Stage Directions: American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre documentary series features fascinating people on the stage, behind the scenes, and in the audience. From Tony Awards® and Obie Awards® winning artists to the next generation of theatre makers, they capture theatre’s inner-workings, industry luminaries, and unique stories that surround important work. In this latest episode they look at Devised Theatre.
5 comments:
In my high school, a great deal of the work that we did was surrounding devised theater. As a class, we were fortunate enough to take a workshop in devised theater. For the first exercise, we sat in a circle and each had sheets of paper. We had about 1 minute to write a short sentence, and then afterward we passed the paper to the person sitting to our right, and so on until we received back our original sheet of paper. Then we proceeded to find a storyline and create a small “play” surrounding the show. I have also worked on shows in which a portion of the rehearsal process was dedicated to coming up with a topic for play and writing a script about that topic. Overall, my experiences with the devised theatre have always been extremely interesting and something that I am curious about doing more of!
This is another video based article that I really enjoyed. I had never heard of devised theatre prior to this article. I really like the concept of it, especially how many different ways the show can go. I really like how they emphasize that they select one element and go from there. I really love the one example they showed where they started with the set and grew out from that. I liked how they interacted with the set, but also the scenic element itself was really cool. It reminded me of a giant tissue box almost. I also really liked how the directors also have no direct vision for what the show is going to be or look like, it’s just a bunch of people in a room doing things and just kind of trial and error style of do it reflect and fix it. I think that this kind of theatre would be fun to do, but it would be a very hard thing to do for a long time as the only thing you’re doing.
I love American Theatre Wing's little documentary shorts on YouTube. Long ago I remember watching them about different productions and the different aspects of theater. I can remember this one about lighting design and how they were testing something in a room specifically meant for a miniature lighting rig that you can test different fixtures, templates, and colors for a show. Only doing high school theater at the time, this seemed like something that I would have never had the chance to be able to do. I am glad those videos opened up my thinking about the capabilities and resources that a professional lighting designer could have. Now at Carnegie Mellon University, my ideas of what is available to a lighting designer has only grown. I also love that now that I am here, it has gone full circle with wanting to learn about more theater and looking up American theatre wing videos and now I get to write about them for class.
-Pablo Anton
I think this is a really interesting piece and exploration into devised theatre, and it brings up a lot of thoughts for me as a student in theatre school. We don't have a devised theatre section of our program here at CMU, and I can't think of any program that I've heard of that *does* touch on or prepare its students for the production process of devised works. Interestingly enough, it *is* something that I am seeing is desired from some of the directors that we have in our program and something a majority of them have experienced before. Conversely, our production departments are not very well-versed in devised theatre, and as it is difficult to "teach" in an educational setting, this is a tricky balance between what the director's want and what the production and design teams are able to work with and produce given our extreme time line and educational environment. I do love the idea that in this video, Pig Pen began with the Scenic Designer's vision, and created a piece from there. They truly became an integral partner in the collaboration of the entire piece because of this. However, in an educational environment, we can't pick one department to literally build everything around, so it is difficult for any of us to learn how to collaborate in such an environment while we're still in school.
From a performance perspective, I think devised theatre is very unique, and interesting to watch as an audience member and even more so to interact with as a performer. The concept of cultivating a piece that changes and has the room to grow is unique, because you always have an intention of what it is supposed to do and how it is supposed to make someone feel, but there is always room for flexibility in devised pieces because each performance is new, brought to you by the experiences of each performer and person in the room. Devised work leaves so much open for interpretation and allows for growth and experience, not only for those on the stage, but also for the people sitting in the audience. The video talks about devised theatre giving birth to a unique experience, and I think devised theatre does just that, provides the world with a new and unique experience that can’t be replicated again.
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