Inspiration
In the spring of 2014 I proposed directing an original play which was initially (and ambitiously) titled ‘The Knowledge Project.’ The structure of the project was introduced to us three years before with a workshop that was lead by Prof Rich Brown of Washington University and his collaborator, Harmony Arnold; a designer who had frequently worked on devising projects with strong success. As a theatre department, we had been producing devised work for decades before I was hired at Bucknell University, albeit it was not called devising, it was called original work, or experimental theatre. The terminology of ‘devising’ was something I brought with me to Bucknell as one of my primary scholarly endeavors. Although many of the pieces created during that period before I was hired were interesting and worthwhile, none of them utilized the interdisciplinary opportunities available at our liberal arts institution to their maximum potential, or so I thought. In addition, those prior pieces seldom became part of the main stage season. When they did, it was a very large strain on the designers and shops to create strong production value on such a compressed time frame, especially when they were also juggling multiple design projects. I invited Dr. Brown to come to Bucknell and lead a ‘May Plan’ workshop with the entire department of theatre and dance faculty on how to build a devised piece into our current season structure with strong support and minimal impact on the design team and shops. The workshop was received very well with equal time having designers perform and performers design, but the most valuable part for us was finding out how to integrate a year-long devising project into a liberal arts curriculum. Although Dr. Brown’s home institution was much larger than our own, he offered excellent advice on how to structure the process to support both the academic and production values of the piece. He suggested, from his experience, dividing the process into three parts. The first; an exploration of the prompt question embedded into a beginning devising class. Second; the writing of the piece as a separate winter/early spring student volunteer project, and finally the third part; the rehearsal/performance as a late spring finalizing component. We decided to attempt this structure in our 2014-2015 season. The prompt question for the whole piece was based on an essay in the New Republic that had received much attention. The essay was entitled “Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture” A Defense of the Humanities. by LEON WIESELTIER. I was excited to explore this prompt with students, especially students who had chosen the Humanities as their majors.
Concept
The play we eventually created was based on the first year college experience, examining how knowledge is defined through experience. I was interested in utilizing the many skills of our students, as well as the technology we had at our disposal, to explore the prompt with great detail. We successfully incorporated song, dance, shadow work, projection and puppetry into the piece to better serve the telling of the story. Although there were many disparate pieces, we were interested in finding ways for them to work together and in a set of characters that we would follow, through narrative, throughout the piece. We were able to use the Tectonic Theatre Moment work process to create the forms from the fall class and incorporate the text from the winter group work. All of this was in support of the overall story of ‘the first year experience’ of a college student and thier problems: fitting in, interpersonal relationships, separating from parents and making choices about sex and sexuality. Our central question was ‘What does it mean to grow up?’ This question connected to the idea of the humanities, which we laced in through shadowy lectures by professors, whose impact on the students lives ended up being measured by measured in the personal choices the students made every day.
Conceit
The first adjustment we had to make regarding process was design oriented. From Dr. Brown’s experience, this three-part structure worked very successfully as a year-long project and gave designers ample opportunity to develop the piece. However it required that the designers were students who were not involved in any other design projects. The designers were then free to be a part of the process beginning with the class and this could be their main focus. Our faculty designers felt that we did not have enough design students to support this format, nor did we have design students (at that time) with enough experience to design a main stage production. The faculty designers themselves could not come to every class, could not take on less production assignments but they were very interested in being a part of the devising process as a whole. After much discussion we decided to keep our faculty designers on the project and that they would try to work with the structure by dropping into class and rehearsal every now and again to lead workshops and to observe the work being produced. This change to Dr. Brown’s original format seemed a good adjustment for our smaller liberal arts program. And it indeed proved successful in the overall production. Our final show utilized many elements that were initially conceived of in some way in the initial class projects, including projections, puppetry, shadow work – but reimagined them to be more expansive than the original ideas. These elements gave the feeling of both being in the current day (with the use of social media and skype as portrayed either connecting or disconnecting characters from loved ones) as well as magic. The faculty designers masterfully took student ideas and manifested them in giant screens and puppets or shadowy ‘house party’ scenes complete with pumping lights and sound working in tandem. The characters the students had created also influenced costume choices and students enjoyed being a large part of the process, taking ownership in the collaboration.
The second change we proposed was based on student need. We decided to allow for more flexibility in student commitment. We were nervous about students committing to a year-long process. What if one wanted to study abroad? What if another came back from study abroad? We were too small a program not to leave the door open for these members of our community. Dr. Brown had an enormous turnout of 60 actors audition for his last devised piece. He called 30 back and cast 10 of those. At our very best turnouts during auditions (often for musicals) we had at most 30 actors. 60 was basically our whole program; majors, minors, designers and technicians included. Ours was a much smaller university than Western Washington’s (3,500 to their 15,000) and we knew the culture of our program had always allowed our overbooked students to audition right before the rehearsal process. We believed flexibility would offer a small minority of students who could not commit for a whole year the chance to participate. What ended up happening was the opposite. The majority of students choose only to invest in one component of the process, and although we had over 38 students work on the piece (16 students in the class, 12 writers and 10 actors) they did not all work together, did not all speak to each other and were all very different groups of people. This journey of well meaning inclusivity created drastic artistic turmoil that came to a head (predictably) the week before the show opened that spring. Offering this idea of ‘no obligation’ began with the class. It was a permission only upper level theatre course which filled with very interested juniors and seniors. They were not obligated to be in the writer’s group or the production.
Reflections
My reflection on this event was that it was a very effective way of discussing first year concerns broadly across campus. The show was very well received. Indeed it changed the interactions of many first year advisors who saw the show in their very next year interactions with first years. The students felt very invested in the process and the show felt very contemporary and cutting edge. There were a few unresolved issues that never came to fruition (some of the more magical story lines of slenderman and Kubiko) but overall the production was a success. I am still wrestling with the process of the project. I do not believe that different groups of people can work effectively in this way. As I begin my next mainstage devised project at Bucknell, I am using a whole new format to explore, create and rehearse the piece. The results are yet to be determined. See ‘The Play yet to be Written’ section for more details.