THE LARAMIE PROJECT: A DEVISED ETHNODRAMA?
Devised Theatre (also known as collaborative creation, ensemble pieces and original work) Devised productions can start from anything and are determined and defined by a group of people who set up an initial framework or structure to explore ideas, images, concepts, themes or specific stimuli that might include music, text, objects, paintings or movement. A devised theatrical performance originates with the group while making the performance, rather than starting from a play text that someone else has written. Allison Oddey Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook
Popularized by the Theatre in Education movement in England and the work of Jerzy Growtowski in Poland, Collaborately-Generated Devised Theater has developed into a major movement in postmodern drama. Subcategories include:
Collective Collaboration - All members share equal responsibility for the creation of the work and equal credit for the finished product.
Guided Collaboration - Features a director/conceiver who governs all elements of group collaboration.
THEATER COMPANIES THAT DEVISE (a short list)
The Right Size Tectonic Theatre Project Dell'Arte
Complicite Rude Mechs Anomic Multimedia Theatre
The Wooster Group Mabou Mines SITI
Elevator Repair Service Radiohole Ghost Road
Criticism: The Guardian’s Theatre critic Lyn Gardner writes that vibrant devised theater is created when artists “are haunted by an idea or story and they do anything or anything they can to turn that thing in to theatre.” She worries that its newfound popularity has brought about an endless stream of courses that attempt to turn the process into a methodology with defined working practices. “When devising becomes an abstract concept, a set of skills or processes that are taught, it to loses its connection to the act of performance. Devising (capital D) becomes an end unto itself. Will some generalized and vague mode of devising become an unquestioned way of working ('we are Devisers, we do Devised theatre') rather than a hand made process that is scrabbled together as the only way to make your ideas happen? Is that happening already?”
"Devising is rare because it’s risky and the outcome is so unsure."
Joan Schirle
Ethnodrama is the written transformation and adaptation of ethnographic research data such as interview transcripts, participant observation, field notes, journals, documents, and statitistics into a dramatic play script staged as a live public performance. More than 50 terms synonymous with or related to ethnodrama have been coined and include variants such as performance ethnography, documentary theater, docudrama, non-fiction playwriting, theatre of the reenactment and reality theater.
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Gardner, Lynn. “The Divide in Devised Theater.” theguardian.com/stage. Web. 22 Jan. 2008.
Magnat, Virginie. "Devising Utopia, or Asking for the Moon."Theatre Topics. March (2005): 73-86.
Morrow, Susanna, Gleason Bauer and Joan Herrington. "Preparing to Devise." Theatre Topics. Sept. (2009): 125-138.
Oddey, Allison. Devised Theatre A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. Routledge: 1996.
Saldaña, Johnny. Ethnotheatre: Research from Page to Stage. Left Coast Press: 2011
Schilre, Joan. "Potholes in the Road to Devising." Theatre Topics. March (2005): 91-102.
Weber, Jason E. “Creating Together: Defining Approaches to Collaboratively Devised Generated Theatre." Mid-America Theatre Conference, Minneapolis, MN 2011.
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