Capital, Cooperation and Creating Performance: BloodWater Theatre Develops Ownership in Collaborative Theatre Practice Joanna Josephine Ronan Ph.D (Doctor of Philosophy) Submitted for Ph.D Examination Royal Central School of Speech and Drama University of London November 2018 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Joanna Josephine Ronan, declare that this thesis is composed by me and that all the work herein is my own, unless explicitly attributed to others. I understand the school’s definition of plagiarism and declare that all sources drawn on have been fully acknowledged. This work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signed: Joanna Josephine Ronan Date: 20 November 2018 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. ORCID 0000-0003-1693-5567 2 Acknowledgements BloodWater Theatre: Without you this research would not have been possible. Gavin Wright, Paul Chaal, Anna Nierobisz, Suzanne Morrison, Martin Smith, Jamie Walker, David Sneddon (February 2011–April 2012) and Kirsty Bagan (December 2013-January 2014) - each of you brought a unique perspective to how and what we made collaboratively. I cannot thank you enough for your talent, your time and your belief that non-hierarchical collaborative theatre is possible and that it can be appealing for artists and audiences. A special thanks to Martin and Jamie for helping me with documentation and Suzanne and Jamie for transcribing the focus group discussions on Whose Story Is It Anyway? Gareth White and Joel Anderson: Thank you for your guidance, patience and honesty. The Focus Group: The time you invested in seeing, reflecting and discussing BloodWater Theatre’s performances went a long way in helping us define the purpose of our artistic labour as we created performances which had meaning for us and for an audience. Thank you Lorenzo Mele, Colin Begg, Hazel Macdonald, Suzie Kane, Jan Warrack, Colin Little, Eileen Frater, Ross Macfarlane, Paula McCann, Martin McCardie and Victoria Price. A special thanks to John Quinn for being the moderator of the group and for supporting me through the challenges and uncertainties of this research over the years. CCA: Thank you Francis McKee, Arlene Steven, Kenny Christie and the CCA staff for programming Leave Your Shoes at the Door and for accommodating our numerous requests for staging and ticketing. Tron Theatre: Thank you Andy Arnold for giving BloodWater Theatre the opportunity to test some of our initial ideas by programming Whose Story Is It Anyway? Henriette Schreurs: Thank you for your laughter as you painstakingly and very meticulously transcribed the lengthy focus group discussions on Leave Your Shoes at the Door. Trent Kim: Thank you for your valuable feedback and for your visual representation of Dialectical Collaborative Theatre which I could only see in my mind. Gilli Bush-Bailey, Paul Brotherston, Shaun May, Rachel Cockburn, Adelina Ong and Nick Ronan: Thank you for engaging with this research and asking important questions Sara Weiner and Raewyn Riach: Thank you for going the extra mile to secure resources. University of the West of Scotland: Thank you for supporting my studies at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. Finally, Nick and Zach Ronan: Thank you for believing in me and encouraging me to persevere with practice as research even if this meant giving up time spent with me. Your unconditional love and selflessness enabled me to find my own voice as an artist/academic. This thesis is in memory of our beloved parents, Zacharia Peter and Theresa Rozario Peter. Your love of learning lives on in Pius Peter, Phyllis Peter, Janet Gomez, Vivian Taylor, Susan Peter-Marcus and me. 3 Abstract This thesis is developed from an experiment undertaken between 2011 and 2014. It interrogates Marx’s theory of capital, with a particular focus on cooperation. The purpose of the experiment was to develop a model for non-hierarchical collaborative theatre premised on collective ownership. My personal experience of collaborations and the literature in this field pointed to an erosion of the political roots of the theatre collectives formed in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then collaboration has come to reflect capitalist modes of production, characterised by hierarchy and utility, distancing it from its earlier intentions to promote equality in the making of theatre. By interrogating Marx’s theory of capital through practice, I suggest possibilities for reclaiming shared ownership in collaborative theatre-making. While the argument for ownership originates from capital and cooperation, it is developed through a theoretical and practical engagement with Engels’ three laws of the dialectic. I identify capital and cooperation to be the primary dialectic of capitalist economy and transpose this to the product/process dialectic in theatre-making. By applying the laws of the dialectic to the process/product dialectic, I discover a theoretical route to developing ownership in collaborative theatre. I test and refine this in practice with BloodWater Theatre, a collective of artists I formed for the purpose. I name my theory and our practice Dialectical Collaborative Theatre. The findings of this research materialise from BloodWater Theatre’s practice of Dialectical Collaborative Theatre over the three years when we created Whose Story Is It Anyway? and Leave Your Shoes at the Door, performed at the Tron Theatre and the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, respectively. Through observations, video diary reflections, focus group/audience feedback and dialectical analysis, I suggest how we came to own the processes and products of our labour. It is not my intention to replace capitalist modes of theatre production. These have their place. Dialectical Collaborative Theatre works within the capitalist cultural economy but it challenges its systems of production and proposes an alternative way of making theatre, working with and against normative cultural production. I hope this practice as research thesis opens up conversations and new practice which interrupt prevalent hegemonic utility-led collaborative theatre practice. 4 Table of Contents Declaration of Authorship 2 Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Preface 11 Abbreviations 14 Introduction 16 The Experiment 16 BloodWater Theatre 21 Politicised Collaboration 23 Capital and Cooperation 25 Theatre, Performance and Community 32 The Chapters 34 Chapter 1: The Field 41 Key Terms and Debates 41 Clarifying terms 43 Characteristics of Political Theatre 44 The Scope of Political Theatre 45 The Scope of the Experiment 47 The Sections 48 Section 1: Twentieth Century up till 1970 49 Piscator and Brecht 49 Russian Realism and Constructivism 56 Mnouchkine and Théâtre du Soleil 59 Augusto Boal 62 The British Context 66 The British Companies 68 The Singapore Context and the PAP’s 1st Phase 73 Beginnings of Theatre in Singapore 76 Reflecting on Politics and Pedagogy 78 Section 2: 7: 84 (Scotland) 70s to the 21st Century 81 Intellectual Property 82 Rethinking Agitprop 83 5 1970s Companies and Contexts 84 Funding Challenges from the Outset 88 Funding Crisis 89 Border Warfare 90 The Changing Politics 91 New Writing 92 Outreach 93 The Wider Context 94 The Twenty-First Century 94 The Writing is on the Wall 96 Working with 7: 84 98 Lessons from 7: 84 100 Section 3: Progressive Singaporean Theatre 80s to the 21st Century 104 The PAP’s Second Phase 105 The PAP’s Third Phase 107 Kuo Pao Kun 108 The Third Stage 109 The Necessary Stage 112 Theatre as Politics 121 Section 4: Moving on from 7: 84 and The Necessary Stage 121 Debates on Devising 122 The People Show 124 North American Cultural Laboratory 125 Theatre of the Emerging American Moment 126 Emerging Companies in New York 126 Song of the Goat 127 Representation 128 Summary 129 Chapter 2: Dialectics and Dialectical Collaborative Theatre 131 Ideology: The Precursor to Dialectics 132 Defining the Dialectic 135 Recognising Dialectical Operations and Naming Them 140 Practice as Research: Pedagogical Premises and Methodology 145 Summary 152 6 Chapter 3: Cooperation, Labour Power and BloodWater Theatre 155 The Beginning (February 2011- April 2011) 156 Composition of the Collective 158 The Early Operation of the Dialectic 159 Dialectical Collaborative Theatre as Pedagogy 164 Collective Ownership of Aesthetics 169 Developing the First Performance Text (April 2011 - October 2011) 179 The Dialogue with Commodity Begins 179 Devising as Agency 183 Non-Hierarchical Production 186 BloodWater Theatre Artists as Dialectical Beings 192 Collective Ownership of the Narrative 195 Collective Ownership of BloodWater Theatre 197 Evolving Artistic Vision and Determining Ownership 198 Labour and Commodity 201 The First Lull (October 2011 – August 2012) 202 Personal and Professional Journeys 202 Defining Value 203 Professional: Aesthetics or Wages? 204 The New Beginning (August 2012 – September 2012) 206 Collective Ownership of Failure 207 Owning Performative Identity 207 Developing Ownership through Iteration 208 Developing the Second Performance Text (September 2012 – January 2014) 209 Multiple Dialectical Formulations 210 Work In Progress 212 September 2012 – October 2012: Real and Fictional Worlds 214 November 2012 – February 2013: Dialectical Self, Dialectical Collective 223 March 2013 – October 2013: Recognising and Missing the Dialectic 226 November 2013 – January