Sextou, P. and Trotman, D. (2012 in print) ‘Devised Drama, Shakespeare and Creativity; Practical Work on Othello’s Pathos’ The International Journal of the Arts in Society.
Current status: In print
Journal: The International Journal of the Arts in Society
Forthcoming at: http://artsinsociety.com/journal/
This paper explores a cross-disciplinary approach to Applied Drama/performance studies and creativity about their role... more This paper explores a cross-disciplinary approach to Applied Drama/performance studies and creativity about their role in contemporary communities. Specifically, it discusses the possibilities of using the devising drama practice as a means of learning about ourselves and the world we live in. Drawing on observations and discussions conducted during an undergraduate Drama programme the authors experiment with ideas that connect drama to the students’ contexts and favourite social issues and examine the impact of teaching drama on student learning as both creative artists and citizens. From these accounts the authors explore how devising new dramatic characters and scenes can develop students’ powers of critical perception and contribution to the community. Practical work based on the plays of Shakespeare was used to generate examples of creative practice within the conventions of drama. The paper concludes that drama involves a pedagogy that aims to develop practitioner powers of individual imagination, collaborative creativity and social awareness.
Devising in the Rhizome: The 'Sensational' Body in Drama Education and Research
by Mia Perry
Perry, M. (2011). Applied Theatre Researcher. 12.
This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring through a theatre... more This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring through a theatre devising process with youth. Contemporary theatre methods, along with poststructural and performance theory, inform an alternative approach to dominant constructions of drama and theatre practices in education. The student in this project is considered a learning self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005); the process and analysis taken up acknowledges the body as an emerging, phenomenological, and relational corporeality. Exploring a sensational and rhizomatic approach to practice and research, this project loosens the body from the representational paradigm dominating applied theatre research, and brings it to the centre of the pedagogical and analytical endeavour.
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Download (.pdf) Theatre and knowing: Considering the pedagogical spaces in devised theatre
by Mia Perry
Perry, M. (2011). The Youth Theatre Journal. 25:1. 63-74.
With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers... more With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers how the creative process, performance event and spectator emerge within this genre. Although the field of arts based education is becoming ever more prevalent in educational theory, contemporary theatre practices in the context of pedagogy and social impact are largely undertheorized. Considering the history and the practices of devised theatre alongside those of critical pedagogy, I argue that devised theatre offers a site for productive critical pedagogies. I use the practice of Forced Entertainment to illustrate this argument.
Meddling with “drama class,” muddling “urban”: Imagining aspects of the urban feminine self through an experimental theatre process with youth
by Mia Perry
Perry, M. and Rogers, T. (2011). Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. 16:2
This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre... more This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre project. These youth, situated next to a particular and storied urban place, reshaped the discourses of ‘The Downtown Eastside’ (DTES) in a classroom based performance project. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth (2005), who argues for the pedagogical power of considering the student who is in motion and performing in relation to an outside world, we describe how the youth in this study accessed their lived experiences to reconfigure common representations of young women in the DTES. Through devised theatre methods, the youth explored and created more complex and proximal representations of lives and circumstances otherwise steeped in taboo and stereotype. The theatre process used in this school-based project evolved from the meeting of contemporary devising practices with more traditional drama education expectations. This paper describes the circumstances and process of this work and focuses on the analysis of one scene from a final performance of the work.
Meddling with “drama class,” muddling “urban”: Imagining aspects of the urban feminine self through an experimental theatre process with youth
by Mia Perry
Perry, M. and Rogers, T. (2011). Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. 16:2
This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre... more This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre project. These youth, situated next to a particular and storied urban place, reshaped the discourses of ‘The Downtown Eastside’ (DTES) in a classroom based performance project. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth (2005), who argues for the pedagogical power of considering the student who is in motion and performing in relation to an outside world, we describe how the youth in this study accessed their lived experiences to reconfigure common representations of young women in the DTES. Through devised theatre methods, the youth explored and created more complex and proximal representations of lives and circumstances otherwise steeped in taboo and stereotype. The theatre process used in this school-based project evolved from the meeting of contemporary devising practices with more traditional drama education expectations. This paper describes the circumstances and process of this work and focuses on the analysis of one scene from a final performance of the work.
Theatre and knowing: Considering the pedagogical spaces in devised theatre
by Mia Perry
Perry, M. (2011). The Youth Theatre Journal. 25:1. 63-74.
With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers... more With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers how the creative process, performance event and spectator emerge within this genre. Although the field of arts based education is becoming ever more prevalent in educational theory, contemporary theatre practices in the context of pedagogy and social impact are largely undertheorized. Considering the history and the practices of devised theatre alongside those of critical pedagogy, I argue that devised theatre offers a site for productive critical pedagogies. I use the practice of Forced Entertainment to illustrate this argument.
Kings of England: In Eldersfield: Notes on Theatre and the Writing of History
by Simon Bowes
Presented at Authoring Theatre, Central School of Speech and Drama, 14th July 2011, (co-authored with John Pinder)
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"The Absurd Training Laboratory"
CO-DEVISED WITH: Bryan Brown, Olya Petrokvka, Kris Salata, Alexei Syssoyev;
A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.
Our project is to challenge the... more
A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.
Our project is to challenge the aims of conference culture, notions of laboratory conditions, and the realities of making viable work in an academic setting. With this in view, our proposed “performance of training” is at once commentary upon the limits and challenges of the institutional structures within which many of us conduct our artistic praxis, and an investigation into the possibilities of spontaneity, collision, leap of faith.
Abstract:
This porous shift is intended as a meeting place for five scholar-practitioners, who have never before gathered as a group, and who share research and artistic interests in practices associated with the theatre laboratories of Russia and Poland. Choosing absurdism, particularly that of the OBERIU, as a springboard for this encounter, our aim is to investigate and problematize the rich complexity that is training, schooling, performance - and the possibilities of art within the institutional structures of academia. Playing with the phrase ‘training for the absurd’ has led us to devise a structure in which performance pedagogies can be proposed, while engaging in a performance of pedagogy.
In what is, on the surface, a “work demonstration” format, a group of PSi and non-PSi performers will be active participants, with an audience invited to watch the work, and, afterward, respond and reflect with us. In order for active participants to have a clear understanding of the supertask, actions and concerns, and a foundation of interpersonal comfort from which to begin the collaboration, we will commence our work with a ‘closed’ session of one hour, directly prior to the open session.
Participants will be given a text by Daniil Kharms to work with, and asked to engage in an accruing montage of “actor-training” tasks, while maintaining the supertask laid out in the closed session. As the shift leaders are from Russia, Poland and America, differences in schooling and theatre training serve as a starting point for the structure. Shift leaders will each adopt a particular pedagogical pose; we might think of this as character work, the performance aspect of our dual role (in this shift) as performers and teachers. While participants engage with very real artistic-pedagogical objectives, the performative dramaturgy of the event plays with the negative dimensions of pedagogy (such as spatial and behavioral constraints imposed upon the child in school, or the batons used to beat out rhythm and threaten the legs of young dancers in Russian ballet training).
The shift will conclude with a moderated reflection and exchange between students, shift leaders, and audience, contextualized by a scholar steeped in history of absurdist theatre and avant-garde performance practices. Taking this critical lens as a starting point, it is anticipated that the reflections will further challenge conceptions of training, schooling and performance interrogated within the shift.
Open to observers from Day 1, Day 2 provides an opportunity for the five shift leaders and the work participants to share approaches to performance practice, in a non-performance mode, in order to further investigate and develop processes and impulses that will have emerged during the performance.
The Laboratory and the Institution: Encounters of The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in three university settings"
Roundtable discussion, in development as a proposal for ATHE 2012 (PENDING).
CO-AUTHORED WITH: Kris Salata, Michael Hunter, Rachel Joseph and Kyle Gillette
SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the... more
SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated and organized by Kris Salata, Michael Hunter and Kyle Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university and partner institutions at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At the heart of our project lies a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?
PARTICIPANTS
Kyle Gillette, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Trinity University
“Institutional Politics: Shielding the Workcenter”
Rachel Joseph, Instructor of Theatre and English, Trinity University
“Community Reactions: Incorporating San Antonio”
Michael Hunter, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University
“Institutional Collaborations: Stanford, SF MOMA, and the Performance Art Institute”
Kris Salata, Associate Professor of Theatre, Florida State University
“The Encounter of Apprenticeship and Pedagogy”
Kathryn Syssoyeva, Visiting Assistant Professor of Performance, Florida State University
"...strangely, suddenly, deliciously slanted...": Nurturing and Demonstrating Student Experience
ABSTRACT
In Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, Shannon Jackson writes: “Like any coordination of human welfare, performance requires an encounter with some very difficult problems that are both formal and institutional.” This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated by Professors Salata, Hunter and Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university environment at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At core, our investigation asks a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?
The praxis of the Workcenter proposes a form of "public" which insists on intimacy and direct connection as its basic condition. It depends upon slowness, accrual, rigour: both in the group’s work and, proportionally, in our approach to witnessing that work. If one meaningful definition of civic action is nourishing the quality of life in a community, then the meeting between the Workcenter and our institutions - the introduction of the laboratory model, the relational action of the performance, the transcultural interaction - constitutes a deeply civic engagement.
Panel members will briefly present challenges and solutions involved in the Workcenter’s encounter with their institutions and communities, as the prelude to a broader conversation about the university’s potential role in supporting forms of performance that might be compromised by the “interests” of bureaucracies, governments, even rigid communities.
THE WORKCENTER OF PONTADERA
After decades of influential and groundbreaking work, in 1986 Jerzy Grotowski founded his Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy, which eventually became the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. Until his death in 1999, Grotowski worked intensively with Richards and a small group of actors, developing a systematic, continuous line of “performance research.” This research continues today at the Workcenter, under the leadership of Richards and Mario Biagini, and involves both extremities of what Grotowski called "the chain" of performing arts: "Art as vehicle" and "Art as presentation". The distinction between these two poles of performance is that "Art as vehicle" has as its aim the performer’s work on him/herself, with a view towards analysis of the ways in which certain modes and techniques of performance might lead to expansions of individual cognitive and perceptual capacities; while "Art as presentation," is oriented towards the perception of the spectator, with a view towards investigating questions regarding intersubjective communication and relationships.
THE RESIDENCIES
Richards and his Workcenter team engaged with the FSU community over eight days, through an extensive acting workshop, classroom visits, performances of The Living Room, and a conference. The FSU School of Theatre is a home for 400 students and multiple programs: BA, BFA, MA, MS, and Ph.D. Because of this broad range of training and educational focus, the visit by the Workcenter created a perceptional challenge, as their “post-representational performance” is not driven by dramatic text, doesn’t seem to have a plot, invests very little in theatrical illusion, and doesn’t seek the spectator’s engagement in the ways traditional performance might. In addition, the workshop revealed seemingly irreconcilable differences between the modes of work, expectations, and methodologies employed by the host and the visitors.
The workshops and performances in San Antonio took place at Trinity University and were largely attended by the Trinity community. The institutional framework of the visit made the participation of the larger theatre community small yet meaningful. Members of the community that attended the performances were skeptical at the outset, but enthusiastic after witnessing The Living Room. As the large proscenium theatre and black box space traditionally used for theatre productions at Trinity were not right for The Living Room, we utilized a space elsewhere on campus, typically used as a meeting room for faculty and administrators. The Faculty Gold Room's conventional uses intersected with the hospitality and warmth of the Living Room in several significant ways, framing it within the civic life of the university.
In the Bay Area, Stanford’s initial support of the Workcenter’s visit sparked a broader collaboration with SFMOMA and the Performance Art Institute. Together, these institutions were able to support the Open Program of the Workcenter (with a team of 12 people) for a month-long residency, during which performances, workshops, and symposia took place at extremely diverse venues across the Bay Area. In the case of this residency, our focus will shift away from examining encounters directly between the Workcenter and the university, and look instead at how Stanford was able to participate in existing performance communities, as well as to help create a new community: over the course of the month, spectators and local arts professionals returned to participate in multiple performance events, creating a network of support and shared interest that was both based in the particular overlap between, on the one hand, the Workcenter’s traditions and the Open Program’s current explorations (notably the texts of Allen Ginsberg) and the Bay Area’s own social and aesthetic histories.
Hey babe, take a walk on the dark side: Or why role-playing is a suitable tool to design against crime and aid designers to think thief
by Matt Malpass
Gamman, L., Thorpe, A., Liparova, E. & Malpass, M. Hey babe, take a walk on the dark side: Or why role-playing is a suitable tool to design against crime and aid designers to think thief. [The journal of Design and Culture accepted at review]
Lives and Deaths of Collective Creation/Vies et morts de la création
by Jane Baldwin
editors: Jane Baldwin, Jean-Marc Larrue, and Christine Page
AITU Press/Presses Collégiales du Québec, 2010.
The book can be purchased on Amazon.com
Pig Iron: A Case Study in Contemporary Collective Practice
published in The Lives and Deaths of Collective Creation, ed. Jean-Marc Larrue, et al., Vox Teatri, 2008.
Creating Together: Defining Approaches to Collaboratively-Generated Devised Theatre
Presented at the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Minneapolis, MN, March 6, 2011
Popularized by the Theatre-in-Education movement in England and the work of Jerzy Grotowski in Poland,... more Popularized by the Theatre-in-Education movement in England and the work of Jerzy Grotowski in Poland, Collaboratively-Generated Devised Theatre has developed into a major movement in contemporary theatre. However, scholarship in this area has been weak due to a reliance on anecdotal analysis rather than using a comparable rubric. For this paper, the processes of three Massachusetts-based devising companies were analyzed to define three different approaches toward collaboration and devising, and present new terminology to aid the discourse surrounding companies and groups that create work in a collaborative way.
