Creating and staging a devised performancePurpose, aims and intentions
When you stage a performance, identify the purpose of your work and the target audience. Choose a suitable style and stage layout. Remember that rehearsals allow you to fine tune your piece.
At the planning stage, it’s important to establish the aims and intentions of your work clearly. It’s not essential that your piece has a message. You may choose to explore a theme and leave the audience to take their own message or meaning away from it. But if you do have a message, remember to keep it central to the work that you create, so you have a clear thread running throughout.
You may already have a clear narrative: a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Nevertheless, at this stage you must still consider the effect you hope to have on the audience. Do you want them to feel moved, gripped, questioning or scared? You could always surprise them with a twist in your tale.
The audience
Who is your target audience? Every piece of drama you create should keep the audience awareness at the core of the work. Without an audience there is no ‘theatre’.
Actor Adrian Lester explains the importance of connecting with the audience in a clip from
