Theatre-Making & Processes
Devising
Category
Devising is a method of making performance that is not dominated by text, and includes the collaborative participation of the whole creative company in all stages and aspects of the creative process.
Video
During the revival of An Die Musik in 2000, Simmons discusses the origins of the original production and the process of its creation and compares it with the process of recreating it 25 years later.
Video
Pearson takes a group of practitioners through the many exercises that formed the central concerns of Brith Gof. These include physical training, spatial and temporal awareness and group choreography.
Video
This video is documentation taken from a weekly contact jam session with the
actors in the MFA Actor-Training program at UC Irvine. Contact Improvisation is
a large part of the movement arc in the first year of actor training, and jam
sessions are held weekly, integrating all three years of MFA actors.
Someone happened to video this session, and I give a brief description of
our use of contact as a tool for actor training in the
voice-over.
Video
This video is documentation of an exercise with 3rd year graduate actors at
the UC Irvine Actor-Training program, speaking a monologue while contacting with
a silent partner. At a moment of heightened activity, the silent
partner is removed, and the resulting delivery of the monologue is focused and
intensely communicated.
The athleticism and sensitivity of the contact created a culture of
expressivity. Tenderness as well as rage and challenge emerged in the contact
session and remained present in the solo monologue. So, the complexities of
emotion that were embodied metaphorically and rhythmically in the extreme lifts
and rolls and balances of the partnering could be seen as an emotional
“rehearsal” for the solo performance. But once the partner was removed, the
speaker had to reach out to us, and address each deeply felt idea to the
audience in the room.
No longer in a contact with the literal “other,” we, the audience, now become
the necessary focus.
Video
In this video presentation, Avra discusses her book and some fundamental
principles that permeate the directing art.
Video
This video presentation features playwright and director Oriza Hirata’s
concept of robot theatre. Making Robot Theatre: An interview with Oriza Hirata of
Tokyo-based Seinendan.
Video
A narrow catwalk between two flanks of spectators: ‘Maran Ata! The Lord is coming! A child is born in Bethlehem. He will destroy Jerusalem. Kyrie Eleison. He has not come to bring peace.’
Video
This film documents the work of Iben Nagel Rasmussen (Odin Teatret) with her
international group The Bridge of Winds during a two-week closed work session held
in December 2011.
Commentary
by Annie Loui
Contact improvisation is a form of dance improvisation based on energy and weight
exchange, incorporating elements of aikido, jitterbugging, child’s play, and
tumbling
Practitioner
An international touring company co-founded by Simon McBurney in 1983, Complicité has helped shape the landscape of contemporary theatre, with acclaimed physical, devised and multimedia work.
Practitioner
Nature Theatre of Oklahoma is an OBIE-winning New York performance group led by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. They create unsettling situations that demand total presence from everyone in the room.
Practitioner
Pip Simmons set up his own experimental company in 1968. It made intense, physical and musical work through collective devising. The group split up in 1973, and Simmons increasingly worked abroad.
Related Items
Practitioner
Goat Island was a Chicago-based collaborative performance group that made nine intimate, low-tech and intensely physical performance works that toured internationally, between 1987 and 2009.
