Recount

So we were missing one of the ensemble totally during this rehearsal and another one had to leave for about an hour which seems to be a recurring theme for my life.  I guess this just comes with the territory.  We started the session by hot seating the characters that we cast last week.  I felt people may have wanted more time to think about them but that’s what the ensemble wanted to do so we did it.  My plan had been to plot out and devise the scenes around the narrative structure we had developed during the last rehearsal.

So we started with the hot seating and it went very well and some distinct traits and characteristics about each of the characters developed.  Home work was set to develop a myspace and facebook profile for each of the characters. I’ll try and get those all up on the wiki but we need to get photo’s and other things done for them as well.

We then started working through the narrative structure and eventual constructed what I am currently calling the first act.  This is up on the wiki currently.  The workshop basically consisted of devising the scenes I had planned.  This was difficult not having all present of the ensemble present at any given stage.  We reached a point in which my planning had stopped but the momentum of the rehearsal kept the devising going and we continued to devise a number of scenes in sequence.  It was great to note that the momentum was still present when the rehearsal stopped but disappointing we couldn’t have continued.  Especially since coming into the next rehearsal we had hit a wall.

Reflection

It has become apparent that a part of working with people is that things will ultimately develop and ensure chaos with plans.  This cannot be avoided and I think that there is for certain a huge part of being a student and working with students in a university context.  Trying to juggle everyone commitments is depressing and and exhausting at times.  Someone not able to come one day then another person and then another person.  Then I feel I’m wasting my own time because I can’t achieve what I want to achieve.  Is my time better spent writing a draft and compiling a script and then to bring it in and workshop that with the ensemble.  At this point for this project I feel yes.  I guess this just comes with the territory of devising and especially devising with university students who really don’t have the time when they are already juggling so many things in their life (TIS transistion piece, Mawson et al, 2008).

What is the difference between the type of momentum that grabbed hold of this rehearsal and took it to a place I had no anticipated and the feeling of uncontrollable chaos from being unable to really workshop the ideas with a full ensemble?  Phelan (2004) argues ‘Great art accumulates relevance and meaning as it moves beyond the control of its creators; weak art decides in advance what the piece is about’ (571).  I’m not tryign to put my work under the banner of great art.  I believe what Phelan is saying is that deciding in advance what a piece of art will be and mean is fruitless because it may never actually amount to these aspirations.  This is advice to not restrict the process but let it be free and go where it needs and wants to go.  Ultimately this is because the audience is the one who will decide it’s meaning, relevance and if it is successful.  How do I embrace not having ensemble members present to develop the work and how will this can be a driving force for the creation of the piece?  I guess in a way it can’t but then I guess it becomes an excercise in planning and drafting as much as possible to then workshop this material with the ensemble and then let the process go where it needs and wants to go.

Schirle (2005) argues that working with students when devising will ultimately lead to them bringing themselves to their roles.  Is this true? Has it occurred? Will it occur?  How can I stop it from occuring? I think their is an issue with this line of thinking.  Don’t all actors being themselves or their lives to their role in some way.  Whilst not playing oneself the irony is that you are always yourself and this is somethign that cannot be removed.  For example an  actor must draw on their own experiences viewed, enacted, real or created.  How can an actor attribute the characteristic of a character if they had never encoutnered those charactertistics in themselves or others? How can an actor play sad if you had never been sad nor seen another be sad or play sad.  Her argument is that a devised work shouldn’t be just a piece of self centered self indulgence for the devisors.  They need to create work which will engage an audience.  Product cannot be overlloked just for the sake of process.  She suggest ’students must develop a rigoruous attitude towards their devised work [which] is to continally pose questions: What is the intent of the devising project? Why make this? Who is it for? Why does it matter?’ (Schirle, 2008: 97).

Before begining the process I have had this type of aims, objectives and understandings for the piece.  This has been due to a lot of other litreature which suggests the same for begining devisors (Oddey, 1994; Pammenter, 1993; Bicat & Baldwin, 2001).  Will the ensemble bring themselves to the performance? Yes but not in the way that is self centered and self focused.  We are creating a performance with intent, aims and objectives, for a specific audience, in a specific setting, and for a specific reason.  However this does not mean that the process need be restrictive to these because it needs the flexibility to be taken where it needs and wants to go.