Introductory Sketches

The trail begins with my anxiety that my approach to devised theatre – as a critic – is based in the same concerns as my approach to scripted theatre. After wide reading, I stumbled upon a common theme in many devised process: a dialectic process informs their creation and development.

The following research trail examines fragments of my quest to find an interrogative instrument for devised theatre. There’s no conclusion, beyond a vague assertion that some but not all devised performances can be analysed in terms of a dialectic process.

One major case study of Joint Stock’s Fanshen and a smaller one for Gecko’s The Arab and The Jew provide examples of dialectic in devised work.

A brief survey of devised political work from the 1950s to the 1980s is conducted through studies of Heddon and Milling’s Devising Performance, Baz Kershaw’s The Politics of Performance and C. Carr’s On Edge, concentrating on evidence of dialectic in their construction, alongside Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and Lecoq's auto-cours teaching technique. 

A tentative suggestion is made that a dialectic process informs the development of devised theatre and is an important process within it. 

A Brief Note on 'Dialectic'

Throughout this blog, the word 'dialectic' is used by me to mean its simplist, Hegelian format: a proposition (the thesis) is set against an antithesis. These combine to become a synthesis, which provides its antithesis - and the cycle continues.

The word is much contested, and Hare's use of it suggests he is considering it as a Marxist dialectic, which adapts Hegel to a more socialist historical narrative. Further consideration of the concept is beyond the scope of this study, although the application of deconstruction, dialectic's opposite philosophical concept, would be fascinating.

What is Devising? A look at the 1960s

A fundamental problem was defining what 'devised theatre' means: it covers a broad range of practices, from the Lecoq inspired Clout and Theatre Ad Infinitum through the sketch-based revue of Kieran Hurley's National Theatre of Scotland supported  Rantin' to Forced Entertainment's extravaganzas. Like physical and visual theatre, 'devised' can be as much about marketing as reflecting shared processes.

And despite its ubiquity, it remains awkward in the context of British theatre: The Stage newspaper, for example, still catalogues productions by author and director, even though the collective creation of much devised work makes this difficult. The status of the script, based on Shakespeare but encouraged by the rise of writers at the start of the twentieth century such as George Bernard Shaw and established by the dynamic playwrights of the 1950s (Beckett and the English 'Angry Young Men'), has been joined by the cult of the director – Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn, Bertolt Brecht and the dynamism of the RSC in the 1960s.

Equally, its history is shrouded in mystery. While there are hints of a genealogy through Artaud’s anarchic proclamations, allusions to the actor as the focus of theatre in Grotowski and prototypes within surrealist and futurist performances, it was not until the 1960s that collective creation became acknowledged. In the USA, as part of the huge social changes during the 1960s, companies like The LivingTheatre, The Bread and Puppet Theatre and the San Francisco MimeTroupe created performances that did not fit within the recognised framework: variously called 'happenings' (after John Cage's experiments) or guerilla theatre, they had a clear political intention but a deliberately incoherent structure.

Thesis: 1960s Radical Theatre
Antithesis: British Political Theatre
Synthesis: Case Study: Fanshen

Thesis: The Anarchic Theatre of the 1960s

The Living Theatre

In The New Radical Theatre Notebook, Arthur Sainer presents an eclectic and fragmented survey of the 1960s fringe theatre in the USA. From the Firehouse Theatre’s provocative audience interaction during Still Failing (‘I disrobed that young lady and she was very agreeable… she started doing a little dance number,’ remembers Marlow Hotchkiss (Sainer, 1975, p201) to The Living Theatre’s collective creation (when asked about a forthcoming production, founder Julian Beck replied ‘We haven’t created it yet. It’s going to be put together by the company the way Frankenstein was,’ cited Sainer 1975, p295), America radical theatre challenged both theatrical form and the society around it. 


In her description of performance art, RoseLee Goldberg reflects this definition: 'permissive, open-

Uncle Fatso

ended medium with endless variables, executed by artists impatient with the limitations of more established art forms' (cited in Carlson 1996 p79). This description easily describes the attitude of the companies discussed by Sainer, who lead political demonstrations (The Bread and Puppet Theatre had their giant puppet Uncle Fatso, a caricature of then-president Johnson), or encourage audiences to buck the system –San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Ronnie Davies’ ‘guerrilla theatre,’ included practical skits teaching passers-by ‘how to stuff the parking meter’ (cited Sainer, 1975 p 49) and  even helped Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver escape arrest.

Their legacy s is clear throughout C Carr’s essays on the art scene of America in the 1980s and 1990s (Carr, 1993). From the emerging cross-border experiments of Guillermo Gomez-Pena to the Kipper Kids unique slapstick vaudeville, Carr emphasises their rawness, echoing the brutality of the New York No Wave music scene, but also harking back to the earlier experiments. 

Lecoq

While the rage of the 1980s precludes much of the playful joy of the happenings of the 1960s - The Om-Theatre held a sharing service in a church which respected the environment and maintained a sense of fun (Sainer, 1997 p66 -73) - the outrage at political oppression and the insistence on the immediacy of expression is shared. The anarchic refusal to respect authority, and the ownership of the performance by the performers, echoes the pioneering mayhem of the guerrilla theatre.This fringe theatre had been inspired by the simultaneous social resistance of the 1960s – in France, the riots of 1968 inspired Jacque Lecoq to develop a distinctive aspect of his training. The auto-cours is time set aside for the students to teach each other.

‘(The students) said to Lecoq, we don't want to work, we want to teach ourselves' (McBirney, cited in Murray 2003, p61). Far from compromising with the demands, Lecoq found a way to integrate them into the curriculum. This self-taught work is then presented and as Murray notes (op cited p61) assessed with a high 'degree of formality... the student group subjected to a fair, but rigorously astringent, analysis from a team of tutors.'

Itself created as a result of the dialogue between student and teacher, the auto-cours also follows a dialectic model: the demands for independent learning and freedom, which follow similar experiments of American radical companies, are balanced against the discipline of academic assessment: Lecoq synthesised the apparently oppositional ideas.


Antithesis: British Leftist Theatre
Synthesis: Fanshen

Antithesis: British Political Theatre

Joan Littlewood

British political theatre draws on a rich tradition, going back to George Bernard Shaw in the early twentieth century, who used theatre as a vehicle for his meditations on socialism and feminism. Inspired by the example of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble in the 1950s, the work of Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop suggested an early experiment with devised processes, while uncompromisingly promoting a socialist agenda.

Although Littlewood is credited with discovering playwrights Brendan Behan and Shelagh Delaney, her attitude to performance was based on a comprehensive work-shop approach.

No one mine or imagination can foresee what a play will become until all the physical and intellectual stimuli... have been understood by a company and then tried out in terms of mime, discussion and precise music of grammar. (cited in Leach, 2006, p140)

Her most famous production, OhWhat a Lovely War was based on a radio documentary about WWI, and was created through company members investigating the subject.

At the Royal Court, the rise of The Angry Young Men after 1956 and Kenneth Tynan’s critical championing of the ‘engaged’ play against the absurdists provided the context for the development of British political theatre.

By the 1970s, playwrights like Howard Brenton and Trevor Griffiths mused on the ideologies and failures of the left – even Sir Laurence Olivier found himself as a leftist patriarch in Griffith’s The Party. By the 1980s, David Hare was writing for the National Theatre and the radical fringe companies of the early 1970s were integrated in the mainstream, receiving Arts Council funding (1973 for Red Ladder, while both incarnations of 7:84 folded after funding was withdrawn).

Consequently, many theatre companies who used devised strategies moved towards scripted theatre. Red Ladder, who began life in 1968 as The Agitprop Street Players, originally formed to present a piece during a demonstration: by 1974 they had produced Strike While the Iron is Hot: although this was devised through workshops, founder member Kathleen McCreey is credited as co-author. From early pieces described as 'units,' Red Ladder moved towards a socialist-realist theatre: while The Cake Play was an immediate presentation of inequality, closer to 'performance art,' tensions caused the collaborative approach to falter. 

Richard Seyd’s The Theatre of Red Ladder revealed the problems inherent in this collaborative process: dominant personalities would hold up progress until ‘those in a minority would… make the decision unanimous… just so work could continue’ (cited in Hedden and Milling, p106). 

John McGrath, famous for founding the socialist 7:84 companies in England and Scotland, and co-founder of the feminist company Monstrous Regiment Gillian Hanna contrasted the democratic enthusiasm of ‘pure’ devised theatre against the skill of the playwright. 

McGrath’s 7:84 allowed a degree of group discussion – Boom (1974) was the result of ‘the whole company… throwing in their ideas’ (ibid, p111) – but maintained his status as author: ‘they are skills which need aptitude, long experience, self-discipline and a certain mental disposition in one individual’ (ibid, p. 111). Hanna, meanwhile, reflected on Monstrous Regiment’s adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as ‘a disastrous foray into the grave labelled devised writing… incoherent. Too many people had a hand in writing it’ (ibid p113).

John McGrath voiced his concerns about such inclusivity following a joint production between 7:84 and Belt and Braces.

There was total decentralization, a total exchange of roles… everybody could do anything on the show. It was total chaos. The gigs got fucked up because somebody didn’t tell somebody that they’d made an arrangement (cited in Hedden and Milling, p106).

McGrath continues with a trenchant complaint: that he wanted to make socialist, not anarchist theatre. 

Thesis: The Anarchic Theatre
Synthesis: Fanshen

Synthesis: Joint Stock's Fanshen (Case Study)

A remark by Mark Ravenhill in his introduction to Shopping and Fucking suggests that producer Max Stafford-Clark does not take a generic approach to script development. Acknowledging that the script, as printed, doesn't reflect the script as performed, he expresses excitement about an ecstasy workshop (Ravenhill, 1996). Stafford-Clark appears to use a script as a foundation for workshops, which then produce the final version.

Max Stafford-Clark

In an interview with Duska Radosavljevic, Stafford-Clark admits that ‘my influence has really been the hippie American companies – The Open Theatre, The Living Theatre and the LA MaMa’ (Radosavjjevic, 2013 p65). His work of the early 1970s, a cut-up version of Heathcote William's The Speakers and Fanshen, an adaptation of William Hinton's epic study of a single village during the Chinese cultural revolution was explicitly political and followed a collectivist process of creation. 

Although Dave Hare wrote the script - and the production has been interpreted as 'scripted theatre' since its 1975 premiere - the initial process was a series of workshops, with actors engaging with the texts and its ideas about social change and equality. While Hare disavows the importance of these workshops – he refers to the spirit rather than the detail of the activities as influential (Hare 1991, p68) – Joan FitzPatrick Dean counters that the production was ‘infused by a communal and non-hierarchical spirit… the evolution of the dramatic text owes much to the idealism of Hare, his directors and the company’ (FitzPatrick Dean, 1990).

Stafford-Clark’s diary details the frustrating workshop and rehearsal periods, which reveal a dialectical approach to source material and to the company’s creativity (Roberts & Stafford-Clark, 2007, p30-43). Actor Pauline Melville identified one strategy that is reflected in Hare’s final script, which is preoccupied with the discussions of policy within the village.

One of the ideas that we adopted from the book and gradually absorbed into our way of working was the notion of discussing everything through until it was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction without taking votes. (Roberts & Stafford-Clark, 2007, p32)

The difficulty of a collaborative process is highlighted, especially in the descriptions of the bickering in the rehearsal.

A bit of directorial conflict. ‘It’s not finished,’ said Roderick. ‘It is,’ said Bill. ‘It isn’t.’ Very hard. We can’t all direct at once…

Part of the problem is that we have no collective purpose in undertaking the show and not even a cohesive and united idea of what theatre should be like. (ibid, p33)

Hare’s later comment that ‘an openly political way of working only pays off with dialectical material’ (cited in FitzPatrick Dean 1990, p. 35) implicitly acknowledges the process of the script's creation and the style of the script, which is a series of discussions around how the Chinese revolution was being expressed through social changes in the village, reflects a dialectical process that echoes the workshop atmosphere. 

Hare argued that the violent parts of the original book were 'undramatic,' but in stripping these away, he leaves behind a series of conversations. This not only offers a way for the audience to experience a dialectic process, it removes 'emotionalism' of traditional dramatic narrative, marked by moments of excitement and reversal. Michael Billington notes the effect.

It offers hard prosaic detail: and instead of showing revolution as a glamorous overnight process, it reminds one that there is only the patient daily work of remaking people… a model example of objectivity, clarity and discussion that transforms noble ideas into a living reality. (The Guardian Aug 15, 1975)

Stafford-Clark, discussing verbatim theatre, offers another clue.

You remember Madonna had a fashion of wearing underclothes outside her clothes? Verbatim’s a bit like that – you’re flashing your research. (ibid p 69)

Hare was flashing his process when he scripted Fanshen. 

Examining this process, through the recollections of the creators, suggests that Fanshen was an attempt to address the problem discussed in Heddon and Milling’s Devising Performance, of reconciling the skill of the playwright with the democratic leanings of devised theatricality.

Anthithesis: Developments in British Theatre

Antithesis: The Carnivalesque Leads to Irony

In chapter 4 of Devising Theatre, Deidre Heddon and Jane Milling discuss the growth of devised performances within the explicitly political companies of the early 1970s, before charting their demise over the subsequent decades. For some of these companies, the energy and immediacy of the devised process – such as CAST’s ‘rock’n’roll’ pub theatre (Heddon and Milling 2006, p 97) or El Teatro Campesino’s happenings to support California striking farm workers (ibid, p 96) – allowed the presentation of complex political ideals in a satisfyingly potent performance. However, over time, these companies returned to the ideal of the script.

Baz Kershaw (Kershaw 1992: pp 67 - 90) identifies a dialectical process in the evolution of British political theatre during the 1970s: the thesis of Marxist agitprop theatre (represented by CAST, a company created by performers expelled from the more traditional Marxist London Unity Theatre) and the antithesis of the carnivalesque (that is more anarchic, permissive and playful, defined by Bakhtin as the inversion of the status quo and its values) as espoused by The People Show or 'early Welfare State' - this carnivalesque could equally apply to the strategies of The Open Theatre in the USA.

Kershaw sees a more sophisticated, ironic form of political theatre emerging as a synthesis of the Marxist and carnivalesque, without limiting the diversity of alternative theatre to a monolithic whole: a perfect dialectical process of thesis and antithesis tending towards a synthesis. Irony, for Kershaw evades the obviousness of rhetorical agitprop, feeds a sophisticated audience's need for complex, layered theatre. Interpretation is no longer fixed, but open to diverse readings. 

THESIS: Joint Stock's Fanshen
SYNTHESIS: Gecko's The Arab and The Jew