Does Longevity Matter?

Session called by: Rebecca Manson Jones of Just Jones &

Attended by: various including Kate McGrath, Phelim McDermott, Alwyn, Sarah G, and several others whose names I didn’t catch, sorry.




I called this session in response to some other sessions which I heard being called. I called it out of curiosity and with a leaning towards wanting to understand why the devised theatre-making (or the D&D) community might be considered to be “vegans”.
It seems to me that the question follows on from the “ownership” theme which came up early in the session calling, but is also linked to legitimacy of the work as it is viewed in the theatre community (linked at least in my mind to Chris Campbell’s opening remarks). Is devising work’s “poor cousin status” connected to its lack of visibility beyond the time in which it is performed? For me, some of the most exciting, important and enduring performances I have been part of and have attended since 1990, are those for which there is no conventional performance script. After the event itself, there is not much record except in the memories of the people who witnessed or made the work.
Whereas, with the ubiquity of the published text by Oberon, Methuen, Nick Herne etc I house a few undistinguished playscripts as part of the production programme. Some plays which I missed I can easily pick up on Amazon. Those plays remain on sale, they can be accessed continually. (It was pointed out to me that many more devising and multi-media performances are recorded via DVD than previously and can be found via Youtube these days - but I’d still argue you don’t see people buying them in the National or Royal Court bookshops, onsale at Waterstones etc).
It is still easier for writers than devisors to evidence their work to those who haven’t witnessed it in performance and for some of those scripts to be revived. Hybrid works like Pool No Water are credited to Mark Ravenhill and are revived by companies other than Frantic Assembly who originally made it. (I know a performer who was part of the original devising process who was asked to audition – with mixed feelings - for a revival of this show she’d already helped create and then didn’t get the gig – weird viewed from several angles.)
My experience is that devised work is often regarded as a poor relation to written texts partly because of its even more transient nature than the written script. I wondered if that contributes to the issues of legitimacy of devised work. As a director who has made devised and text based work, I had forgotten that the divide between the two worlds is still so clearly defined. I use both strands to make work – it’s what suits me.
[A bit later in the week, I met another senior figure in literary management, and was amazed to discover he had never heard of D&D. When explained - especially with the “butcher amongst vegans” anecdote - , he thought the principle very interesting.]
A few years ago, when getting new plays on was becoming increasingly hard in the light of budget cuts, I was in a discussion about longevity with “new writers”. Did anyone think about the future or posterity of the work, or were they writing for the moment? I wanted to ask the same of devisors now. I wanted to ask makers of this kind of work if a life beyond the production matters to them? And how would they feel about other people who weren’t involved in the original production reviving their work in other manifestations later on.
In the end I think we covered these three themes
• Does having a record of the performance in something like a text-based published script add legitimacy to the work?
• Do devisors think differently about the future of their work from text-based playwrights?
• How would devisors react to other people/companies wanting to revive their work or to reviving works themselves?

The following is the best I can do from scrappy note-taking. Apologies if your comments are bowdlerised or omitted.
Q - Do written texts command more respect because they are written down?
Q - Do they justify revival?
Caryl Churchill it could be argued writes up a devising process in some of her plays but brings to it a genius for unifying the work.
I asked KM about Will Adamsdale’s work. Would he ever accord the rights to someone else to perform it, as I believe there have been revivals of by other performers of Tim Crouch’s “My Arm”? KM thought it unlikely at this point. She mentioned that agents have contacted her about onward productions of work that has been made in collaboration between a playwright and a company and each time it has to be referred back to all of the collaborators. Phelim mentioned that Improbable had been approached by a band in Hamburg to remake Shockheaded Peter without the Tiger Lilies and Improbable collaborated on that and kept their artistic link with it. I mentioned that Oily Cart have licensed one piece of their work to be made in the US but this in response to a request. Not something they have considered doing for themselves.
I asked him whether hypothetically he’d consider granting the rights to other performers to revive 70 Hill Lane. Phelim said it was his story and that would feel weird. There is such a strong emotional attachment to the process, could it be given over to other people and what would be the point?
There seemed to be a theme that much devised work was very close to the originator’s personal experience so detaching the lived experience, and the original making process from the performance might just render any revival a cardboard facsimile re-enactment thing.
Phelim (?) considered that he might go back to a subject to revisit it if there was unfinished business. Looking at that work 10 years on - might bring something new – watching other people in those roles might be interesting.
We agreed that most of the time, the people making the work were interested in its theme at this particular time of making, it was a personal or public response to the world as it is now and posterity never entered their heads. The audience is here and now. Playwrights who joined the discussion including Sarah G commented that sometimes playwrights have to think of the future because they have no guarantee the play will be put on now, even if under commission. Devisors tend to know when the show is planned for, where, when and why it will take place. Someone mentioned that Shakespeare had no sense of the future or revival. He wrote and performed and the future was another story.
The idea of documenting and notating the work like Laban notation was mentioned. There seemed to be a concensus that preserving the work like Becket’s work would not be favoured. Phelim felt that it would be important to him if revival were ever to take place that people understood the energy that inspired the show, the process that went into its making and that a revival might look, sound and feel quite different, rather than being a re-enactment of the original.
I asked whether a sense of legacy was important for future theatre-makers and academics? I think it would be great if more people could be aware of this work in the future so that when Performance is studied and this past 20 years is looked at, it isn’t just the published texts which are focused on. War Horse will be remembered and celebrated but will all the work of all those companies which lead us up to War Horse be known about? I used the example of suffragette plays mostly unpublished, frequently not very good, but important in their time and for us to remember that they happened. Someone mentioned that some companies do make source books for their shows and sell them (was it the Wooster Group) so these works are taught on university courses and in drama schools.
Q - does the British Library contact devising companies for a copy of their scripts?
We talked about archiving live performance and how we can do that better than with a fixed camera video. Capturing the specificity and rigour of the process seems to be important. Re -creation could kill the magic – is it possible to repaint a Picasso? Is devised work another genre from a written-down play, that is even more transient than a text-based play. Is part of its essence?
If the originators went back to a work later, they’d probably do it differently - playwrights often rewrite for a revival if they’re still alive (directors/dramaturgs edit texts).
Can these devised works evolve or is the continuum like the folk tradition in that each generation refinds the discoveries and deals with them in a new way, with the new production tools and other conditions available to them?
Perhaps a devised work might be revised 30 years on from its creation because the time seems apposite. A revisit might throw new light.
Phelim mentioned that Opera’s are commissioned to be created so that they can be done again (perhaps musical too). Nature of the genre.
Playwrights now hope their plays will last because it may not be picked up at the time of writing. And it can take so long for the play to be written, then workshopped,....
WHOEVER PUTS IT ON IS THE ONLY PERSON WHO COULD HAVE.

Often with productions what we are left with is script, photos, reviews, publicity materials. The devised productions which may be celebrated may be the ones where a case book is created. In the digital age, perhaps we have the possibility of better, cheaper documenting of process and production which may put these productions into a debate about work 5, 10, 20 years on.
Wooster Group, Philip Glass were mentioned, Pina Bausch who kept revisiting her work and whose work continues after her death.
Phelim mentioned that Spirit produced by the Royal Court never got a published play text as anticipated for sale as the programme because the script wasn’t finalised. By the time it was finalised on tour, the publishers weren’t interested because without the door sales it wouldn’t have sold in sufficient numbers. There was some consideration of how it would be watching the originators perform that “play” now or whether a younger team could do it. Phelim imagined it would have to be a different way into it...however hard it is documented... the nuances in the realisation would elude verbal capture... video helps a bit, but turning it over to new people.... hard to know if it could be revived.
A playwright mentioned that revivals are less troublesome in that way because by the time the script is handed over for a first performance, there is already some emotional detachment, the play has been given over.
Who would make such a revival? -
• would it be other devisors or a director auditioning for a company?
• It could be ghastly – could be the worst sort of flattery ending up in a grotesque of the original, like bad Ayckbourn.
• It could be reproduced brilliantly if it was more in the spirit of the folk tradition because it was passed on, reinterpreted, enjoyed, passed on....
And then Kronos got in the way and it was over, but perhaps it’s not over.

Improbable's Monthly D&D Satellite: How can we tour better?

October 26th at Toynbee Studios
Hosted by Kate McGrath and Louise Blackwell, Fuel
Facilitated by Nick Sweeting

Below are a list of issues that were raised during the evening.
If a report was written up for the issue, click on the listing to read the report.


Can a tour be run in an open space?

Cutting a deal- different ways- discuss

How can we be more environmentally responsible in our touring?

What are the best, most effective ways of communicating with bookers/venues?

Is there a better way to fund touring? What should we be telling ACE?

How can we market better for tours?

Its too expensive

How do we break the tyranny of the end-on space?

How best to start new relationships with venues?

Relationships- why slightly disappointing?

The FIRST tour

How can touring companies work better together?

To what extent are tours effective in developing new audiences?

How should we co-ordinate a press campaign?

Doing it alone

Quality, not quantity?

What do we do about Opera and Music Theatre?

Can a tour be run in an open structure?

Background to my issue to the event wednesday 26th Oct 2011. City, crowdy busy city, competitive, being on time, reaching to the top floor, Artsadmin, being early or being late. Whenever starts it's the right time. Improbable, Fuel

Hello!?

Waiting time, waiting room, singing a song in my head to clam me down.

How to tour better?

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My question to the group: Can a tour be run in an open structure?

Touring is very boring sometimes, it seems to me it is just showing your show or building your audience. Dry! Things are already complete, works/productions are very well-prepared/made/constructed/set out, too perfect, lack of real and life. Not good enough, audience's demand are high, especially the audience who are in the arts industries. Possibility: How to tour better is to run a tour in an open structure.

What I mean by an open structure, it's where the work is incomplete. Work is continuously changing, yes, durational, and we don't know what to expect, what it is going to happen. Both artists and the audience do not know what the event is going to be. Touring theatre doesn't make sense to me at all, touring theatre doesn't apply to what I want to tour. My question will be better if I put it as: how can you tour a show/work in which nobody know what it's going to become?

If I do a tour or organise a tour, I would like audience not to know what it is going to happen.

Always being an outsider of everything, by chance meeting an outsider (Cathy) from Canada, we had a great conversation about many things that are happening and not happening in the arts, UK and Canada, - dance, theatre, performance arts, performing arts/live art, or the unknown territory, durational arts, "no plan" for a tour, tour with friends/ the local communities - whoever comes are the right people, an open structure.

I am very interested in hearing more about Improbable's tour of open space in 2012.


Li E Chen

Improbable's Monthly D&D Satellite: What are we going to do about Impro?

September 15th at Battersea Arts Centre
Hosted by Improbable
Facilitated by Lee Simpson

Below are a list of issues that were raised during the evening.
If a report was written up for the issue, click on the listing to read the report.

There are lots of women in the room- why are there still so few on the stage?

The action of 'nothing' & not knowing. Preparation has reached _____________ _____________.

This is the most spontaneous thing I've done this year- is it improvisation?

Improv ⇔ Funny. From the audience's point of view

Should short-form comedy/gag-based improv be treated separately ti longer-form, story-telling based improv.

How can we make impro better theatre?

Lets play your favorite impro game

My story Your story

My group seems to have left our audience in Edinburgh. Where/how do we find them? (in London)

Making theatre through improvising- am I just being too lazy to write?

Is Impro not mainstream because of the audience or the impro

What is threatening about abandoning structure

It's not often this many people who care about improvisation are together.
What's the one thing we would like to make sure happens and commit to is?

Improv + finance - how do we make money from improv?

Non-theatrical applications of improv

Who wants to start and impro school in London

Who wants to play the Life Game with Phelim Mcdermott?

How can I make you look good?

For many impro = comedy. Why? How do we feel about this? Do we do anything about this? If so what?

Handcuffs or Blindfolds?

Is our acting good enough? If not, why?

Impro/v: The North/South divide (AKA come and take part in the Manchester Improv tournament this October)

The action of ‘nothing’ (not knowing) Preparation has reached: _____, __________.

Spoken form of the session:
The action of ‘nothing’ and not knowing.
(Hands covering ears, head looking down) Preparation has reached: 41, I am your anti-matter.

Written form of the session:
The action of ‘nothing’ (not knowing)
Preparation has reached: _____, __________.


Convenor:
Li E Chen (Full report with images: http://wp.me/pWz4M-xS)

People who attend the session:
Paul

Un-edited Notes:
No action, there is no action.
But it is an act with structure. A structure: a structure of not knowing.
“A structure of 3 on nothing”
Are you waiting for an idea to come along? Don’t wait, it will be too late.
Just keep doing, keep doing, not stopping, don’t worry, don’t even have time to worry, don’t even have time to think. Nothing makes senses. Doesn’t make senses at all.
John Cage’s 4”33 – “Nothing” is structured in the action of (Nothing). Silent performance/music. Player – Not Knowing -?
Just did it.
Just do it.
(no time to worry about it, no time to feel scared, no time to think.)

Actions to take:
1. Seeing a white crumble ball of paper on top of another piece of white paper on the floor.
2. Drawing the shadow of the crumble ball on the paper.
3. Taking the piece of paper and crumble ball home.


Actions after the session:
4. Recorded the crumble ball of paper on top of another piece of white paper on the bus. (Link: http://vimeo.com/29526332)
5. Revisited John Cage’s exhibition “Everyday is a good day”, 18 September 2011, at the Hayward Gallery (Link: http://wp.me/pWz4M-xS)


Discussion/un-edited notes of someone else’s session “What is threatening about abandoning structure?”
- Abandoning: Give up completely (a course of action, a practice, or a way of thinking)
- Formal structure
- Emerging structure
- Short forms (Bored with the same structure, doing the same structure again and again.)
- (Complication dynamic)
- Structure – good dangerous – dangerous
- Structure=formal (less interesting)
- Structure comes without knowing
- Expectation – Going to be so shit (can also be so brilliant)
- No structure at all?
- Drama schools/educations system & learning
- Impro: How do you solve the problem? But it is more than that?
- Fuctional result, education system.
- Bored/Bored with your own structure.
- Some creative people do not like structure or learning improvisation through structure.
- Your ego is always need to completely ‘let go’ and ‘free’ (completely not worry about it.)
- We are creature of structure with no structure at all and allow structure to emerge.
- Just keep doing it and doing good work, not to worry whether audience like it or not, etc.
- Ref: Keith (Being afraid of the structure; Killing the structure.)
- Other way: you know everything happening, but actually nothing really happen.
- A structure becomes a story that you tell.
- How do you ask your whole self? = (Body)
- Not being worried about things going wrong, not being worried about audience not like it.
- John Cage “Structure without life is dead. But Life without structure is un-seen”
- Noticing yourself your ego. Just noticing your ego is there.
- “Structure without life is dead. But life without structure is un-seen.” John Cage

There’s lots of women in the room, why are there still so few on the stage?

D&D : Improvisation, September 2011

Title of session : There’s lots of women in the room, why are there still so few on the stage?

Called by : Stella

Attended by :
Phil W, Matilda, Sarah Jane, Kirsty, Mary, Alex, Neil H, Chris, Lucinka, Mufrida, Avena, Teresa, James, Dylan (and about 6 others I didn’t get names for) and Jim in not-presence (he said if he could have, he’d have been at the sessions and stayed to listen, just listen.)


Summary of discussions :
- is it a comedy thing? A feeling there might be more push in standup for new women performers, and not yet in impro/v?
- having more women helps a show, a feeling there’s more ‘heart’ in the show with more women (this was said by one of the men)
- Unscripted (US – LA) has load of women in cast and it’s/they’re brilliant.
- Not only, or not so much, about men needing to make space for women on stage, but also about women needing to step up, be brave, make those leaps themselves.
- Older men are useful? Useful because/when they’re less ‘punchy’?
- Women don’t always give themselves time/space to be brilliant.
- Basic male/female biology/attitudes/society still not giving women as much space as men (cf front benches, media, CEOs etc)
- Is it worse than 25 years ago? Is there less of a gander balances? (possibly, if 25 years ago there were several companies with 3 men and 2 women, and now there are several companies with 7 men and 2 women, then yes.)
- Women are sexualized, in the world anyway, so it makes it hard to step on stage – women, especially if only 1 or 2 in a company, are sexualized by the audience before they do anything.
- Women need experience of knowing being on stage just as themselves is enough.
- Because we have aligned ‘risk’ with a male model of risk (eg big, brave, open to fail, open to look stupid), it can be difficult for women to take ‘risks’ of those risks are defined by a male model. What would women’s risk-taking be like? Is there a possibility it might be different to men’s? what is a risk for a woman???
- “I’ve got better at deciding I’m not rubbish YET”
- it’s hard to send yourself up when you’re young (and women’s drop out rate being higher, so women get less practice?)
- women’s fear is different to men’s
- the difficulty for young women (and older!!) of not looking good on stage, in a society that places such very high value on women’s looks.
- We need to teach audiences and teach men as well as women that we’re better TOGETHER.
- The culture of scarcity that means women can enjoy being the one or two women in a group (partly because it can feel ‘special’, also partly, in a culture that casts women as wives and girlfriends rather than heroes, once the wife and girlfriend and mother roles are gone, there’s nothing left for the women to play)
- We have a culture (dame role) of finding men dressed as women funny, but not vice versa. The Dame gets a laugh, before doing anything, just because of the dress up, the status ‘drop’, the Principal Boy does not. (To do with perceived status – the man, usually high status, drops status to play women, so is funny,. The women, usually low status, raises status to play man. Not so funny.)
- Also the archetypes women are so often presented as are so traditional (the wife/mother ting) – so what Do we do when on stage if not those roles?
- Impro doesn’t reward niceness or chivalry (no? an uncertainty about this, some types of impro perhaps)
- In 20 years it doesn’t feel like it’s changed much (22 year old woman saying the same stuff a 48 year old women said 20 years ago) – it reflects the world we live in.
- It’s possible that we might do an amazing thing, with an all women impro company, a thing that’s never been done before, without trying we can’t know what it is.
- Matilda talked a little about world-work, ghost roles : that is a woman is not on stage, there IS sill a woman there, as a ghost role, and therefore it’s an invitation to be on stage. (this was said at the point where there were no men in the session, so perhaps there were men there, as ghost roles??!!)
- The history of women making fools of themselves in public is less than that of men. Getting women to play with status is a different leap than getting men to do the same.
- Something about what do we do with the content once we’re ON stage – that is, it’s not only about standing up; it’s also about using the space, using the time, being present.

ACTION – Stella is going to support Matilda in calling that women’s impro/v workshop that’s been talked about for a while now.

So ... Matilda??? xx

Improbable's Monthly D&D Satellite - What are we doing about Interactive, Immersive and Gaming Theatre

July 21st at Battersea Arts Centre
Hosted by Tassos Stevens
Facilitated by Lucy Foster

Below are a list of issues that were raised during the evening, where they are highlighted means that a report has been typed up against it.

1. Is there scope to create a new kind of summer festival, with pervasive entertainment at the centre, not as an add on?
2. Theatre Maker V's Audience/Participants - How much to give and how much to expect?
3. Headphones and Instructions?
4. Can we develop/is there an established scale within interactive/immersive theatre?
5. What about content and narrative?
6. How do you entice people to trust you and to want to participate when they came not expecting to?
7. Use it to explore the future of humanity.
8. How do we make it less niche?
9. Can we animate BAC's foyer? Commission info and ideas pitch.
10. What possibilities does technology offer for immersive theatre?
11. What responsibility do artists have to take care of playing audiences?
12. What can/should we learn from LARP (Live Action Role Play)
13. How the hell do we explain immersive/interactive theatre?
14. What is the role of the playwright in this work?