Devising & collaboration

Notes on devising to spark ideas.


Collaboration!

Schirle, J. (2005). Potholes in the Road to Devising. Theatre Topics, 15, 91-102.

Every artistic process involves difficulty and risk, and devising has its own set of challenges. The playwright faces the problem of the blank page; with group devising, the problem is compounded by the number of opinions about how to fill it. Whether a particular collaborative process is based on harmony or on enthusiastic contention, there is no guarantee that the best ideas will emerge when the smoke has cleared or that the simultaneous contributions of numbers of people can unite in a work of power and vision.Page 91

When collaborations are attempted, there is a greater chance of success if the group establishes and adheres to basic guidelines for working together.  Collaborative principles encourage artists to develop trust and respect, come to a common understanding of the challenge, and to be clear about intention, roles, and agendas. By creating a shared space, generating and manipulating models, and using outside resources and strategies, the capacity for making decisions is expanded. Page 91


Oddey, A. (1994). Devising Theatre: a practical and theoretical handbook, London, Routledge.

Devising begins with the interaction between the members of a group and starting point or stimulus chosen.  The group absorbs the source material, responds to it, and then generates a method of working to the initial aims of the company and project.  The devising process challenges every group member to confront the work, engage with it individually at different levels, as well as developing a sense of group cooperation, affiliation and unity at the same time.  All groups are different as personalities change the group dynamics and impetus of the work.  Working in unison becomes difficult when individuals conflict with each other, but is also an intrinsic part of establishing a collective group identity.  Ultimately, it is about the group discovering a relationship between itself and the product it produces.Page 24


Heddon, D. & Milling, J. (2006). Devising Performance: a critical history, London, Palgrave MacMillan.

It is our argument that collaborative devising processes match contemporary critical concerns, making it the ideal means to explore and embody those concerns in practice.Page 192

Etchells, T. (1999). Certain Fragments: contemporary performance and Forced Entertainment, London, Routledge.

Or is collaboration this: a kind of complex game of consequences or Chinese whispers - a good way of confounding intentions?  If the process of direction in the theatre most usually has at its heart the interpretation of a text and the fixing of a set of meanings in it, the staging of one interpretation of many possible ones - perhaps we had in mind something utterly different - of theatre or performances as a space in which different visions, different sensibilities, different intentions could collide.Page 55

... gaps are the most important thing because it's there where you stop 'showing' and the audience can use their imaginative powers and they're the ones that fill the gap.  That's where they become true collaborators.  And if you can invent the gap well enough the audience just comes right into there.Page 93


Graham, S. & Hoggett, S. (2009). The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre, London, Routledge.

Our favourite devising processes are the ones where the lines of creativity start to blur.  A successful production for us will be one where it is hard to distinguish which came first between, say, words and movement and music.  This is achieved in a rehearsal room where the creative team act as one unit, sitting in front of the same scene or image or moment and all feeding into the process not just as, say, lighting designer but as potential audience member and a Frantic theatre maker.Page 8

Sometimes good ideas come quickly.  Some days you find yourself skipping home from rehearsal thinking you have cracked it.  You have found the elixir.  You know this is how the should be done.  This kind of conviction can be fantastic but it can also cloud your judgement.  There have been times when we have absolutely thought that we have found the only way to do a scene or stumbled upon the most brilliant physical scene that encapsulates and lifts the whole production.  Invariably our passions become dimmed.  The love affair is over and we see clearly now.  The scene is not going to work.Page 41