Student Blog: Discovering Devised Theatre

In a theatre program where work that is created ranges from the most traditional to the most experimental, especially among the vast array of student-produced theatre, "devised theatre" and "devising" felt for my first year or so like buzzwords for something that seemed fun and exciting but that I didn't quite understand. I'd enjoyed work that felt tangential to it - things like a viewpoints class where we created a lot of fun weird theatre material, the creative work of choreography, and more traditional new work workshop processes - but had never really experienced devised theatre when I was cast in the fall of my sophomore year in a long-form devised process for a play that would be called The Women Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe. Over the course of the process, I'd fall deeply in love with devising, and the practice would come to inform my process on a variety of other projects.

Devised theatre is, on its most essential level, theatre that begins without a script. It's a very broad category, under which a lot of really varied theatre can fall. While it might seem unfamiliar, many very well-known plays were created via devised processes: although not explicitly labeled as such, even seminal Broadway classic A Chorus Line could be considered a devised process, as it began without a set text but instead with a theme/question and series of conversations/interviews out of which the show would come. The Laramie Project, an extremely successful and important play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard which has been broadly produced and even adapted into a film, was created via a devised process by the Tectonic Theatre Project, a company that specializes in incredible devised work. Led by Moises Kaufman, the company pioneered an approach to devising called "moment work", which has since been codified in a book of the same name and become a starting point for devised processes by countless other artists, including those of The Women Who Discovered... . The simple, open-ended, generative approach that explores the individual elements creating a theatrical moment was my introduction to devising, and made the work that seemed so intimidating into something I could grasp and tackle. About a year after this introduction, Moises Kaufman himself took on a virtual residency at Northwestern, and I got to learn about the process from this creator himself. Remarkably, it transferred very effectively to a virtual setting - a valuable discovery, considering the several virtual devised works that Northwestern students would take on this year.

Every devised process is different - some include a playwright, primarily responsible for collecting the collaborative work of the room into a written script, while in other processes the cast and director create the script themselves without a playwright. Some productions - like the Laramie Project and A Chorus Line - are strongly text based, and/or rely heavily on interviews; some combine some degree of text with a major movement component. Starting points/sources of inspiration can range from current issues and collective experiences and themes (for example, a recent devised Northwestern production exploring Asian-Americanness and patriotism) to historical events or figures (e.g., Tectonic Theatre Project's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde).

My own introduction to devising aimed to explore and share the stories of the Harvard Computers, an often-overlooked group of women who made major astronomical discoveries working at the Harvard Observatory in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The play focused particularly on the stories of Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and also included an ensemble of four computers who appeared as various other characters and otherwise supported the storytelling. The process began with combinations of research and discussion of themes, and explorations of how these stories and ideas - be they moments in the lives of these women, or astronomical concepts they examined - could be embodied through movement and text. While our playwright helped finalize language, movement was also central, and my work as a choreographer with storytelling through gesture both aided my contributions, and itself improved from the process. The process was a long-form one - we worked about twice a week, developing early ideas in the fall, creating a rough draft of the full show in the winter, then planning to begin a regular, more intense rehearsal process in the spring before performing the show in an actual observatory on campus in early June. Of course, when the pandemic began, our spring quarter plans were interrupted. We held several zoom readings to continue to workshop and discuss the script, but because movement and physical connection in a room together was so central to our play, we chose not to try to transition it to a virtual format. And while the show has been on hold and many cast members have graduated, we look forward to hopefully continuing to develop the play in the Chicago theatre scene.

Although this project never saw an audience, it has shaped my work since. Seeing the work that can be created spontaneously in the rehearsal room by a group of actors has made me a more collaborative choreographer and inspired me to further include actors in my creative process when moments of actor- (not just choreographer-) generated movement can be valuable for storytelling. I've sought out further opportunities to engage with devised works in a variety of capacities, including working as dramaturg on devised piece this spring. And as an actor, it's further empowered me to bring my own creative voice to a rehearsal room.

As the limitations of virtual theatre complicated rights and show selection, several processes at Northwestern this year turned to a devised format out of necessity, and made powerful, creative stories even with covid limitations. As the world begins to open up, I look forward to seeing how such creative innovation in what theatre can do and be will appear in the new and (hopefully) improved theatre we will create.

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