Maker’s Diary: A Considered Response

I have taken the time to consider my response to the student’s e-mail, so here is what I wrote back to her today:

Thank you for your e-mail. I really appreciate your comments and feedback; however, I am fairly confident that I know what I am doing with my project. I have been a performance practitioner for over 5 years now, running my own performance group: Vertical Exchange. As well as being involved in contemporary performance as a practitioner, I am also a theatre scholar; Siren Song is part of a year long, ongoing project that makes up the PaR section of my PhD research. (In fact this will be the 3rd development stage of the work; it has already been performed in Winchester and at Camden People's Theatre in London). Your response to my e-mail, suggests that you have misunderstood/misinterpreted the underlying principles of the project, so I wanted to take a little time just to clarify and theoretically contextualize my work for you, then if you still feel that you are interested, I would be more than happy for you to be involved in the project.

As I mentioned, Siren Song is part of my PhD thesis, which is entitled: Participatory Theatre: (Re) defining the role of the theatrical spectatorship. My research project seeks to investigate the production and reception of specific participatory theatre events through the actual experience of the makers and audiences. I am primarily concerned with the phenomenology of particular participatory events and the role that is taken up by the actual, material audiences in attendance. I am looking to conceptualise and theorise those actual experiences through applied cognitive materialism in order to develop a localised and specific theory of production and reception.

Your observation that the project is 'quite unusual', is an astute one. The objective of a PhD is to contribute original new knowledge to an existing field of scholarly research. The AHRC’s definition of PhD research is built around a frame of three key features that constitute and outline what may be classified as rigorous research:

• it must define a series of research questions or problems that will be addressed in the course of the research. It must also define its objectives in terms of seeking to enhance knowledge and understanding relating to the questions or problems to be addressed

• it must specify a research context for the questions or problems to be addressed. You must specify why it is important that these particular questions or problems should be addressed; what other research is being or has been conducted in this area; and what particular contribution this project will make to the advancement of creativity, insights, knowledge and understanding in this area

• it must specify the research methods for addressing and answering the research questions or problems. You must state how, in the course of the research project, you will seek to answer the questions, or advance available knowledge and understanding of the problems. You should also explain the rationale for your chosen research methods and why you think they provide the most appropriate means by which to answer the research questions.

(AHRC 2005)

The aim of this piece of work is to develop and identify strategies and devices of performance practice, that enable the audience to take up the same role ad the ‘makers’ and ‘performers’ (a role which I have coined as the ‘creatorly participant’). This means that I am pioneering a new and experimental form of participatory practice; hence the reason you may have found the concept ‘perplexing’ or alien. Forging into new and un-chartered territory is always an ambiguous and risky activity. (As I will go on to explain, risk is a vital concept and a key factor that underpins the project).

With Siren Song, I aim to bring together a group of performers and an audience in a particular ‘space’ (the party), at a particular ‘time’ (for 6 hours on the 22nd Oct), then through a pre-determined structure of games and tasks, the performers and audience will work together to produce a postdramatic performance text. The whole point of the performance is that by playing certain games and undertaking specific tasks both the performers and audience generate a unique (to that particular event), polyphonic, multiplicitieous, performative manifestation of HER/SHE. That performative manifestation of HER/SHE will not be a fixed, fictional ‘character’ but instead will be a set of possibilities, a plethora of ‘could’, ‘should’, ‘has’, ‘is’ an ‘will be’, HER/SHE’s. Thus HER/SHE will manifest in performance as a multi-dimensional presence; a presence that will be unique and personal for each and every person present, audience and performer alike. There is no conclusion, no cohesive whole or even an end to the work; potentially it could go for an eternity, dynamic, fluid and forever shifting. This dynamic repetition is a widely recognised device within contemporary practice. The element of the ‘unknown’ and the repetition push the boundaries of performance and make the event an actual experience, something that has to be lived through, not simply watched or witnessed; the audience become integral to the event. There is no event without the audience’s participation. Both audience and performer take an equal amount of risk during the 6 hour event. Risk and investment are the core ingredients for the success of the event.

I am sure that you can now understand why nothing except the games, tasks and space can be fixed before the event itself. I have no idea what will happen during the event itself and that is really the point. This type of practice does not have the opportunity to become stale or stayed in the way that you expressed concern about. We will only be preparing for the event, not rehearsing in a traditional sense. The process will be designed to generate material and I do not want to fix too much before that journey begins, as this would betray the practice that I am adopting for the making of Siren Song. I want the performers to be involved at the very heart of the creative process. It’s scary but really fun and exciting at the same time.

My practice sits firmly within an established body of work and has developed out of a 20 year trend for a particular brand of devising. I was surprised that you did not seem to be aware of such practices. (I would suggest that perhaps you have a quick look at the work of groups such as Forced Entertainment, Uninvited Guests, Blast Theory, Lone Twin, Imitating the Dog, Goat Island, The Wooster Group, Punch Drunk, Stan’s Café, Reckless Sleepers and The Little Dove Theatre Company). If you want to look at some of the criticism and theory that surrounds these practices and to some extent helps to understand my own, you might want to look at the writings of Auslander, Zarilli, Kaye, Kershaw, Fuchs and Etchells; all of which chart and explain where my work sits in relation to other practice and how it has developed from the practices of other makers, like the ones listed above.

The games and tasks will generate new material each time they are played or undertaken, thus I am not concerned about ‘monotony’ setting in. The audience will be free to come and go as they please, different people will be in the space at different times; so despite games being repeated, I very much doubt that they will elicit the same response for the many possible combinations of players at any one time. The games will be repeated but I suspect that they will create a totally different experience each time. It is repetition and games that will replace the traditional dialect of orthodox drama, these devices will take up the slack within the postdramatic situation, creating the tension, structure and pace.

I can understand how a lack of details might make you feel nervous or as if I am unsure as to what I am doing with the project, I anticipated that because of my previous two experiences of working with undergrad students on this project in the previous stages. I can assure you that I am completely in control and the whole process is underpinned by sound epistemological and ontological considerations as well as being marshalled by a rigorous research methodology. It is experimental practice that is breaking new ground and new ground always feels a little precarious.

The process will be a journey, one which continues on into the event itself. I am an experienced practitioner and have worked with performers on many similar projects. I have a whole ‘toolkit’ of strategies and practical devices that we will be applying in the devising process in order to develop and shape the work. I will be leading and guiding through actual material methods for the whole journey; you will not just be thrown in at the deep end. It is my responsibility to enable you, the performers to develop in the appropriate manner. It is a responsibility that I approach with respect and professionalism. My role will be more of a creative facilitator than that of a director. I don’t know if you have come across the term ‘creative performer’, but that is the role that I will be facilitating you to adopt.

Alison Oddey. Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook, London: Routledge, 1994.

Deirdre Heddon & Jane Milling. Devising Performance: A Critical History,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Emma Govan, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington. Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London & New York: Routledge 2007.

All of these are great books for talking about this type of process.

I really hope that this helps to clarify the project a little bit better for you. If you have any further questions or if you want to meet up for a chat, then I will be more than happy to oblige. I am in the process of trying to find out everyone’s availability, so that I can organise and intro session before we get down to it. We do not have a great deal of time to get this project running, so I am eager to get things moving as soon as. I am still a little short on females, so if you know any other students who might be interested then I would really appreciate you passing on the details.