When you say "devised theatre," what the hell are you talking about?

When I'm ex plaining it to my students, I simply tell them, "You know how a play usually is made? A playwright goes into a dark room, drinks a lot of coffee, prays to their terrible gods, and emerges weeks or months later with a script. Then s/he hands it to a theatre company and they find a director and actors and they produce it . And sometimes people give them money or canned goods to see it performed." Devised theatre is the other way a play is made. According to Wiki, devised thea tre is a form of collaborative creation where the script does not generate with the playwright, but from a group of theatre artists, frequently through improvis ation. Which is basically what I've been saying, but with more hyperlinks. I did not intend to become involved in devised theatre. I certainly did not inte nd to co-found a devised theatre company. I had taken part in co-creation proces ses before with other playwrights where we all worked on the same script. But it was less collaboration and more relay-writing, and the result left much to be d esired, both in process and product. So when director and fellow Catholic Univer sity grad student Ryan Whinnem told me he was looking to get a group of actors, directors and playwrights together to create a theatrical adaptation of the epic of Gilgamesh, I said I'd think about it. Maybe. Possibly. Probably not. And whi le I had never read Gilgamesh and knew next to nothing about the epic, I was wor king on another play dealing with Middle Eastern mythology. I figured the least I could do is go to the first meeting and maybe learn something new about the su bject. I had no intention of sticking around. Which probably says something terribly profound about intensions and life planni ng. I was the only playwright that showed up, Ryan the only director, along with a h andful of actors. Each of us had read a different translation of the epic-the st ory of what is essentially the world's first action hero, whose quest for immort ality leads him to confront the gods themselves. That first meeting was basically a conversation about what we each liked about t he story-what interested us, confused us, what we thought could be unpacked. We gave ourselves homework looking at some particular aspect of the story that inte rested us. What resulted was a form of group dramaturgy that allowed us to disse ct, evaluate, expand, discard, and transform the epic along the lines of what mo st intrigued us. At some point, Ryan got the actors on their feet, and began lea ding improvisational workshops using the ideas . The most memorable was the crea tion of the Sumerian Underworld-something that does not show up in the epic prop er, but was too exciting a world not to explore. I think it was around here-with a group of actors writhing in darkness, limbs bent at terrible angles, screamin g in hunger and pain-that I wrote the first scene of what would eventually becom e Gilgamesh, who saw the deep. The script was completed over the winter holidays and a workshop production was planned in Catholic University's Callan Theatre for March. By that time, we had accumulated around 14 actors, who donated their time and talent to the project. The workshop production was much like a full production: off book actors, lights , sound, choreography, a modicum of set. But it was acknowledged by both perform ers and audience that the piece was still unfinished. After each show, we held t alkbacks, listening to audience members thoughts on the piece and soliciting tho ughts on how the production can be modified and improved. There was a certain learning curve involved in this. Usually this kind of feedba ck would make artists twitch with barely contained rage. But if the project real ly was a collaboration between every stakeholder in the process, then the audien ce needed to be the final collaborator. Those people who were going to sit and e xperience the play had a stake in it being as solid a show as possible. And they had good ideas. And a lot of them made it into the revised production, which we produced at the 2008 Capital Fringe Festival in the newly-renovated Source Thea tre, managing to sell out at least once. And so the result of this year-long process was a success. And exhausting. And e njoyable. And exhausting. But it resulted in a solid piece of theatre. And we th ought: Maybe we should do it again. Series: Secret diary of a playwright

My dirty secret: I like devised theatre It seemed to be doing playwrights like me out of a job - but perhaps the battle between different performance traditions is finally over * Steve Waters * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 January 2012 06.35 EST * There's always a special pleasure about going to the theatre after a period of abstinence. I am not a theatre-binger anyway - one show a week is enough for me , which is why I'd make a lousy theatre critic. So it's perhaps for these reason s I found myself especially beguiled by Travelling Light's production of Cindere lla at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. Even as I write, I sense something heretical is being uttered - playwright accla ims devised show! Actually I did feel the lack of a writer in the project (an oc casionally vague gag, the odd line that doesn't land), and on my annual festive engagements with theatre in Bristol I am struck and niggled by what seems to be the hegemony of devised work there. Yet, watching this family show in the unfail ingly warm forum of the Tobacco Factory, I was enjoying a theatrical form which has thrived on the English stage since the 1980s. It also took me back to my first adult incursions into the theatre, as a teacher in secondary schools back in the early 1990s, driving students to arts theatres in Aylesbury or Reading or up to the South Bank. We'd seek out "physical theatr e" as if it was manna. Berkoff's Salome, Complicite's The Visit, early shows by Trestle, Pete Brooks, or best of all, submitting oneself to a day of Le Page's m agnificent The Dragon Trilogy at the Riverside Studios. I was far more aware of this work than anything at the Royal Court. Behind it all stood the legendary fi gure of former PE teacher Jacques Le Coq - one year at his feet, it seemed, woul d be enough to forever rid an actor of the neuroses and limitations of the Briti sh stage, to liberate their body and imagination. Not being able to afford the Le Coq detox, I would go to weekly masterclasses wi th other now-forgotten gurus of this form - Rick Zoltowski, the curious Enrique Pardo, Bouge de l - even naming this litany of luminaries brings back a shiver. G od knows what I learned from endless sessions of shedding shoes, playing strange games and movement "tasks", beyond a hostility to the word, and an ethic of cel ebration, but it felt revelatory at the time. When I first moved in more writerly circles, I was taken aback by the hostility of my peers to this kind of work. I remember going to see an early Forced Entert ainment show with Sarah Kane, who was enraged by it - inexplicably, it seemed to me. Dominic Dromgoole wittily dispatches it all with his apologia for new writi ng The Full Room by setting a plethora of playwrights against the idea of Peter Brook's "empty space" and empty notions of theatricality. And bar staying loyal to friends such as Hoi Polloi, I found myself going less to such work as I got i nto a playwriting groove. Physical theatre seemed wilfully naive to me; apolitic al, sentimental in many instances. I still get unaccountably irritated when peop le talk about "making" theatre, or brandish mask-work and puppetry as ends in th emselves. Yet perhaps the unstated conflict between these traditions is drawing to a close . Already there are seismic shifts - Frantic Assembly started it off really with their heretical incorporation of the writer in the rehearsal room, and some of the most exciting work in recent years has taken this form - for me Kursk, which linked the huge talents of Bryony Lavery with the immersive genius of Sound and Fury, exemplifies what can be achieved; this time last year I even put a toe in the water myself, collaborating with Offstage Theatre on Amphibians. In all the se cases text and image, show and space, body and word are treated as indivisibl e. Watching Cinderella work its considerable charms on the audience was a salutary reminder that theatre's task is always the steady, patient suspension of disbeli ef, the reawakening of the child in the audience. Whether this achieved through words or the body seems somehow secondary. ======================================================================== Devised Theatre - What's it Worth?

Dateline: 23rd May, 2004 Last month someone wrote on our Forum, "Can anyone enlighten me: what's the valu e of Devised Theatre?" I replied, but there's been no response from the original enquirer. Either my reply was so devastatingly powerful that (s)he was forever silenced or (more likely!) (s)he hasn't bothered to come back to read the replie s. It's actually a very British question because our concept of theatre is very tex t-based and we have a very high regard for the playwright. To an extent, of cour se, that's true everywhere, and every culture is proud of its great dramatists, but in many parts of the western world, particularly Eastern Europe, the last ce ntury saw the emergence and flowering of a theatre which is based not upon words but upon images and symbols. The linear flow of text-based drama gives way to a n almost impressionist succession of visual (and often verbal) symbols. This has led to what we often refer to as physical theatre, which overlaps with dance on the one hand and mime on the other. It's a vast spectrum, which include s such diverse work as the performances by Russian company Derevo and the work o f people like Belgian choreographer/director Wim Vanderkybus, and both of these develop their work through a collaborative process, involving all the members of the company. In North America, too, we had the growth of improvisation as a theatrical form. It's been used here, of course, as part of acting training and for the explorati on of ideas and emotions for decades, but the US was the first to make it a publ ic performance. Now, through TV programmes such as Whose Line Is It Anyway? and companies like Improbable Theatre, impro has become a part (albeit small) of the British theatre and entertainment scene. So there is a strand of theatre, even in the UK, which is moving away - indeed, has moved away - from the single-author/text-based piece. More than forty years ago, Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop company at Stratford East created Oh What Lovely War, working collaboratively with each other and with writer Char les Chilton. Much more recently, in 2002, Matthew Bourne created Play Without Wo rds at the National Theatre, a piece which uses dance and physical theatre to te ll a story from a number of points of view simultaneously. In the UK, however, we do tend to be fixated on the writer model and yet it is n ot inherently superior to any other. In the hands of a great writer, then clearl y it works brilliantly - one only needs to look at Shakespeare (or any other gre at dramatist, whether British or from elsewhere) to see that - but it is not the only model. We accept, for example, that two or more writers can combine their talents to produce a great piece of theatre - look at Beaumont and Fletcher, Wat erhouse and Hall, George and Ira Gershwin - so why can't a piece which is a coll aboration between a larger number of people be equally as effective? Ah, you may well say, but look at Oh What a Lovely War, it had a single writer, Charles Chilton. True, but he was part of the collaboration and the final text w as based upon the research and exploration (including improvisation) of the whol e company. There are, it must be admitted, dreadful devised pieces, but then there are drea dful pieces written by single authors - and I've seen a few in my time! One migh t even say that it is more difficult to produce a coherent piece when there are a number of creators - the words "cooks" and "broth" spring to mind - but to sug gest, as the contributor to the Forum seems to do, that a devised piece is someh ow a lesser breed is, I think, wrong: there is no reason why a devised piece can not be great theatre. Theatre, after all, is a collaborative art: all the devising process does is tak

e that collaboration a step further. ====================================================================== On the last day of the new play convening held at Arena Stage this past January, participants (and livestream satellite observers) were asked to come up with go als for the coming year. What could we do to further the state of new play devel opment in our town/city/shire? One of my resolutions for the coming year was to figure out how to reconcile my work as a devised theatre artist with the fact that I m a playwright with a pretty strong artistic vision who enjoys creating plays in the traditional manner. Or whether these parts of my creative life need to be reconciled at all. The question arose in my mind when the panel on devised theatre sparked some pre tty heated responses from playwrights in the Twitterverse. A few wondered if dev ised theatre was a hot topic because it was sexier than regular playwriting. There were a lot of very defensive posts from playwrights concerned that their role i n the playmaking process was being threatened by artists trumpeting devising pro cesses that did not necessarily require a central author. There seemed to be a belief that, if people do devised work, then they must beli eve the other methods are flawed or inferior or outdated. Which isn t true, at lea st from my perspective, since I do both. Yes, all of my posts on 2amt have been on devised theatre, but it really makes u p a minority of my work. During the initial stage of idea generating, which Brig ht Alchemy happens to be in now, it only takes up about 10 hours a month. Most o f my days are spent writing plays generated solely out of my own noggin, or in r ehearsals. It s a process I enjoy and a life I like. At least until tech rolls aro und and I don t get home until 1:30 a.m. Then I might have second thoughts, but ra rely third ones. So, why do I, as a playwright, do devised theatre? You see, I have a box. It s made up of my experience, my preconceived notions, my talent, my skill. It s made up of my limits. I work in it, I live in it, I think i n it. A few years ago, I began to make a concerted effort to expand my box. For my MFA thesis, I wrote a play that included music, dancing, a drag show, and a s lew of Erik Ehn-inspired impossible stage directions all things that I loved seein g on stage, but had never attempted to put there myself. Afterwards, my box was a lot roomier. But like a goldfish, my ambitions grew to fill their environment. When I began working on my first devised piece, I discovered that everyone works in a box. But those boxes never exist in the same place; they don t consist of th e same experiences, or skills, or point of view. And those boxes can be porous. They can stack and lock together. A group of theatre artists who are comfortable working together, who communicate well and have the requisite artistic openness , can crawl into each other s heads and play around and see things through the len s of entirely new realms of experience. And that process can allow me to write a play I never would have if left in my o wn box. Could I have written an adaptation of Gilgamesh? Sure. Could I have writ ten a play about a star-obsessed girl trying to recreate herself from the confin es of her room? Absolutely. Would they have been half as surprising or unique as what I helped create as par t of a group? No. Never. Nein. Nyet. I had so many people tell me that A Cre@tio n Story for Naomi was unlike any play they had ever seen. And that s because, whil e I was responsible for the most of the text, the story, structure, and thematic /dramatic engine at its core were hand-built in some metaphysical cardboard box

fort of artistic vision and talent. So, would I ever give up writing plays on my own to do devised work full time? P robably not. I have too many stories to tell, and our devising process is a slow burn. But because of working in that process, my box is constantly expanding an d the stories I tell are the richer for it. Stephen Spotswood ================================================== http://www.2amtheatre.com/category/devised-work/ http://www.drama.org.nz/?p=1473 http://hannahsilva.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/transcribing-the-imaginary-performan ce/ http://www.playmarket.org.nz/bookshop/products/devised-theatre Participants will work with creating both verbal and physical material, and expl ore how Massive company uses personal stories and experiences to create theatre. The workshops will be highly energized and physical, with participants being ask ed to bring a variety of material in the form of stories and experiences to work w ith in making material for devised theatre. These workshops are aimed at Professional practitioners, who are wanting to make a commitment to developing their work and learning more about the style of work that Massive Company makes. ================================================= Devise - "to contrive, plan, or elaborate; invent from existing principles or id eas: to devise a method." I found this introduction to 'Devising Theatre' to be very interesting. It chang ed the way in which i view devised pieces. Prior to reading the text, I associat ed devising with 'frustrating brainstorming', i always pictures a handful of act ors and directors standing around feeding off each others imaginations in order to come up with an idea or concept. However, i have learnt that it can be differ ent. "Devised theatre is not always in contradistinction to 'straight' theatre" - thi s quote remains in my mind after having read the text, as this seems to sum up h ow i felt about 'devising', trying to be too diverse and 'alternative'. And alth ough i do enjoy improvisational work, i found companies who strive to be TOO dif ferent, slightly pretentious and flamboyant. Nonetheless, after reading the text , i have come to realize that devised work CAN be scripted, it can be naturalist ic and have direction, as well as involving elements of improvisation, spontanei ty and impulsiveness, which makes it so refreshing. This has given me a much des erved respect for devising theatre companies, and the way in which they've been able to penetrate the slightly closed minded and judging world of theatre. Posted by Ailee Kemeny ================================== Aims: Using various exploratory devising techniques, working as an ensemble comp any, devise, perform and evaluate a piece of theatre for assessment. Objectives: by the end of the unit the students will have: -Been introduced to various ways into devising theatre. -Looked at how different stimuli can contribute towards making theatre.

-Experienced the discipline needed to make theatre to performance standards. -Understood how non-naturalist theatre can be use and its effect. -Considered how space an atmosphere contribute to performance work -Understood the difference between content and form. -Worked collaboratively as a group taking a joint ownership of the project. -Have a polished piece of performance that has been viewed by an audience. -Kept an analytical, documented record of the working rehearsal process. -Evaluated their own individual contribution to the group as well as the whole g roups performance ===================================================== Written for companies, students and professionals interested in non-text-based t heatre, the books aims to shine a practical light on the passionate business of the devising process. Suggestions and advice include getting started and develop ing trust and communication within the devising company; how to research and use the results to stimulate ideas and discussion in the rehearsal period; and enco uraging, channelling and developing ideas in the rehearsal room. The book also e xplores discovering and incorporating the unexpected in rehearsal; how to stop t alking, start playing and develop the performance for an audience; and backstage and design work, complete with sample checklists, raising money and organising budgets. =================================== http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZRtPoPP5qg ============= Collaborative Nature Cooperative endeavor required to produce and perform a play or improvisation. (This process requires close attention to individual responsibili ty, willingness to share ideas and tasks, assistance from others, and team effort.) Collaborative Relationships The interaction between two or more people working together to create a theatrical text or performance. (See collaborative nature a nd collaborative theatre processes.) Collaborative Theatre Processes Agreed upon or shared methods of working togethe r to generate and refine ideas, to test and implement solutions, and to revise and polish works for performance; a process enhanced by positive interpersonal and small gr oup relationships. ======================== WTF Is Devised Work, Anyway? By Isaac Butler 99 and I were talking about having this conversation on Parabasis about Devised Work and I thought I'd get the ball rolling. For those of you who read this site who aren't big into theatre... Devised Work

is kind of hot right now, but it's also not especially well defined, because it seems to be both a method of constructing theatre and an aesthetic that work cre ated through that method tends to adhere to. As a method, it's basically a play that is created without a written script as a starting point. Generally, colla borators (who may be any mix of writers, actors, directors and designers) begin from some kind of starting point-- a title, a found text or film, a line of inqu iry-- and from that they generate a play. That work tends to adhere to certain aesthetics of experimental theatre. It tend s to be deliberately messy in its narrative structure and/or stuffed the gills w ith thematic content. There's frequently post-modern dance breaks in it. Video w ork if often integrated. It may be missing some of the components of traditional drama (such as characters, or plot, or words). There's a number of reasons why it's worth asking this question about devised w ork as a process vs. devised work as an aesthetic and inquiring deeper into it a s a field, now that it's kind of ascendant. First off, do audiences care about how a play is created? Should they? Second, what about devised work that eventually is crafted by playwrights, direc tors and actors in a more traditional structure? The Civilians, The Debate Socie ty and Young Jean Lee's company all use devising processes, but the shows they p roduce are written, directed and acted by people in fixed roles (even if those r oles overlap). Are they still devised work? Are they devised work once actors o ther than the original development company take over roles ? What about when ot her companies license the scripts and do the shows? If a playwright writes a play for a specific group of actors, and then meets wit h those actors and discusses the play with them and with a director and then doe s rewrites and then mounts the play with that cast and that director... is it a devised work? Does it become a devised work if they call themselves a company an d get their 501(c)3 status? Is Cloud Nine a piece of devised theatre? I ask these questions because it seems to me that what is most exciting about de vised work is, in fact, what is oldest about it. It represents a stealthy way t o reintroduce to our theatremaking system a very traditional method for making p lays wherein roles are written with particular performers in mind who also go on to actually play those roles instead of being replaced for someone who used to be on Charles In Charge or whatever and may also participate in the research and development of the material. And if theaters want to embrace that method of mak ing plays instead of the standard deal they've gotten going on right now that mo st people insist isn't working, then I think that's great. What I've noticed in most of the work that openly embraces the label "devised wo rk" is that I frequently end up wishing it had whichever staff member they've es chewed (generally either a director or a single person tasked with writing/assem bling/structuring the text). And that a lot of work I've seen that embraces the label devised or company created work makes work they call final products that r eally should be called development workshops. And that the more focused on talk ing about how awesome their process is, the more likely it is that that process is being used to justify shoddy work. This isn't always true, of course. But it often is. And I notice that, depending on what your definition of a devised piece is, all sorts of work can fall into it. The Civilians aren't called a devising company, but they have a research process and the first productions of the plays they wr ite generally feature the people involved in that research process in the roles they've researched etc.

I'm just wondering if the term has meaning or at the end of the day is simply so mething that a group of artistic collaborators adopt so that they won't be fucke d with by theaters. And again, I go back to audiences. Does this term have any v alue for audiences? Or is it so elastic that it just kinda means "it's going to be weird?" =============== http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2011/01/wtf-is-devised-work-anyway.html MAKE SURE TO CHECK THIS ONE! ===================== http://wamu.org/programs/mc/10/12/trans-17-11-39473.php I think anything that gets us away from the creation of literature is a good thi ng. Of all the refugees who take up home in the theatre (failed psychologists, f ailed tyrants, etc.), the English Department refugees have done more to cripple the evolution of theatre, especially in America. Call it devised work for want o f a better phrase, but I think should be encouraged because it gets us away from the creation of scripts and back to the creation of live events. I know I sound crude here, but Ben's snarky take really put me off. If I've lear ned anything from 2 years of StageGrade profiling, it's that we're still stuck v iewing theatre through two distinct critical filters: 1) the text and 2) ... eve rything else. I rarely know, after reading a review, if it's a good play. At bes t I know whether or not I should buy a copy at Barnes and Noble. So anything that confounds our sense of ownership or authorship of the theatrica l event is a good thing. It prevents an easy exit for critics and audience membe rs because devised work doesn't let us confine the virtues or shortcomings to a text. What might be troubling or challenging about a piece can no longer be isol ated as the failings (or genius) of one person's world-view. I always thought th eatre was supposed to work that way, even when it wasn't "devised," but that's r arely the case these days. Anywho, people who've read my rantings know that this is my attitude, so all I c an add to the discussion here is a plea for more of whateverthefuck "devised wor k" may be. Seems we keep talking about the death of theatre at the hand of film, tv, video games, etc, but we forget that the death of theatre started much earl ier ... with the printing press. ============ I think getting hung up on the term "devised" is part of the problem here. We ar e hung up on how different this must be than what we know because the playwright role is compromised. However, the creation of theatre is more than just writing a script. It is the development of a whole production. Therefore, I would sugge st that all theatre is "devised." Whether one person or a group created the scri pt, or whether a person created a script and then other people made it into thea tre, or whatever scenario you can suggest... it's all devised. What is actually relevant to this discourse is how the collaboration works. We see this new working method as undefinable because we focus on the anecdotes of procedures and exercises which vary even in the "traditional" theatre. What s eparates this new process is the way in which the artists relate to each other. The collaboration of all companies can been charted on a triangle whose points a re made up by the following terms: Collective Collaboration, Guided Collaboratio n, and Specialized Collaboration. All companies use all or part of these approac hes to make their work. Even if they aren't conscious of it. COLLECTIVE COLLABORATION is an approach where all participants are equals. All p

articipants must work together to accomplish every aspect of the production from writing the script, staging it, performing it, designing it, and physically bui lding it. GUIDED COLLABORATION is an approach where a single leader stands out from the co llective. He or she dictates decisions about the topic of the work, the approach to the work, and the method of development. All remaining participants work tog ether as in Collective Collaboration. SPECIALIZED COLLABORATION is an approach where each person in the production has a specific role that they are trained for and is needed for the specific type o f project at hand. These roles could include traditional roles such as playwrigh t, director, designer as well as atypical roles such as puppet master and story researcher. The project is then broken into pieces to allow the specialist to fo cus solely on their area of expertise. If you can imagine this as a triangle, you can now start to plot theatre compani es and see how they compare to each other without using merely anecdotal evidenc e. For more information on these new terms, you are welcome to attend my presentati on at the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Minneapolis, MN on March 6th at 8:00 a.m. or read my thesis available here: http://independent.academia.edu/JasonEWe ber/Papers/400293/Creating_Together_Defining_Approaches_to_Collaboratively-Gener ated_Devised_Theater ==================