Creating and staging a devised performanceTheatre practitioners

You may have decided to devise work in the style of an established theatre practitioner, such as Bertolt Brecht or Konstantin Stanislavski. If you do this, it’s important that you choose the best practitioner to suit your chosen theme or storyline and to complement your aims and intentions.

Stanislavski wouldn’t be a good practitioner to emulate if you’re devising a piece that jumps about in time, has several locations and where the actors play more than one role. His approach is entirely based upon naturalistic (truthful) performance. The use of stylised methods to tell your story would be at odds with his methods and ideas.

If you had a clear moral message that you wanted the audience to think about throughout the work, then employing Brechtian techniques and devices might work well.

Practical exploration

Get on your feet. Try things out, adapt and refine. Remember that you don’t have to create scenes in their chronological order even if you aim to present the finished piece that way.

Improvise in role around a theme or scenario and keep what works. Don’t rehearse the same scene over and over again until it’s perfect during these early stages, however tempting it is. Only rehearse in detail properly when you can view the whole drama as a piece in its own right. By then you will understand the demands of separate scenes in the context of the journey of your play. You will have identified the highs and lows, where tension builds, points of climax and any necessary pauses or changes in pace. If your narrative doesn't make sense, decide what you need to add. At this point you are sketching an outline for your play to ‘colour it in’ later. If a scene isn’t working, leave it. Come back to it at a later date after exploration of other scenes has provided fresh inspiration or insight.

You may have elected a director, to steer the work that you create, advising you what’s successful and what’s not.

Alternatively you could be working as an ensemble where, in effect, you are all directors. Use one another for feedback. Discuss the work you create as it unfolds and be open to sharing constructive criticism.

Your narrative may be already established so you know what needs to happen, or you may still be developing and discovering the storyline as you work. Either way there are a range of techniques you can use to explore your ideas and move the drama forwards. Look at Explorative strategies for more information.