“Devised work may begin and end without a written text. It may be inspired by a written text and contain pieces of the original text in the work. It comes from dreams, obsessions, rants, photographs, smells – well, you get the picture. It comes from everywhere and anywhere that creates inspiration. Simply put, devised theatre begins with an idea and then the creators start to investigate the best form to bring that idea to performance.” (Carr, 8)
As a collaborative piece of devised performance this means that my roles of Assistant Director, Assistant Stage Manager are very fluid. This allows me to have more creative input and work closely not only with the performers but also with the technical production aim of the show as well helping to translate our creative ideas on to the stage. I work as not only a second-eye for the director, running extra rehearsals, initial blocking and line-learning workshops for the cast but I also am on hand to organise rehearsals, take notes of blocking, oversee lighting, sound and video cue sheets, help with the stage managers script and organise set coming on and off stage in order to help create the directors overall vision.
When it came to deciding how we wanted to create the show we decided to take advice from Goat Island as our “work is developed collaboratively” (Goat Island, 2000). This meant that the major decisions about plot and subject matter would have to be agreed on as a group. We wanted everyone in the the theatre company to be passionate about the subject to create the best performance we could. The main focal point of our ideas was around political issues as our audience are just able to vote in elections and our political climate is always changing. Politics also effects our everyday.
The other main focal point was looking at real life stories, potentially using verbatim to tell the stories. Diving into issues such as homelessness, illness, leaving university, death of a loved one, issues which are very present in today’s climate. However, it was also at this stage that we decided we wanted to do more of a comedy than a drama. We want to provide escapism and a light-hearted show that our audience can walk away from feeling reassured.
The video featured below is one example of a real- life story we looked at potentially using. LaLa is an elderly gentleman in America who has devoted his life to maintaining his wife’s memory. He created a a garden of umbrella’s and a room of photo’s. His enthusiasm inspired a band called Mutemath to make their music video about him, along with the music video they also created a few back-story videos to tell the world about LaLa and Louise. Below is the official music video, however there is more content on LaLa available on Mutemath’s YouTube page.
(Mutemath, 2016)
Works Cited:
Carr, T.W. (2015) Devised Theatre. Southern Theatre, 56(2)6-15
Goat Island (2000) Letter to a Young Practitioner. [online] Chicago: Goat Island. Available from http://www.goatislandperformance.org/writing_L2YP.htm [Accessed 27 January 2016]
Mutemath (2016) MUTEMATH- Monument Official Music Video [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6i6TBT4kfg [Accessed 4 February 2016]