DIRECTORS CHANGING THE ENDINGS OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS. I have sometimes heard it said, especially by directors, that a director and the actors should strike out all the stage directions in a script, that the the playwright’s writ stops at the words.
This wikipedia entry defines Regietheater (German for director’s theater), a term which reflects this point of view: “Regietheater (German for director’s theater) is the modern (mainly post-World War II) practice of allowing a director freedom in devising the way a given opera or play is staged so that the creator’s original, specific intentions or stage directions (where supplied) can be changed, together with major elements of geographical location, chronological situation, casting and plot.”
Notice that in the productions of Measure for Measure and Hamlet, no words of Shakespeare were changed.