Creating Theatre

Recently I talked to Rebekah Davies, a student on the BA American Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford, about stage management. As part of her project, she very kindly transcribed the interview, which I’ve now put into the learning zone as “Thoughts on stage managing”.

Given that the name of the website refers to creativity, it’s about time there was something here about the processes of creating theatre. What’s set me off is that I’ve just been asked by my friend Gail Pallin to comment on her research paper about creativity and stage management. It has triggered an impulse to try to quantify my own thinking on these matters.

There a different issues here. Some are about the whole issue fo creativity in a cultural context; about value sets , about use value, and about power operations – whose culture, whose creating, and who is consuming the production of creation. We live in consumption-oriented society (so did the Victorians but not in the same sense) and there is a whole literature about the relationship of culture to meaning, cultural production and use.

The question here is about creating meaning however.. and how that gets managed – specifically, in a theatre performance or event context. A few thoughts, coming from Gail’s original book, from the paper, and from thoughts I’ve been having:

1 Creative process as recombination of existing things (“Standing on the shoulders of giants”).

2 Following on from this, the value of contextualised knowledge

3 The ability to recognise the value of unforeseen outcomes, to seize on them and capitalise on opportunity

4 Understanding the rights of the SM to engage in the creative process, and the responsibilities and duty of care that come with it.

5 Creating environments within which creative process can happen; including the social psychology of creative groups.

6 The application of imagination, both in conceptualising the outcome of the developing event, and in plotting missing or conflicting components.

7 Inventiveness in problem solving on all fronts

8 Understanding the visual, spatial, and dynamic aspects of live and recorded events, and being able to correlate the intellectual , emotional and spiritual impact of the performance on its audience.

9 The values of craft skill in refining and developing aspects of the event

10 Chaos and complexity models, comedy and surprising turns

These issues come to the fore in particular when working ina devising situation, whether as actor, director stage manager or designer. I’ll flesh this sketch out in the next few days.

References
Ken Robinson – address to TED conference www.ted.com
Pallin G, Miller Judd P Stage management and creativity www.stagemanagement.co.uk 2008

While much of the time there’s a load of crud on my bookshelf, such as french atlases and camping directories, cookery books and playtexts, there are some books I can’t face putting up in the loft; either because they are too important or because I haven’t finished reading them yet. Here’s a selection of what appear to be the most important / formative. They are also the ones I find myself recommending on a frequent basis.

Senge, P et al Presence London, Nicolas Brearley, 2005

Asking questions about humanism and leadership.  Senge is better known for “The Fifth Discipline” – his description of the qualities of mastery is, er, masterful.

Gardiner, M Critiques of Everyday Life London, Routledge 2000

Traces ideas of the individual quotidian experience through Surrealism and the Situationists to de Certeau and Dorothy Smith

Benjamin W trans Zorn H Illuminations London, Pimlico 1999

(Contains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction – 1936 Discussion of the ‘Aura’ of artwork among other things)

Boal, A Theatre of the Oppressed London, Pluto 1979

The interchange of culture which is needed to cope with asymetric power relationships, through class or other difference.

Fo, Dario trans Emery E Mistero Buffo in Plays One London Methuen 1992

Totally delightful mix of performance and lecture on medieval clowning

Brook, P The Empty Space London Penguin 1968

Devastatingly great analysis of the process of theatre. I was bowled out by it, and went to see the White Box Dream expecting to see it put into action. Maybe he’d moved on; maybe I was reading something else into it.

Sennett R The Fall of Public Man London Penguin 2003(new edn)

Insight into contemporary and historical attitudes to being and doing in public.

Sennett R The Corrosion of Character (The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism) New York, Norton, 1999

Sennett R The Craftsman London, Allen Lane 2008

First of a trilogy on material culture. This guy is tapping into the zeitgeist, trying to work out why it feels like it’s all going wrong, in the midst of material wealth.

Huxley A The Doors of Perception London Penguin 1959

On the nature of mystical experience .

Berne, E Games People Play London, Penguin 1967

Transactional analysis. Explains a lot about why people often act in strange ways. Performed as a play in the 60′s.

Campbell, J The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

An attempt to chart the ‘monomyth’ – te psychic blueprint of human development as expressed through religious symbolism.

Shlain, L The Alphabet and the Goddess (The conflict between word and image) Penguin 1998

Associations between Logos and Eros; monotheism and mother goddess worship; changing technologies; images and iconoclasm.

Bakhtin, M The Carnivalesque in Storey, J Popular Culture and Cultural Theory: a reader.

Explanation and enquiry into the role of the demotic in performance.