It may be presumptuous of me to feel intimate with the ins and outs of peer collaboration, but there is a certain confidence which comes after so many years of working with the people around you. I’ve collaborated with all of the people in my class at some point before, either in theatre or in other subjects, and I know firsthand that none of them are any more inexperienced in working with our peers than I am. One of my fondest memories of collaborative work was two years ago in a devising theatre elective. It was mixed grade levels and many of the people I had never worked with before; perhaps that contributed to the outcome which was a strong, confident-feeling piece. It was a large group in that case so we divided into several different groups of three or four and created short little scenes which we then wove together. That was an effective process but might not be applicable to the Collaborative Theatre Project which is already a small group of people. The idea generating process undertaken in that case however was useful and effective. We began by coming up with vague ideas for skits based on random objects or articles or photos, and then we would create solely the dialogue. We used a shared Google Document and for each of our characters (sometimes making up new ones spontaneously) we wrote our lines of dialogue. This was an incredibly effective script creation process, because it allowed for us to really refine the staging, movements, and vocalizations of characters along with script changes, and I would greatly like to emulate it in some way for this project. Another experience I have in collaboration is currently ongoing and of a much different nature than any theatre project I’ve ever devised. I run an after-school philosophy  club with another person and we working in conjunction to plan and facilitate weekly discussions of certain decided upon topics. This kind of collaboration is much less structured and is more characterized by spontaneous ideas for pop culture references and 4:00 a.m. phone calls. It is equally as effective however, and the results of such a hectic process are surprisingly satisfactory. The non-rigid, free structure of such a process allows for more creative bursts and seems to be a general boon to the uniqueness of whatever ends up being generated. These are things which I also find desirable in theatre projects, so I would encourage our group to consider some elements of this process (although complete disarray might certainly prove to be more problematic than helpful for our process).

    Having had a few years’ experience with devising, I hold in certain regard almost all devising company theatre an uniquely non-traditional. What I mean by this is that no company I’ve ever encountered produces what I would call conventional theatre. As a theatre student, I’ve always been drawn to the look of Broadway plays and professional performances—the costumes, staging, scripting—most of which seems to be directly challenged in devising theatre. Most devising companies remind me of Absurdists theatre or impressionist painting, and despite being a hallmark of many other companies, I would very much like to avoid this in my project. For me, it simply boils down to a matter of taste—but all art is subjective and as a subject my take on art ought to be valid enough on its own. The first company I looked at, Forkbeard, uses mixed media (e.g. sculpture, projections, etc.) because they are visual artists firstly and performs second. They too come across as stereotypically non-traditionalist because their performances are so rooted in art pieces and the live performance feels as if it comes second. Nonetheless, I might like to borrow from their use of art as a focal point because it connects the show with something directly physical. The other company I look at was Gecko. Although Gecko’s productions don’t much appeal to me in the way of final products, I’ve taken great interest in their devising process. Their process includes finding a “seed” of the performance during the idea-generating period and then expounding upon that to great lengths until an entire entity comes into focus, like an iceberg emerging slowly from the water. Their seed-finding process is something I would very much like to incorporate in our devising process.

    Our group formed after all the students in the class shared with one another the posters they had made advertising their interests and theatre background. The group that I am a part of formed mostly around the prospective roles that we were interested in: I expressed interest in having a directing/technical role, both my peers had interest in performing onstage. Our initial class was small enough that this group made for an almost even split and neither group felt particularly slighted or unbalanced, so far as I know. Everyone in our group had previously collaborated, both in theatre and in other coursework so going in we all felt comfortable knowing each other’s comfortabilities and strengths.

    The day after forming our group, we set about creating a list of agreements that would reflect the mutual interests of our group. Having worked with each other many times before, there was little to no disagreements and the seamlessness of the process seemed to foreshadow a smooth and well-functioning collaborative process down the road. The agreements we came up with are as follows:

 

We agree to respect and support each other as artists, people, and creators so that we may all produce the best work possible.

 

We agree to not rewrite or remove another’s work and instead question each other about anything we are unsure of and have respectful discussions.

 

We that we need each other in order to collaborate effectively and respectfully.

 

We agree to not say “no” without discussion.

 

These center mostly around how we will treat the collaborators in our group, and next week we will begin setting forth our containers and bringing in source material to inspire our initial devising.