printable version'Devised theater' project brings California's propositions onstage
BY CYNTHIA HAVEN
Graduate student Matt Moore, left, rehearsed with sophomores Max Sosna-Spear, Sarah grandin, Charmaine Tangonan, Nguyen Pham, and Chris Rurik, and fellow graduate student Rachel Anderson.
The rehearsals, outside the Math Corner of the Quad, don't appear to be anything more than a few students goofing around after classes—except, perhaps, that the three Stanford sophomores at times are strutting and clucking like chickens.
They are reenacting the debate over last year's Proposition 2—which prohibits cruel confinement of certain farm animals—from the chickens' point of view.
"It's not about the taste—it's about the space!" declared one of the "chickens."
The scene is the latest effort in the Devised Theater Project at Stanford. Performances of Propositions: An Outdoor Theater Work are scheduled for Thursday, June 4, at 5 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Math Courtyard, behind the Math Building. The theater group used three of last autumn's California propositions—on animal rights, drug treatment programs and gay marriage—as a jumping-off point to create theater.
The 50-minute performance, free and open to the public, invites the audience to witness, consider and at times participate in a "series of theatrical moments by choosing what to watch, how to watch, and whether or not to engage," according to its publicity.
The talk-back session following Saturday's show will include as guests members of Lucky Pierre, a Chicago-based performance collective.
Devised theater has a long lineage in the East. But in the West, most theater begins this way: Someone, somewhere writes a script—whether last week or 500 years ago. A theater company decides to produce the play. Auditions are held, and actors fill the cast.
Since Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook started experimenting in the 1960s, however, actors have taken a more active role in shaping scripts and performances.
"Devised theater," which involves intensely collaborative work among performers, is finding a natural home at Stanford. With a $10,000 grant from the Stanford Institute for Creativity in the Arts (SiCa), the devised theater movement at Stanford, which began over a year ago with three plays and also a visiting residency, workshop and performance by Goat Island, a Chicago-based troupe known for its work in devised theater, has sent down some vibrant roots.
The Proposition performances are an outgrowth of the Devised Theater Project sophomore seminar, a new course taught last winter in English and Drama.
Devised theater, according to Kevin Di Pirro, lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, who instructed the course with drama Professor Emeritus Carl Weber, "is simply a process of making theater that involves intense collaboration. That is, the group starts without a script, and together, by generating material and writing or acting exercises, they create a script for the show."
It differs from improvisation because, "moments in the performances are often nailed down, there, fixed. Improvisation is not fixed, the performers can do anything at any moment," said Di Pirro, who is also producer for Propositions.
Back in the courtyard, Max Sosna-Spear, Charmaine Tangonan and Chris Rurik (Sarah Grandin and Nguyen Pham are also included in the play) plan staging and concept, and even finalize the script. None of them are drama majors, but they are nonetheless engaging in "metatheatrical" moments in the creation of a new production and play.
"Whatever capacity you have for feeling silly—I want you to exceed that by 5,000 percent," called Rachel Anderson, co-director with Matthew Moore. (Both Anderson and Moore are graduate students in drama.)
"There's no particular rule as far as directorial roles go in devised work," said Anderson later. "Some groups and processes use them, and some don't. In this case, I think Matt and I function mainly as directors and facilitators."
For Di Pirro, who has taught a playwriting seminar for a number of years, the initial draw to "devised theater" was moving beyond standard tropes and conventions of theater scripts. "As one of the lecturers in Writing and Rhetoric, I draw on and apply techniques of playwriting and dramatic writing. My interest is in generating good writing that uses dramatic ways of stepping outside habitual and formulaic ways of creating a text."
In playwriting seminars, it allows students the opportunity of "writing for the theater, rather than writing in their minds for the theater"; it keeps them from writing "page stuff instead of stage stuff."
For the students also, the collaborative nature of the work allows them to create their own work, rather than interpreting someone else's. It also allows them to contribute to various kinds of theater work and to learn from one another. In a time of economic meltdown, it is also a low-cost option for supporting their work in a period of diminishing funds and opportunities.
It has its drawbacks, however: "It's pretty difficult to pull off," said Di Pirro. "The whole production process is flipped around. You're really waiting on the artistic process. That's the big fear. That's the big worry. It's not a business-friendly model."
But it does, he said, offer "a lively, dynamic, interactive, knowing performance."