Devising Solo Performance: a Practitioner's Enquiry Misri
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Devising Solo Performance: A Practitioner’s Enquiry by Misri Dey A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfillment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Falmouth University March 2015 1 Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent. 2 Abstract This research explores the validity and value of ‘solo devising’ as a means for specifying a category of theatre-making that has been little discussed, compared to group devising, in existing literature on devising and postdramatic theatre. Primary source material was obtained through carrying out extended interviews with five experienced British theatre practitioners who have made work that could be described as solo devised performance: Tim Etchells, Bobby Baker, Mike Pearson, Nigel Charnock and Wendy Houstoun. In analysing these interviews, referred to in detail but not reproduced in full, the enquiry draws on a range of writings, including Oddey, Heddon, Harvie, Alexander and George, on devising and making performance and in particular on Melrose’s concept of practitioner-centred expert knowledge, Lehmann’s notion of the postdramatic and Sennett’s specification of expertise in craftsmanship. Chapter One considers solo practice in relation to the idea of a solo devising economy, the interviewees’ professional work and other experimental solo practices within theatre, performance, dance and art. Chapter Two explores how the interviewees create multiple performance personae, doing and undoing notions of individuality and autobiography through strategies of working ‘about’, ‘from’ and ‘beyond’ the self. Chapter Three explores solo devising processes, involving research, generation of material, composition, performance and ‘orchestration’. Chapter Four scrutinises different kinds of collaboration, including ‘audiencing’, as both enabling and productively confounding activities occurring within solo devising. Chapter five specifies some findings about solo devising: that it both involves expert, crafted, individual working, requiring orchestration of a high number of activities and skills, and, simultaneously, practices of negotiated authorship with other artists and audiences, enabling a potentially political reading of its distinctly ambiguous working. An additional finding is that close attention to what expert practitioners say about their work can yield rich information about a specific practice. 3 Table of Contents List of illustrations and tables ................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 6 Author’s declaration ..................................................................................................................... 7 Notes to the reader. ....................................................................................................................... 9 Preface .................................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 15 Aims ................................................................................................................................................. 17 Rationale ....................................................................................................................................... 17 Research methods ...................................................................................................................... 29 The interviewed practitioners ............................................................................................... 42 Chapter One: Contextualising solo devising .............................................................. 49 Understandings of ‘solo’ ........................................................................................................... 50 Its wider context as a practice ........................................................................................................... 50 Experimental solo creative practices .............................................................................................. 54 Solo devising within a wider performance practice ................................................................. 64 The notion of ‘the postdramatic’ ........................................................................................... 71 Solo postdramatic working ................................................................................................................. 76 A solo devising economy .......................................................................................................... 80 Characteristics of a solo devising economy ................................................................................. 82 Expert crafting: processes, skills and dispositions ......................................................... 95 Devising ....................................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter Two: Doing and undoing notions of the ‘self’ ........................................ 115 Strategies for making: ‘about’, ‘with’ and ‘beyond’ self. .............................................. 120 ‘About’ self: re-thinking autobiography ...................................................................................... 121 Working ‘with’ self: presence and physicality ......................................................................... 135 Working ‘beyond’ self ......................................................................................................................... 142 Chapter Three: Solo devising strategies and processes .................................... 151 Exploration: Forms of practitioner research .................................................................. 154 Individual learning as a research process ................................................................................. 157 Information gathering ........................................................................................................................ 157 Immersive research ............................................................................................................................. 159 Starting with explicit questions ..................................................................................................... 162 Generation of material ............................................................................................................ 174 Improvisation ......................................................................................................................................... 174 Creative thinking as making ............................................................................................................ 188 Multiple modes of making and composition ............................................................................ 213 Solitude ..................................................................................................................................................... 222 Exploration/Composition: Orchestrating in the in between. .................................... 228 Composition ............................................................................................................................... 234 Shaping ...................................................................................................................................................... 234 Ordering .................................................................................................................................................... 239 Performance as a process of devising ................................................................................ 245 Chapter Four: Collaboration in solo devising ........................................................ 251 Collaborating with others ...................................................................................................... 255 Contributing distinct materials and expertise ......................................................................... 259 4 Feedback .................................................................................................................................................. 266 Extended collaborative roles ........................................................................................................... 270 ‘Audiencing’ as collaboration .......................................................................................................... 277 Collaboration as collision ...................................................................................................... 285 Two solos or one duet? ...................................................................................................................... 286 Collaboration as confounding intention ........................................................................... 288 Chapter Five: On finding solo devising ....................................................................