Devising is a method of making performance that is often non-text-based or not dominated by text, and includes the collaborative participation of the whole creative company in all stages and aspects of performance-making. Companies that devise begin with one stimulus or more, such as an idea, question, theme, story, object, image, light, smell, movement, place or a piece of text or music. They then use a variety of methods first to develop performance material and then to rehearse and edit it into a performance event. Methods of generating material vary but may include improvisation exercises, writing, drawing, filming, play and games, research and discussion. Having developed material, the company selects, structures and edits it, practises it – sometimes seeking training to develop necessary skills – and often shows work in progress to solicit audience feedback.
Devising methods can be seen in many earlier forms of performance such as commedia dell’arte, but they achieved newfound currency from the 1960s on, in the work of avant-garde companies that aimed explicitly to challenge conventional theatre-making methods – such as the prioritisation of text, director and performance product – by using collaborative and collective methods. Thus, before the term ‘devising’ gained currency in the UK in the 1990s, the work of such companies was often known as ‘collaborative’ in the UK and as ‘collective creation’ in Canada. These makers frequently rejected dominant generic patterns and formal categories, often producing non-linear postmodern performance and cross-disciplinary performance. They also provoked audiences’ ethical engagement with controversial current social issues.
Devising’s anti-hierarchical origins question the necessity of a director or another figure who takes final decisions, although it should be noted that in companies worldwide still using devising practices, some of the utopian collectivism characteristic of devising from the 1960s to the 1980s has now dissipated. From the RCTP
Image: When will the September roses bloom? Last night was only a comedy by Goat Island. Photograph by Ivana Vucic and T. J. Kacunic, Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany, 2004