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