‘Entrances’, ‘Exits’ or ‘Nodes’, ‘Edges’, ‘Clusters’?: Simon Stone, & the Director as a ‘Network Subject’

Australian theatre director Simon Stone has emerged as a major presence on the European stage since the International Ibsen Festival presented his The Wild Duck ‘after Ibsen’, co-written with Chris Ryan, in 2012. Prior to Stone, Barrie Kosky and Benedict Andrews, the most influential directors of their generation in Australia, had established themselves as internationally significant artists in Europe. This article explores Stone’s imbrication in theatrical networks defined by Kosky and Andrews and the director as a relational phenomenon. It shifts analysis from the director as a singular subject to a network subject by deploying datasets held in AusStage (www.ausstage.edu.au) to firstly, chart the ecosystem of artists intrinsic to Stone’s career in Australia and Europe, secondly, to anatomize the concept of the network subject by interrogating the reoccurring connections and patterns of participation constituting the director, thirdly, to examine correlations between Stone, Andrews, and Kosky and thereby the question of the transference of artistic influences and Australia’s cultural relationship to Europe, and finally, to touch on the role of repertoire in Stone’s theatrical endeavour. In doing so, the article contends that the intersecting relationships intrinsic to Stone’s theatrical experience expose critical embodied junctures in the development of his directorial signature, and as such, constitute a means of identifying and measuring (circuits of) influence and aesthetic tendencies more broadly.