He is author of The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning, Shakespeare and Canada, and Reading the Material Theatre, co-author (with the Cultural Memory Group) of Remembering Women Murdered by Men, editor of Theatre in Atlantic Canada, Judith Thompson, and The Masks of Judith Thompson, and co-editor (with Joanne Tompkins and W.B.Worthen) of Modern Drama: Defining the Field. He is general editor of the book series Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English and New Essays on Canadian Theatre from Playwrights Canada Press.

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Patricia Flood is a theater, film and television designer. Her credits include set design for the films Ararat and Where the Truth Lies. She was Resident Designer for Theatre Calgary, spent many seasons at Ontario's Blyth Festival and worked with Susan Benson as Assistant to the Head of Design at Stratford Festival. Flood has taught Design for the Theatre at Montreal's Concordia University and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

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