Structures in devising
STRUCTURES IN DEVISING
by Frauke Franz and Synne Behrndt
On the 18th October 2003 the Dramaturgs’ Network held a Debate Forum on devised theatre dramaturgy at the BAC. The initial aims of the forum were to open up a debate about the need for a critical language (exemplified by dramaturgy) in making and evaluating devised performance in order to create stronger performance outcomes, and to discuss ways of working and approaches to collaboration and devising.
It was an open Forum exploring ways of working within devising framed by presentations of and discussion about collaborations between dramaturgs and directors. The real success and achievement of the (sold out!) event was that it created a platform for practitioners and audiences to discuss processes and practice.
After the introduction (held by Network members Frauke Franz and Synne Behrndt) the forum presented three very different case studies of companies and their way of devising.
Faster
The first project discussed was Faster by the company Filter. The speakers were director Guy Rattalack, writer Stephen Brown and dramaturg Kate McGrath.
This project had been developed over 3 stages in the past couple of years and dramaturg Kate McGrath was brought in initially as the project’s producer and eventually as the dramaturg. This transition from, or blurred line between, the producer to dramaturg, was unique to the projects as in none of the other projects presented did the dramaturg take this double role. However, Kate McGrath’s transition from producer to dramaturg led to questions about whether it is important at all to define roles so specifically in a devising process.
What seems unique to many devising processes is the nature of ‘collaborative and collective effort’ where people often take on a variety of roles and ‘jobs’ so is it also important to ‘name’ the roles in the process. This seemed to be one of Kate’s challenges in the discussion.
This project was unique in the sense that Filter as a company consists of some actors and musicians who are playing and sampling live on stage. For their project Faster they decided to initially bring on board an outside director and writer. During the development process three different writers worked on the project. Kate, the dramaturg and Stephen, the final writer came to the project at the same time.
The challenge here for the dramaturg was also an issue of creative ownership of the project. Essentially you had a devising company who have spent a good part of 1.5 years developing a story and characters. There was an outside director, Guy who had his own set of ideas and finally a writer, who brought some new ideas into the process.
Guy Rattalack and Stephen Brown described the role of the dramaturg in this project to be that of keeping the project on track and focussed, making sure that director and writer were “working on the same project”, i.e. ensure that there was a consensus about the direction and concept of the performance.
Both Guy Rattalack and Stephen Brown felt that there was a need for someone who had a “big enough brain” to keep track of the different ‘threads’ of the project in order for the project to come together in the end. And Guy and Stephen reiterated that they found that this seemed to be a much-valued task of the dramaturg. The discussions here revolved around the need for ‘someone’ with a ‘glorified’ overview in a devising process due to the ever changing nature of such a process, who is also someone who can tie together the different elements in the process, both in terms of material, but also mediate between people working on the project.
No, It Was You
‘The ability to keep the project together and allow the director to focus on details’ was also a theme in the second presentation by director Boz Temple-Morris (Fake Productions) and dramaturg Frauke Franz. They spoke about their work on the show No, It Was You. As opposed to Filter’s collaboration with Kate McGrath, where Kate gradually became the dramaturg of the production, Frauke Franz was from the outset defined as the project’s dramaturg and worked closely with the director to formulate and devise the initial performance concept.
In this process the role of the dramaturg becomes more complex. Essentially there are two parts, which in a way involved different tasks. At the beginning the director and the dramaturg did a long process of research, collating ideas and source material. These were then communicated to the set designer, lighting designer, writer/poet, costume designer and composer. It is central to the work of Fake that each artist involved initially reacts freely to the source material. So in a way there is no set philosophy that is created and the artists react to the director’s vision but the different ideas and reactions from the artists build the foundation of an ever-changing philosophy.
In the rehearsal process, which in this particular process was only three and a half weeks, it was crucial to have someone coming in from time to time instead of being there every day, overlooking the overall arc of the piece and therefore allowing the director to concentrate on detail.
Lux
The third project Lux was still in the early stages of preparation at the time of the Forum and the discussion between David Harradine (director) and Synne Behrndt (dramaturg) focused on how one begins a collaborative project and what one expects from each other as director and dramaturg. Director David Harradine explained that he had invited Synne Behrndt into the collaboration due to his curiosity about having someone with a different perspective as part of the working process.
During this discussion, issues like the dramaturg as a creative collaborator with analytic input, which can push the process in interesting directions was brought up. A recurrent theme in this discussion was that the dramaturg should not just be used as an ‘ambulance/emergency’ service that is wheeled in at the last minute to ‘pick up the pieces’, but should be integrated from the beginning.
We found that it might be interesting to go even further and to set up ‘surgery-type’ collaborations where practitioners who are in the middle of a process collaborate with dramaturgs for a week (or more). This could then frame stimulating debates and discussions about analysis, structure and dramaturgy in devising.
The Debate and Content
From the outset the audience was invited to partake in the discussion and subsequently a lively debate was provoked, which in our estimation could have continued well past the 3 hours the forum was scheduled for.
The discussion moved quickly into discussing different devising methods and some confusion about the dramaturg’s role occurred. This was caused by a few audience members feeling they needed more introduction to dramaturgy and the work of a dramaturg if the debate was to be about this.
The debate also centred around the issue that companies often have very little time to devise and rehearse performances and that there often was a need for a critical dialogue between them and an ‘outside eye’. This seem to correspond with comments made by playwright Mark Ravenhill in a recent lecture at Queen Mary’s University, London where he expressed a desire for a theatre which was exploratory and experimental, but that time constraints often made this impossible. The question is then, how can a dramaturgical vocabulary enable an exploratory process when time and means are short and limited.
The future
It became clear that a forum of this type would be a good and helpful initiative and could with great success be incorporated into festivals, performance showings or even form part of symposia or other. It was felt that amongst some practitioners in the audience, there was a curiosity towards the collaboration between dramaturgs and directors and that workshops and meetings between these could be an interesting way to move a debate about devising forwards.
Posted by Hanna at 04:09 PM in Articles
