The Internationalists Directors’ Collective: A Source-Based History

A note on names and evidence. The historical collective discussed here shares its name with this editorial resource. The sources cited below document a directors’ collective; they do not establish that the present editorial project is its successor, partner, or official representative. They also do not establish a founding date, legal form, or current status. The account is therefore a source-based project history, not an institutional history.

What the records establish

The reliable answer to the question ‘what were The Internationalists?’ is narrower than the name suggests. In the available records, The Internationalists are a group of directors who organised occasional multi-director collaborations and described themselves as a collective. The records document specific projects and a 2010 Odyssey festival, but not a continuous company history. Three kinds of evidence are available: two self-published blog records, an undated self-descriptive collaborations page, and one piece of independent theatre coverage in The Brooklyn Rail. No production programme, contract, full credit list, or archive catalogue was supplied.

The earliest supplied record: naming, not founding

On 30 June 2007, a blog post titled What’s in a Name? opened a nomination and voting process for a company name. It listed proposals including The World Theatre, Zeitgeist, The Internationalists, Transnational International Theatre Alliance and United Nations of Theatre. The post and its comments record preferences but no final vote result in the supplied material. It is therefore evidence of a naming conversation, not of incorporation or a founding date. The name was in circulation by that date, but the record does not show when the group began working together or whether it had a formal membership.

A collective method: multiple directors

The undated collaborations page describes the group as a collective of directors. It says that directing is generally a solitary activity and that the Internationalists occasionally challenged one another to create a project with multiple directors. This is the clearest available statement of method. It is also a self-description, not an independent assessment, and it does not explain governance, membership, rehearsal responsibilities, or how credit was allocated.

According to the same page, the group’s first director’s collaboration was 7 Deadly Sins at the Public Theatre in New York City. The page gives no date, cast, creative team, or outcome. The project can be listed as documented self-described activity, but it cannot be securely dated from the supplied sources.

Which Direction Home: the 2010 Odyssey festival

Two records support Which Direction Home. The collaborations page describes it as the culmination of a year-long residency at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, with eight directors from six countries creating a large-scale Odyssey production. A blog announcement dated 20 July 2010 calls it a festival of new work inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, encompassing themes including home, mystery, choice, identity and myth. It lists two programmes and a marathon performance.

The Brooklyn Rail’s July/August 2010 article by Ashley Kelly-Tata gives independent coverage. It describes a June rehearsal in Bushwick, identifies Jake Witlen as a director, and presents the work as an experiment still moving toward its July opening. This corroborates activity and process; it does not supply a full production archive or audience results.

Source discrepancies and limits

The announcement’s headline claim is eight directors from six countries. The programme listing above, however, contains seven distinct directors and five country labels: Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, France and Australia. Possible explanations include an unlisted eighth director, co-directors, or loose counting, but the supplied sources do not resolve the point. A source-based history should retain the claim and note the discrepancy rather than inventing the missing credit. The same caution applies to venue: the collaborations page connects the project to a year-long LaGuardia Performing Arts Center residency, while the 2010 announcement and the Brooklyn Rail excerpt supplied here do not provide a complete performance venue list.

Hotel Project and theatre-for-one

The collaborations page credits Hotel Project to Ana Margineanu and Tamilla Woodard. It says the project brings guest directors, writers and actors together to create a theatre-for-one experience. No date, venue, or participant list is given. Theatre-for-one usually means performance for a single spectator at a time, often in a small or specially designed space; the page uses the term but does not describe its format in detail. It is best cited as a project description rather than a fully documented production.

Reading the international dimension

The sources use international in a numerical, credit-based sense: directors are identified by country. They do not show how cultural difference shaped rehearsal, nor do they identify performance languages, translation credits, surtitles, or multilingual dramaturgy. That distinction matters. A project with directors from several countries is not automatically intercultural in its dramaturgy, transnational in its production structure, or multilingual in performance. Those are separate claims requiring separate evidence. The 2010 festival can be described as internationally cast at the level of director affiliations; further characterisation would need programmes, scripts, or production records.

Practical lessons for directors and producers

For contemporary practitioners, the case is useful less as a template than as a warning about documentation. Multi-director projects disperse authorship, and without records history collapses into a list of titles. A few practical safeguards follow.

• Keep a credit matrix from the first workshop: director, adapter, translator, dramaturg, performers, designers, source text and translation rights, venue, dates, and presentation format.
• Record decision rights in writing. Who curates the programme? Who holds final say over cuts, staging, and billing? The sources do not say how the Internationalists handled these questions, so they cannot be held up as a model.
• Archive programmes, variant scripts, rehearsal notes, and audience-facing materials with dates and permissions. An undated web page is weak historical evidence on its own.
• Distinguish national affiliation from language and cultural context. Do not label a production multilingual unless its languages are documented.
• For theatre-for-one, document access, consent, safeguarding, and audience protocols as part of the production record, not as an afterthought.
• Check rights for any specific translation or adaptation. The Odyssey is ancient, but a particular translation or adaptation may still be protected and credited.

Legacy and verification

The supplied record leaves The Internationalists as a small, suggestive case: a directors’ collective experimenting with shared direction and international participation, with its best-documented project receiving independent coverage in 2010. That coverage gives Which Direction Home more evidentiary weight than the undated project pages. But no source supports a claim of institutional continuity, a formal roster, a permanent venue, or a current programme. Readers should treat the name as shared and historically specific. Any present-day activity, archive, or organisational relationship should be verified separately against dated primary records and any current organisation’s own published information.