Monday, November 25, 2013
Growing Up, Devising
HowlRound: A trio of young men took to the stage in an imagined classroom scene. Mayhem ensued to the great delight of the audience. Initially the scene consisted of just one boy who lay on the ground in defiance of his teacher’s request to work quietly at his desk. Over the course of the creation process, the group decided the scene needed a stronger presence. And so, when the short play premiered, it featured three boys. Two sat at their imagined desks as the teacher told them to work quietly while she stepped out of the room. Upon her exit, the two boys shucked their studies and began reading a local legend to pass the time. The third entered, pantomiming to the audience to be quiet as he snuck up on the other two. As he surprised them, the mayhem erupted. When the teacher reentered, the audience went delirious as the scene turned into a Three Stooges-like routine. The entire routine was designed by the young performers with their audience very much in mind. Essentially a minor scene in this short play, it proved to be an effective counterpart to the seriousness of the rest of the play.
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My favorite part of this is the way that casting is dealt with- no one is assigned a role until late enough in the process that they have all been able to contribute to each role that exists in their playlet or scene. The author points out that this makes the characters more complex, and creates more of a challenge for the actor that ultimately steps into each role, because the characters have been touched and added to by many people. This is one of the most interesting parts of devised theatre for me. I love how the creation of a devised piece is a group effort, and then it becomes the responsibility of each individual within the group to represent a single part of the group's work, a single character, and to do so in a way that is congruent with the rest of the piece, they must take the contributions of the whole group into account. I admire this author for being able to access the people he has worked with in such a way that they were able to do this, especially since most of them did not have much experience with theatre previous to working with him. It just goes to show that, at the core, theatre is based in the art of storytelling, and that all people can tell a story, because we have all lived through experiences and learned how to tell others about them.
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