HOW CAN WE PLAY TOGETHER: survival kits for devising and process-based theatre within institutions or on trust

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to define what actions can be taken during the creation of a devised performance within an institutional theatre by the three agents of director, actor and artistic leader, to find a middle ground despite their differences. I will explore what steps each participant can take towards the middle, hoping to also define what the middle is and what the middle can be; and, since this is a thesis on Theatre Directing, to place the main responsibility to organize these conditions on the director themselves. Using my own artistic thesis project FÖRLORARNA at Åbo Svenska Teater as a case study and through conversation with other directors, artistic leaders and actors both from Finland and Iceland, I hope to find tools to facilitate similar processes within institutions. To take one step closer to normalising non-text based creation processes within the mainstream production houses and to create space for more of the different, strange, unknown, unpredictable, norm-questioning and unconventional art to be visible on our best-funded stages. I will also define what devising means for me, basing my thoughts on my opinion that devising relies on the conditions for play and to analyse what is needed to create and maintain the conditions for play within a process. I will attempt to analyse what needs professional actors at institutional theatre have to be able to perform at their desired standard and to stay open through-out a process, what needs the theatre as an institution has to be able to meet their duties and what needs a director has to stay true to their artistic vision and not burn out, and where those needs can be modified or have to be compromised. This thesis is both personal and practical, as I reflect on my own practise and experience, examining where my own taste and methodology comes from while also opening up to a wider context of how this kind of work can be facilitated and normalised on an institutional level. My personal life situation at the moment affects the writing of this thesis to a large extent, since it is written with a newborn child in my arms. Some reflections on this situation will be found in the footnotes. I have found it more giving to think through conversation with other people and thus I explore these topics through 9 interviews with different theatre professionals, some of which are friends and/or colleagues. In the later part of this thesis, I will reflect on directing a devised process through the philosophical and practical paradoxes encountered in the terms of freedom, violence, trust and taste.