Devising
In this video I am talking about the history of devising theatre, key practitioners, companies which have been using this technique for creating productions. Also, I review how the devising process has been used for societal, politic issue and the importance of it.
In our project we were influenced by Bertolt Brecht's, Jacques Lecoq's, Antonin Artaud's techniques. The logbook and the devising process of our project is available on the links below. Or in my blog.
The key practitioners in devising
Joan Littlewood
6/10/1914—20/09/2002
British theatrical director who rejected the standardized form and innocuous social content of the commercial theatre in favour of experimental productions of plays concerned with contemporary social issues for working-class audiences.
Influenced by Bertolt Brecht, she encouraged audience participation, allowed onstage improvisation, altered the text, and used techniques originally developed in the music hall. Her later productions were collective in that the actors shared in planning the presentations.
Jerzy Grotowski
11/08/1933 - 14/01/1999
Jerzy Grotowski was a theatre director, educator and creator of acting methods. He invented the term 'Poor Theatre': a style of performance that got rid of all extraneous parts of theatre. This meant there were no lavish costumes, complicated props or detailed sets. Jerzy Grotowski and his small groups of actors were known for experimenting with many different aspects of theatre: spiritualistic, ritualistic and physical and also the nature of role and the relationship between actor and spectator.
Antonin Artaud
4/09/1896 - 4/05/1948
French dramatist, poet, actor, and theoretician of the Surrealist movement - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonin-Artaud
Artaud created his "theatre of cruelty", project for an experimental theatre that became a major influence on avant-garde 20th-century theatre. He proposed removing the barrier of the stage between performers and audience and producing mythic spectacles that would include verbal incantations, groans and screams, pulsating lighting effects, and oversized stage puppets and props.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Theatre-of-Cruelty
Artaud’s “Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty”, "The Theatre and Its Double" call for a communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonin-Artaud
Jacques Lecoq
15/12/1921 - 19/01/1999
Jacques Lecoq was one of the greatest mime artists and one of the finest teachers of acting. Lecoq used two kinds of masks. By putting on a bland, totally expressionless mask, the actor was forced to use his whole body to express a given emotion. On the other hand, by donning a mask, the features of which were contorted in pain, downcast in grief, or exultant in joy, the actor had to adjust his body-language to that facial mood. And from that followed the technique of the 'anti-mask', where the actor had to play against the expression of the mask. Another vital aspect in his approach to the art of acting was the great stress he placed on the use of space the tension created by the proximity and distance between actors, and the lines of force engendered between them. This led to Lecoq being asked to lecture at faculties of architecture on aspects of theatrical space.https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/jan/23/guardianobituaries
Devising companies
Frantic Assembly
Devising company
Frantic Assembly's unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text. The company attracts new and young audiences with work that reflects contemporary culture. Frantic Assembly is led by Artistic Director Scott Graham. Scott formed the company with Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994, and continues to collaborate with many of today's most inspiring artists. https://theatreanddance.britishcouncil.org/artists-and-companies/f/frantic-assembly/
Scott Graham, Artistic Director of Frantic Assembly:
"The Frantic Method is approaching devising as a series of tasks, each broken down into building blocks. This is designed to establish progress from the simplest discoveries.
Performers are encouraged to take a moment back to its simplest truth and build from there. This places dancers, actors, students, teachers and all participants on the same starting point.
Using these building blocks they are empowered to find and create complex work through a process that is safe, fun and constantly illuminating."
DV8
Physical Theatre
DV8 Physical Theatre's work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically, about breaking down the barriers between dance and theatre and, above all, communicating ideas and feelings clearly and unpretentiously.
DV8 is motivated by artistic inspiration and creative need. The focus of the creative approach is on reinvesting dance with meaning, particularly where this has been lost through formalised techniques.
DV8's work inherently questions the traditional aesthetics and forms which pervade both modern and classical dance, and attempts to push beyond the values they reflect to enable discussion of wider and more complex issues. DV8 (Dance and Video 8)'s strong commitment to film and video continues. This reflects its ongoing interest in how two primarily visual media can enhance one another and reach a crossover audience from within both forms.
The company's reputation relies on pushing its own boundaries and on the constant re-examination of the roles and relationships of men and women in our society. Its policy insists on the importance of challenging our preconceptions of what dance can, and should, address. https://theatreanddance.britishcouncil.org/artists-and-companies/d/dv8-physical-theatre/
Despite the darkness of its themes, the work never loses sight of DV8’s characteristically oddball sense of humour. There’s a hilariously surreptitious pas de deux for a pair of beady-eyed shoplifters – though Newson’s principal mission in recent years has been to reconnect the power of movement with the power of speech.
Theatre de Complicité
Physical Theatre
Complicité is an international touring theatre company, based in London. Founded in 1983 by Annabel Arden, Fiona Gordon, Marcello Magni and Simon McBurney, the Company is now led by Artistic Director McBurney OBE.
Complicité began life as a collective and this spirit of collective enquiry, of collaborative curiosity, has driven the work throughout its history. The Company is famous for making its work through extensive periods of research and development which brings together performers, designers, writers, artists and specialists from diverse fields to create the works – a process now known simply as ‘devising’.
These many diverse Associates - as they’re known – have developed and evolved a shared creative language, which provides an anchor for the explorative work that the Company has become famous for and which foregrounds every piece they bring to the stage. This focus on a collaborative devising process has meant that Complicité has also become famous for a distinctive, visually rich stage language, which layers physically beautiful performances and tightly choreographed ensemble work with innovative lighting, sound and video design. The main body of work has been of devised theatre pieces and adaptations and revivals of classic texts but the Company has also created opera and worked in other media.
http://www.complicite.org/company.php
In many theatre rehearsal processes the written text is the primary source for the actors and director, but for Complicité, although spoken words are of course important, they do not dominate over other elements of the storytelling. Lecoq’s pedagogy places the communicative potential of the body, the space and gesture before the spoken word.
https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/theatre-de-complicite-and-storytelling
Kneehig
Theatre
Based in Cornwall, Kneehigh tells stories and creates theatre of humanity from an epic and tiny scale. It works with an ever-changing ensemble of performers, musicians, artists, technicians and administrators, and is passionate about its multi-disciplined creative process.
Kneehigh aims to collaborate with fellow human beings, whether they are adults or children, professionals or outsiders. Aiming to create events and offer experiences that can profoundly change people's lives, it creates relevant and emotionally charged work, reaching out to the non-theatre going community, to build a non-elite audience and to celebrate our time on the planet.
Kneehigh chooses to be based and work in Cornwall, within a community but outside the ‘business'. Inspired by Cornwall and calmed by Cornwall, it dedicates itself to thinking outside the constraints of fear and neurosis. Taking in the principles of play, generosity, vulnerability, ambition, bravery, anarchy and instinct, it believes that human beings are capable of anything and push to find new depths, new joys and new excitements in its relationship to its work and its audiences.
https://theatreanddance.britishcouncil.org/artists-and-companies/k/kneehigh-theatre/
Punchdrunk
Site-sympathetic
Punchdrunk was founded in 2000 by Felix Barrett. Along with a key group of collaborators, the company pioneered a form of theatre that rejected the passive obedience of traditional theatregoing. Audiences wear masks, Venetian style, covering much of the face and masking the mouth. They are free to roam through productions, which are staged in disused or abandoned buildings. The action of the play is deconstructed, often reordered and condensed with multiple scenes playing at once in different parts of a building. The space is brought to life with intricate set dressing, epic visual scenes, low atmospheric lighting and a filmic soundtrack. Audiences must make choices about where they go, the characters they follow and the rooms they find. They choose the show they see, often coming back many times to witness the production from different perspectives.
Arguably in part due to the company’s success at pioneering highly non-traditional forms with wide appeal, especially to new theatre- going audiences, there has been an explosion of work taking place in unusual settings, and an exponential rise in the popularity of experiential theatrical forms.
For Punchdrunk the audience is often the starting point for each production. The process of putting yourself in the shoes of an audience member is essential when making work, as more often than not the company is asking audiences not to view the work from a seat, but to experience it moving around, making decisions, finding their own action. This presents a whole series of dramaturgical, narrative and practical challenges to solve that are fundamentally different from the kinds of considerations that you might face in a more traditional setting where the audience is essentially fixed.
Key questions asked by the company are as follows:
Who are the audience members?
What is their role in the piece?
How do they interact with performers?
How do we inform the audience of what they can or can’t do within the narrative of the piece?
https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/a-punchdrunk-approach-to-making-theatre
The idea is this: traditional theatre shows are passive affairs where you watch a distant stage from the comfort of a chair - but a Punchdrunk show is active, mysterious, and places you inside a fiction you can touch, smell, and even taste. The choice of what to do and where to go is up to you.
VIVA
In videos below our group is talking about key practitioners, our strength and weaknesses, as a individuals and an ensamble.
Also, we are discussing which techniques we were using in our project and what can be done better.