The Collaborative Impact:

Writing a Play with the Collaboration of Actors

Katherine Lyall-Watson

A play script and exegesis submitted for the requirements

of the Masters of Arts (Research)

Creative Industries Faculty

Queensland University of Technology

2007

THE COLLABORATIVE IMPACT

KEYWORDS: collaboration, collaborative theatre, group devised

theatre, devising, playwrights, creativity, play building, play script,

authorial control, theatre.

ABSTRACT: How can a playwright share authorial control with a

group of actors when creating a new play script? How does the

individual playwright address matters of genre, form, style and

structure to create a unifying theme, while remaining true to the

dramatic intention and aesthetics of the group? What impact will

the collaborators have on a playwright’s work? Will they help or

hinder the writing process? This exegesis closely follows the

creation of a new play, The Woods, in a process where the

playwright intended to facilitate a collaborative process with the

actors rather than act as sole author. Issues arising in this mode of

working include the real meaning of sole authorship, aesthetic

integrity and creative power balance. The analysis of these issues

will have relevance for theatre practitioners working in

collaborative contexts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

RESEARCH PROBLEM 3

RESEARCH ARGUMENT 3

LITERATURE REVIEW 5

A definition 5

The writer’s role 6

Creator or scribe? 7

Working with actors 9

Copyright issues 10

METHODOLOGY 11

SCRIPT FOR THE WOODS 15

CASE STUDY 67

In the beginning there was fear 67

Germination 67

Time 68

Ideas 69

First meeting 69

Workshops 70

Eureka moments 72

Actors as co-creators 73

When collaboration harms 74

A changing process 76

From collaboration to isolation 78

Reflections 79

CONCLUSION 81

APPENDIX ONE (invitation to actors to be involved) 83

APPENDIX TWO (email response from D. Eady 21/07/06) 84

APPENDIX THREE (email response from K. Stevenson 2/07/06)88

APPENDIX FOUR (email response from K. Stevenson 12/11/06)90

BIBLIOGRAPHY

92

STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institute. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature: Date: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Peter Cossar, Dan Eady and Kaye Stevenson – the three actors involved in the creation of the play script – for their generosity, patience and willingness to explore. David Megarrity – for the wisdom shared while supervising this thesis. Errol Bray, Elaine Acworth, Bette Guy and Paul Sherman (the on-campus cohort) for their ideas and insights regarding The Woods. And, most of all, my family – for enabling me to go back to study.

The Collaborative Impact / 1

There is a popular myth about the way new plays are created: a

writer labors in isolation for days, weeks, or even years and

finally produces a finished script delivered to a producer fully

formed and ready for production. (Kahn and Breed, 1995, p.

xiii)

Introduction

Imagine a writer at work and most people will imagine a person sitting at a desk,

scribbling in a journal. Or perhaps with a laptop, typing intently. Romantic

stereotypes persist of writers, gaunt and pale, emerging from secluded garrets,

completed manuscript in hand. Orhan Pamuk in his Nobel Lecture on receiving

the Nobel Prize for Literature gave credence to the stereotype when he said the

following:

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to

discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes

him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes

first to my mind is … the person who shuts himself up in a

room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward … To write

is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds

into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so

with patience, obstinacy, and joy. (2006)

Australian author Kim Wilkins describes the popular Romantic myth about

creativity as believing that: “ … creative people need to be sick, on drugs,

isolated, in order to receive the kind of inspiration that pours forth without effort.

But beware the constant intrusions of the mundane world, which can blow it all

to pieces.” (2006, p.16)

What I set out to do with this research project was to dispel that

Romantic myth in the most dynamic way I could think of. Instead of labouring

on my own to create a play I would work with other people, involving them as

collaborators in the project. When inspiration touched me with its magical wings

I would resist the impulse to go away and write down my new ideas. Instead I

would wait to meet with my collaborators, talk about it with them, see what they

thought and let their ideas cross-pollinate the inspiration I had found.

What new and hybrid forms would we make together? Would four minds

work better than one? And would I be able to wait for the others, to resist the

lure of writing ahead, seeing where the play would go if left in my hands?

The Collaborative Impact / 2

The results of this collaboration can be found in the written script ‘The

Woods’ and in the case study, which traces its creation.

But, for now, let’s go back a few steps and look at the way that plays are

often created.

As Kahn and Breed’s previous quote states, there is a popular myth (the

Romantic myth) that the playwright goes away on his/her own, writes in

isolation and comes out with a finished play script, ready for performance. The

truth is that there are many variants between sole and group authorship of

drama. Some writers work in isolation and come away with performance ready

material, others use a combination of working in isolation and getting feedback:

working on their own for a rough draft, having it read by others, getting

feedback, going away and writing another draft, having it read, and so on.

And then there are groups of performers who work together with a

director or facilitator to create and perform a play. No writer is ever used in the

process and the resulting play may never be written down, it may remain a

performance text (used only to facilitate that performance, as a guide for light

and sound cues etc.). (Allen and Pearlman, 1998)

If you picture a grey colour scale with white at one end and black at the

other and place the writer working in isolation at the white end and the

performance group working without a writer at the black end, you would find

playwrights working in every shade of grey between the two. The play that I

wanted to work on in this research project would, I imagined, be a dark grey

when placed on this theoretical scale. It wouldn’t be black – after all I would be

involved in the process as a writer – but it would be darker than middling,

veering into the inkier shades. The scale can also be seen as showing known and

unknown fields. The white end is lighter because it is known and has been

tested. The darker end is unknown, less explored, mysterious – holding obvious

appeal to a researcher.

The idea of working collaboratively excited me as a researcher and as a

playwright. I was setting out to explore the impact working collaboratively would

have on a piece of writing. I wasn’t thinking of collisions or force, although both

of these are implied in the word impact, instead I was thinking of “the

impression made by an idea [or] social group” (Collins, 2000 p. 773). It was the

impact of other minds and other backgrounds that, in my mind, would surely

benefit and improve the work.

The Collaborative Impact / 3

For many playwrights the idea of writing collaboratively is abhorrent.

Michael Gurr in a masterclass held at the Brisbane Writers Festival on 14

September 2006, stated that he runs screaming from the room if a director

suggests the actors improvise one of his scenes. When challenged about this he

went on to say, “I like people to have jobs. I like the writer to write and the

actor to act”. In his view improvisation “… is a director’s creative thing, not a

playwright’s.” (Gurr, 2006)

I wanted to blur these traditional job descriptions, to share the joys and

the onus of being creative amongst a group of people, to work together as co-

creators. At least that was my intention as I set out as both the researcher and

the playwright on a creative process that would have been challenging enough

under more normal circumstances.

Research Problem

For many writers, writing a play is a long, time-consuming process. Having spent

three years working on the first draft of a novel I suspected it would be the same

for me. I was time-poor. I had a full-time job, a family and University deadlines

to contend with. What I was searching for was a way to expedite and enrich the

writing process. The kinds of enrichment I envisaged included detailed, well-

developed characters, surprising plot twists and believable dialogue.

Research Argument

My intention with working collaboratively with actors was to speed up my writing

process. I imagined that:

[A] Four artistic minds could create a play much faster than I could on my

own, and that

[B] The influence of three other creative people would stretch my

imagination and extend the possibilities of the play – making it a better play

than I could have managed on my own.

These two hopes were for two very different outcomes. [A] is a

mechanical outcome. I wanted speed, an expedited process. Achievable, I

thought, because I would be able to transcribe sections of our workshops and

slot them straight into the play. I imagined our working environment as some

sort of artistic incubator, where embryonic ideas could be discussed and speedily

grown to full size. After all, Shakespeare, who is regarded by many as the

The Collaborative Impact / 4

greatest and most prolific playwright of all time, wrote, not on his own, but on

his feet with a troupe of actors improvising as they went along. I believe that,

apart from his genius, it was probably the fact that he was working with actors,

giving them situations and characters and letting them play, that facilitated his

speedy writing.

[B] is an artistic outcome, hard to quantify as better is a personal,

subjective quality. I thought the dialogue would be better than I would come up

with on my own, as dialogue was an aspect of novel writing that I had struggled

with. More importantly, I imagined that the play’s social, philosophical and

emotional scope would be greatly enriched by the inclusion of other perspectives

and imaginations.

By working collaboratively to generate and write a play I wanted to test

whether four heads were better than one, in an environment where one head is

traditionally assumed to be best.

The Collaborative Impact / 5

Literature Review

COLLABORATIVE THEATRE – A DEFINITION

‘Collaborate’ is defined in the fifth Australian edition of the Collins English

Dictionary as “to work with another or others on a joint project”. Schrage gives a

much more elegant definition:

Collaboration is the process of shared creation: two or more

individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a

shared understanding that none had previously possessed or

could have come to on their own. Collaboration creates a shared

meaning about a process, a product, or an event. (Schrage,

1990, p. 140)

Group devising, devised theatre, playbuilding and collaborative theatre

are all terms used for the process where a group gets together and devises or

creates a play. Most, but not all, of these processes use a director to facilitate

the devising. Many of them don’t use a playwright at all. The end product is

often a performance text, which differs to a written text in that it is devised for a

particular group to perform. It is not envisaged that it will go on and be

performed by other people outside the devising process. A written text on the

other hand is created so that anyone else can pick it up and perform a similar

play to the one that the group or playwright intended.

Catherine Oddey, one of the key thinkers and practitioners of devised

theatre, describes collaborative theatre in this way: “A devised theatrical

performance originates with the group while making the performance, rather

than starting from a play text that someone else has written to be interpreted.”

(1994, p. 1)

This is in direct contrast to the traditional approach to play creation

which: “ … assumes the priority of the written text, and is unable to deal with

important questions regarding the nature of the collaborative devising process,

such as the nature of authorship, the operation of random process, and the role

of intuition and improvisation.” (Hancock, 2002, intro)

Oddey goes on to say that: “Devised theatre is an alternative to the

dominant literary theatre tradition, which is the conventionally accepted form of

theatre dominated by the often patriarchal, hierarchical relationship of

playwright and director.” (1994, p. 4)

Collaborative theatre is not a new discovery. Shakespeare, Molière,

Goethe and Brecht all worked with actors during early periods of text

The Collaborative Impact / 6

development – just as devising companies do now. (Keßler, 2002, p. 63) But it is

interesting to note that it is the playwrights whose names are remembered; few

could name any members of their companies who may have offered considerable

input and experience.

The strengths a devising process offers script development are manifold.

Work is created on its ‘feet’, where flaws and weaknesses are immediately

obvious. Other eyes get to view the work as it progresses and offer feedback and

different interpretations. “Devising is really collaborative writing in the broadest

sense of the word ‘write’.” (Callery, 2001, p. 164)

THE WRITER’S ROLE

In traditional theatre companies the writer’s role is to write the play. The director

then interprets the writer’s work and directs it in the way that he or she sees fit.

Actors, composers and designers come on board and interpret the playwright’s

script as seen through the director’s vision for it. There is little or no room for

the writer once the play has gone into rehearsal. But collaborative theatre is not

traditional theatre and hierarchies are frequently broken down.

In most traditional theatre companies the playwright is seen as the

creator of the script and the actors are there simply as interpreters. In a

devising process the actors are given the freedom to be co-creators and, in

many instances, the playwright is there to interpret, or shape, what the actors

offer. “I do not see why one only has the right to be called an author if one has a

pen. An improvising actor is an author, an author in the broadest sense of the

term.” Mnouchkine (cited in Williams, 1999, p. 55)

Caryl Churchill, a playwright who normally works alone, worked with

a collaborative group, Joint Stock Theatre Company, for part of the process

of writing Cloud Nine. Although the group used collaboration and

improvisation in the early stages, Churchill then went away and finalised the

script on her own. (Churchill, 1979, introduction)

What is interesting to note among the companies that regularly use a

collaborative method is how many of them seem to work without having any one

person labelled as playwright. (Théâtre de Complicité, Improbable, Théâtre du

Soleil, etc.) Either the group devises the play and it is never written down, or

one of the group acts as a scribe, or a playwright comes in with a first draft of a

script, which is then workshopped and developed by the group.

Few companies employ a writer. The post-modern distrust of

language seems to have spread into a distrust of writers. Yet

The Collaborative Impact / 7

frequently the textual aspect of physical-based devised theatre

– both the words and structuring that are the writer’s craft – is

its Achilles heel. (Callery, 2001, p. 179)

Many collaborative theatre companies get around this by working in a

strongly physical way with very little text or by using a text-based piece, such as

a short story or poem, as their starting point. (eg: Théâtre de Complicité’s

production of The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol 1994–1996, which was based on a

story by John Berger.)

Hancock sees the writer as an integral part of the collaborative process,

as long as they are not controlling it:

… writing cannot be isolated from the overall process of

production. The activity of the author needs to be seen as

located within the system rather than external or prior to it.

Causation is then no longer a purely top-down process,

originating with and controlled by an individual agent such as

the writer or auteur. (Hancock, 2002, chapter 8)

This was my intention for the research process. My role and my activity

as a writer would take place within the research and the workshops – not before

or afterwards. From this collaboration I would create the first draft of the play.

CREATOR OR SCRIBE?

It might seem that we can write plays in the same way as we

rehearse – in other words, completely collectively; ideas,

associations and experiences from different directions can flow

into the text from the whole company and make it richer. But it

is probably the case that once all these influences and ideas

have been heard and explored, one person must hold the pen

and fix the words on the paper. (Keßler, 2002, p. 63)

Keßler is clear about the writer’s role as a conduit for the process of

devising, and Oddey concurs, saying that the writer in a group devising process

must be aware that they will often function as someone who “…transcribes,

interprets and assembles the ideas of a group.” (Oddey, 1994, p. 56) She

reminds us that this is not always a terribly creative part of the process.

It is interesting to note the differing viewpoints in the literature on the

role of the writer. Hancock (2002) sees the writer as playing an integral part,

stating, “… the role of the writer in devising is central”. Yet, Gration argues

against this centrality; “Somehow the myth that the writer is the centre of the

The Collaborative Impact / 8

theatrical process has been taken as truth (not that there is no role for the

author in the making of performances, just that their role is as a co-creator not

the creator).” (Gration, 1996, p. 10)

The divide between the playwright and the rest of the cast and crew isn’t

limited to collaborative companies. Lattanzi describes the feeling of being the

playwright on a set in a traditional company in the following way:

And the playwright knows he's making everyone nervous, he

knows everyone wishes he would just disappear. This makes

him feel worse. Working on an – ugh – new play – the actors,

directors, designers are immediately set off their game. Usually,

these ‘real’ theater people work on something proven, with a

track record... (Lattanzi, 2003)

Working collaboratively with the rest of the creative team in the early

stages of writing a new play is one way for a writer to combat the discomfort

Lattanzi describes. The decisions are not the playwright’s alone. If things work

the group can all enjoy the glow of success, when they don’t work there isn’t one

person to blame. At least that’s the theory. In practice, if you are the group

leader/facilitator/director then if things don’t work it’s your responsibility.

Peter Brook notes that “it is woefully difficult to write a play”. (1968, p.

38) And that: “In theory few men are as free as a playwright. He can bring the

whole world onto his stage. But in fact he is strangely timid.” (1968, p. 40)

One of the many benefits of collaborative theatre is the way that it can be

used to workshop problem areas of script. This point is made by Bray in his book

Playbuilding. “It is easy to target improvisation sessions to specific points in a

creative process or an existing script to test the processes of other work and to

test improvisation results against existing results.” (Bray, 1991, p. 105)

Both Bray (1991) and Hancock (2002) write about working towards a

performance text rather than a written text. Hancock claims that Bray (in

Playbuilding) sees no need for a writer or a director and sees the objective being

that the devisers make the work their own, with the less outside assistance

visible in the final product the better. Bray does talk briefly about writers when

he notes that: “Writers can be helped and encouraged to write plays through

playbuilding workshops.” (p. 105) and “New writers can benefit greatly from

having their ideas tossed about in group discussions and in improvisations.”

(Bray, 1991, p. 106)

The Collaborative Impact / 9

WORKING WITH ACTORS

It was of great interest to me to read about Mike Leigh’s ways of working with

actors, as his films were one of my inspirations in choosing to work

collaboratively.

He [Mike Leigh] perceived that if, as a dramatist, he was

genuinely to be in control of the material, he must get in on the

ground floor of character-making and share that work with the

actor instead of abdicating it to the actor and confining his

function to an orchestration of what the actor comes up with.

(Clements, 1983, p. 17)

Working together to develop characters is one of the joys of working

collaboratively. But I wanted to take it further. I wanted the actors to be

involved in creating more than just character, I wanted the actors I was working

with to also have a say in the direction and the plot of the whole piece. In some

ways this goes against the traditional responsibilities of the playwright, even

within collaborative settings: “The main responsibility of a playwright in a

devising context, therefore, is to work with the director and actors to ensure that

an interesting, surprising plot is generated from the source material.” (Keßler,

2002, p. 63)

Many proponents of group devising talk about the need for compelling

subject matter. “The choice of material is crucial. Ideally, whatever it is, it has to

matter to everyone involved. At the very least, everyone needs to be able to

respond imaginatively and bring their personal skills to the process.” (Callery,

2001, p. 172)

This idea was reflected in one of the actors’ responses to my research

process. Kaye wrote that: “To be truly collaborative I would have to feel that

there was a story I really wanted to tell and in this way I would feel more of a

sense of ownership.” (Attachment Three, line 30) Keßler (2002) sees it

somewhat differently as he feels that it is the playwright’s responsibility to locate

the first idea for the story. (p. 63)

Among the groups who work collaboratively there are all sorts of different

approaches and levels of participation. “Individuals cannot effectively go off and

improvise drama situations on their own. For constructive work a group of

people is required and, as with all groups, there must be a leader.” (Stanley,

1981, p. 1)

It seems to me that actors are often kept in a child-like state, dependent

on the director or playwright to come up with the situations and ideas for the

The Collaborative Impact / 10

workshops. It’s refreshing to read someone like Gration who states that: “My

work in theatre, therefore, attempts to celebrate the individuality of actors and

recognise their role as co-creators in the process of making performances.”

(1996, p. 10)

Actors don’t just help with writing dialogue or with trying out scenes

when you’re unsure whether or not they will work, they also reveal many

things about the characters they’re playing, which would otherwise remain

undiscovered. (Kahn and Breed, 1995, p. 17)

Ariane Mnouchkine in her work with Théâtre du Soleil relied heavily

on improvisation, with her work described as:

… opening up to the possibilities of a group creative process to

which each member of the company could contribute, building

up a complete performance by means of improvisation. Her role

was to stimulate, then to control and shape, these

improvisations. (Bradby and Williams, 1988, p. 88)

I looked forward to working with actors as co-creators and felt confident

that their input would enrich and benefit the final play. But I was aware that, to

do this, we would need time to ‘play’ and I was concerned with the limited time

we had (eight workshops). Could true collaboration be induced in such a short

time frame?

COPYRIGHT ISSUES

When a group has the input of so many collaborators, how do they define the

writer? Does one person have the right to take ownership of the final play and

have their name attached to it as playwright? In England the issue is clearly

stated: “With regard to issues of authorship or script control, the Theatre Writers

Union supports the belief that whoever scripts the material within the group is

the author, regardless of whether the play has been group devised or not.”

(Oddey, 1994, p. 49)

This is also the case in Australia where the person who writes the words

down on the page holds copyright, regardless of whether the words are his/her

idea or not. (Chan, 2004) It was important to me that if I was asking artists to

collaborate with me on the creation of a new product that they would then be

recognised as co-creators of the product. Although I hold the copyright to the

final script, the title page lists the actors’ names with a credit for their creative

input.

The Collaborative Impact / 11

This creative input and the effects of collaboration on a playscript were

about to be tested in a research process where I would try to discover what

happens when a traditionally solitary process, in this instance playwriting, is

opened up to actors, working as equals with a playwright.

Methodology

With a long background in theatre (as an actor, director and then theatre

reviewer) I came into this research as a novice playwright with a good

understanding of theatrical conventions and of what works and doesn’t work on

stage.

My approach as a writer is one that embraces feminist and socialist

ideologies. It was a natural step for me to move towards participatory action

research with its inherent respect for all participants. The process I would be

exploring would also involve me using reflexivity, as articulated within Denzin

and Lincoln:

… reflecting critically on the self as researcher … It is a conscious

experiencing of the self as both inquirer and respondent, as

teacher and learner, as the one coming to know the self within

the processes of research itself. (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, p.

210)

While working as both an actor and a director I have baulked at the

power plays and authoritarian models often used in theatre. With the chance

now of stepping into playwriting and research it was an obvious choice for me to

commence a project that would attempt to dislodge the patriarchal, authoritarian

models, which keep actors on the lowest rung of the ladder and afford them little

respect.

I designed and conducted my research using creative practice as my

central research strategy. The model I chose as a framework for this creative

practice study was a participatory action research model as described by Denzin

and Lincoln. Participatory action research involves: “collaborative dialogue,

participatory decision making, inclusive democratic deliberation, and the

maximal participation and representation of all relevant parties.” (Denzin and

Lincoln, 2005, p. 34)

The framework for the research process was a series of workshops with

the three actors who had agreed to be involved and myself. I had come up with

a sketchy outline for a play and some possible characters for the actors to play.

The Collaborative Impact / 12

We would get together and discuss ideas and then the actors would improvise

scenes. The improvising would involve the actors getting into character and then

seeing what happened in a given scenario. It’s a tool that’s been utilised by

many companies, but less frequently by playwrights. Peter Brook describes the

purpose of such exercises as being “… to lead actors to the point where if one

actor does something unexpected but true, the others can take this up and

respond on the same level.” (1968, p. 128)

I set myself the goal of being the instigator, coming up with a framework

for the workshops and creating an outline for the actors to colour in. I imagined I

would then be able to sit back and simply transcribe their improvisations and,

with a little bit of editing and rewriting, I would have a play.

I saw myself, the writer, as being there for inspiration for the actors when

things got difficult, but also being there quietly, to accept and interpret what the

actors offered. To filter and reflect back to them. I saw it as a circular pattern: I

would inspire them with an idea, they would create something, I would be

inspired, I would create something, and on it would go. My creations would be in

the form of ideas and written pieces of script, theirs would be ideas and

improvised pieces of script. This process could be called ‘playwright led group

devising’ as the actors would be working from outlines and ideas, which I, as the

playwright, had given them.

“… the combination of a sole authorial vision with the power of

group-devising is a sure way to enrich the artwork itself. At its

best, this combination can enable the discovery and realization

of moments that surpass the expectations of either party.”

(Megarrity, 2005, p. 37)

My aim was to use collaborative theatre to create a written text that could

go on to be performed by people outside of the group who had devised it. My

role would be both playwright and researcher. There would be no director – just

the three actors who agreed to do the project and me.

Over the course of eight workshops, held between April and July 2006, I

wanted to work with these actors to create the first draft of a play. I intended for

the workshops to last for three hours each and take place fortnightly. The

workshops would be transcribed and/or filmed for later transcribing. I would be

involved in the process as a facilitator and a researcher and would transcribe the

sessions to help create the first draft script. The draft would be read for a select

audience and could then be redrafted by me, possibly using more workshop

sessions with the actors or, if need be, working on my own.

The Collaborative Impact / 13

As a record of the workshops we have the DVD footage taken, the journal

I kept throughout the process and the book in which I wrote as a scribe in the

early rehearsals. I kept recordings of the later workshops on DVD so that I could

go back and see how much of the script was taken verbatim from the actors’

improvisations and how much had been written by me as the playwright. I also

kept copies of the email correspondence I had with the actors (with their

permission to use excerpts in this exegesis).

The first part of the process was to find my collaborators. Before I

approached the actors I came up with a brief outline of the play, complete with

thumbnail sketches of the characters. A mother (Martha) and her son (Ned) live

far away from any other people. Martha is terrified of the outside world and

instils her fears in her son. One day she is forced to leave the house and, while

she is away, a stranger arrives and upsets all Ned’s beliefs about the nature of

the world. Martha returns to discover the stranger and they battle for Ned’s

trust.

I needed to find people who would be passionate enough about their craft

to take on the project for the learning experience it would offer them, rather

than for a monetary reward. I sent out approaches by email to actors who I felt

would bring something interesting to the embryonic characters I had in mind.

The approach is contained in Attachment One.

It was important to me to be clear with the actors from the beginning

about what my expectations were of them and about what they might get out of

the process. I needed them to know that I would be asking them to be involved

in improvising and working collaboratively and that there would be a time

commitment. In an ideal world I would have been able to pay them for their

work, but as it was I was asking them to work with me for their own

experience/enjoyment and in the hopes that if the play was eventually produced

they might end up acting in it.

Initially, I looked only for the actors to play Martha and Ned. (I wanted

the stranger to be a surprise when I introduced him/her, and wanted to wait to

see how the early scenes developed before deciding what sort of third character

to add to the play.) There was an initial meeting to discuss needs and

expectations and to set parameters for the work.

Over the next few months we met regularly for a few hours on the

weekends, as part of our eight three-hourly meetings. The actors asked me to

bring pieces of script for them to work off and these became the basis for

The Collaborative Impact / 14

improvisations and discussions. The third actor joined us for the last three

workshops at my invitation.

In the first sessions I jotted notes and transcribed the bits of dialogue

that intrigued me. In later sessions we used a camera to record the

improvisations. There was always time to discuss the scenes and the actors were

encouraged to share their feelings and thoughts about the characters and the

direction of the play. I brought props and ideas for scenes to start off the

improvisations.

At the end of each workshop I would write up the scenes that had been

improvised, no matter how repetitious they were. I kept as close as possible to

the actors’ words and intentions, while trying to make the scenes dramatically

interesting and weaving them into the overall structure of the play.

Because the outline for the play was already in existence before we

started working together, it was just a matter of improvising through it, from the

start to the finish. Once we’d reached the end and tried a few different endings,

the actors were able to take a break from the process.

I then worked on my own to write a first draft of the play. This draft was

adapted straight from the workshops, with very little dramatic license taken. My

methodology determined that it didn’t matter what ideas I had or how much

better I thought the play would be with some different trajectories taken, I stuck

to what had transpired in the workshops. I wanted to see the shape of the play

with as much of the collaboration intact within it as possible. At this point I also

emailed the actors and asked them to send me any written response they were

comfortable giving for my research. (Attachments Two and Three.)

The actors were invited to come along and do a reading of the first draft

and give their responses to it. Once this was completed I then undertook

extensive rewrites of the play, taking control of it as a playwright and changing,

cutting and adding scenes.

The actors were invited to come back and work with an outside director to

do a rehearsed reading of the third draft of the play for an audience. Any

feedback given after the reading was noted (Attachment Four).

It is worth noting that the existing literature is predominantly written by

directors and facilitators and pays little heed to a writer’s process within a

collaborative setting. This exegesis with its emphasis on playwright led group

devising shows another aspect to collaborative work and details the ways that

collaboration can help and hinder a writer at work in their craft.

The Collaborative Impact / 67

Case Study

To experiment is to make a foray into the unknown – it is something

that can be charted only after the event. (Roose-Evans, 1989 p. 1)

In the Beginning there was fear

The germ of the idea for The Woods came in 2005 when I was sitting on my

son’s bed. He’s a fearful child and I would spend hours trying to allay his terrors

and convince him that he was safe so that he could sleep. As I sat there, I

wondered what would happen if he had the sort of mother who didn’t do that.

Who had her own fears and encouraged his terror instead of trying to dissuade

him from it. It was a little seed but it took root inside me and I knew that I

wanted to explore it and write about it in some way.

Germination

The idea for this play was sprouting wildly in my head but I tried to contain it. If

I was going to work collaboratively with the actors then I mustn’t bring too much

to the table to begin with. I must give them room to be creators as well. I came

up with a simple outline for the play, enough to hopefully intrigue the actors I

would approach and still leave them the space to come up with their own ideas.

As I was approaching actors I hadn’t worked with previously I felt that it was

important to give them an indication of the play’s likely content and of the

research I would be doing, so that they could decide whether or not to

participate in the project. The three-act framework that I had and the wording I

used to approach the actors can be found in Attachment One, which is the email

correspondence I sent to the actors I wanted to work with.

I was very fortunate to have two talented actors agree to work with me

from the outset. Dan Eady would play Ned. Dan was a young actor and

playwright who had worked in intensive devising processes before. He had about

him the feel and the energy I wanted for Ned and I was excited about working

with him. Kaye Stevenson would be our Martha. Kaye was a wonderful actor, a

consummate professional and someone who had worked professionally for

decades. She conveyed both strength and a brittleness that I wanted to see in

Martha. Kaye’s standing in the theatre community had me feeling very grateful

to her for agreeing to be involved, but also a little apprehensive about working

with her. (Peter Cossar was our third actor – he came on board towards the end

The Collaborative Impact / 68

of the process. He was skilled in physical theatre and used to working on his feet

and improvising and he brought a wonderful energy to the group.)

Time

The most successful companies using collaborative principles (like Théâtre de

Complicité and Théâtre du Soleil) work on a play full-time, rehearsing every day

for up to a year. “L’Age d’or took a year of improvisation to prepare and even

then was subtitled ‘first version’.” (Bradby and Williams, 1988, p. 97) Rehearsal

time isn’t limited in the same way that it is with most mainstream companies.

“[Collaborative] works had a vital focus on process, with rehearsal and

preparations taking months, sometimes years – a far cry from today's common

four-week rehearsals.” (Luber, 2005)

Ideally, there would have been funding to allow the group to meet

regularly and for long sessions. Because I wasn’t paying the actors I didn’t have

the luxury of time to play and explore. Instead I set up a schedule. We’d meet

for three hours each fortnight. I gave myself a goal of eight to ten meetings. I

hoped that this would be enough time to improvise scenes to flesh out the story,

leaving me with enough raw material to construct a play. My starting ideas

tended towards heightened naturalism and I envisaged the play’s events would

take place in a chronological order.

What’s important to note here is that many of the decisions were made

by me prior to the start of the collaboration. I had chosen the characters,

outlined the plot, set up the style for the piece and cast the actors. In retrospect

it is easy to see this as a flawed beginning for a collaborative process. It had

seemed imperative to me to make all these decisions because of the lack of time

we would have once we started the workshops – I didn’t want to spend time

discussing possible plots and playing styles as I thought that would prevent us

from getting through all the material we needed to get through.

The decisions I had made prior to beginning meant that we did get

through the material needed, but the lack of time to ‘play’ had huge

ramifications on the collaborative process, as will be explored later.

I realise that this perception of lack of time is not unique – “In devised

theatre there is always a sense of never having enough time to work.” (Oddey,

1994, p. 14) – however, the process we undertook would be short by anyone’s

standards.

The Collaborative Impact / 69

Ideas

At the beginning I imagined myself as a catalyst. I had presented the actors with

a figurative sketch, just a few pencil lines on a large sheet – two characters, a

setting and an inciting incident – and I imagined they would run with the ideas,

taking over areas of the page, adding their own lines and colouring it in.

The way I had envisaged the collaborative process working was that we

would all meet and I would give the actors a starting point, either a physical

object, or an idea, or a question, and they would then begin to improvise around

that starting point. Their improvisation could use speech, silence, movement or

stillness. They would be exploring and enacting the moment I had given them

and extending it to something of their own devising. If the improvisation was

floundering then I could offer something else to try to spark it. (Physical objects

that I brought along included a chess set, a hand-carved wooden figure and a

snake’s skin.)

At our very first meeting this idea had to be renegotiated.

First Meeting

Before committing to the project Kaye wanted to meet with Dan and me to make

sure that we would all be compatible.

We met at a coffee shop and talked. My journal from that day (28 March

2006) records the following:

I talked about my ideas and then asked for their thoughts. Kaye

said that she felt very frightened. Not of the character, or the

situation, but of working without any script. Dan agreed with

this. I suggested giving them scenarios to work from and said

that I would be there to throw in ideas, help move things along,

provide stimuli, etc…

Both said this would be good but didn’t look convinced.

Kaye said she’d really like some script as a starting point. I

explained that I hadn’t wanted to start with a script as too

many decisions would be made by me and I wanted their input.

I realised this was way too scary for the actors and

compromised and said that I would try to write a few pages for

our first rehearsal – Sunday 2 April.

As can be seen from this extract, I changed my idea of collaborative

working before we even began. It’s interesting in retrospect to look at why I did

this. Why didn’t I just tell the actors that the idea for this process was to

The Collaborative Impact / 70

improvise, and that if they weren’t comfortable doing that then I would need to

look for other actors? Perhaps it was because I was intent on this being a

democratic process – on sharing power with the actors – that I felt I had to

compromise and find ways to make them comfortable rather than pushing to get

what I wanted. Then there was the fact that I felt indebted to the actors for

being involved in my project. Being in their debt meant that I would do anything

in my power to keep them happy and comfortable. Another factor was certainly

the timeframe. Approaching and finding other actors would put me behind in my

schedule and add more pressure to the process.

For all these reasons, I ended up creating a piece of script before the

actors had had a moment to explore, let alone inhabit, their characters. I was

making decisions and shaping the characters when that had never been intended

in my methodology. Instead of the characters and the plot evolving through the

actors ‘playing’, decisions were being made unilaterally by the playwright.

I wasn’t the only one to feel frustrated as can be seen by Kaye’s

feedback. “Have, at times, felt a bit frustrated with the process. Earlier on I

wanted Katherine to have more material for us to work on.” (Attachment Three,

line 46)

Workshops

In companies working on group devised plays there is almost always one person

who takes on an authoritative role. Normally a director, but sometimes a

facilitator or workshop leader.

Although I had made all the decisions and choices prior to commencing

the workshop process, I still initially tried to divest myself of the authority I held

as the playwright and researcher. I did this by playing low status, deferring to

the actors, and acting as a scribe. This was rejected by the actors, who wanted

me to take more control. They wanted prepared pieces of script and wanted me

to be able to answer their questions.

I then took on the role of facilitator/director and the workshops became

what I’ve termed a ‘playwright led group devising’ process. As a playwright this

is an extremely useful way to work. You can have an idea and try it out with

actors who understand the characters really well and see whether the idea works

and where it takes the characters.

The main method used in workshops was improvisation. For some

participants this was easier than for others and the slowness of the pace of the

work and lack of perceived results caused some difficulties. Trust is an essential

The Collaborative Impact / 71

part of working collaboratively and in improvisation, and for this group of

strangers it was a struggle to reach the level of trust necessary for risk-taking in

the short time-frame we had at our disposal.

The actors’ desire for scripts in the early workshops meant that we didn’t

do the improvisations and character work that I had hoped for. Instead what

tended to happen is that we’d sit down, read the script, talk about it and then

they’d get up and do an improvisation that followed on from what we’d just read.

It was ironic that I’d wanted to liberate the actors and give them limitless

possibilities only to discover that they wanted tight parameters and defined

boundaries.

I struggled from the first workshop to find a way to enmesh my writing in

the creative process of the improvisations so that the actors were my co-

creators. While I don’t feel this was ever truly achieved, by workshop four I was

able to take a more hands-off approach, feeding ideas and suggestions,

watching the improvisation, talking about it with the actors, taking on their

feedback and then trying another improvisation. This experience was enhanced

by the use of a video camera to record the improvisations.

My time constraints imposed an imperative need to achieve concrete

results from each workshop so that we could get through the research process in

the eight sessions I had allocated. This prevented us from ‘playing’ in workshops

and letting things happen in their own time. It also put constraints on the

collaborative process and imposed hierarchies I’d planned to avoid. Instead of

letting things flow organically and take their own shape I was setting scenes and

tasks for each meeting and racing to reach outcomes I’d set for the process.

Although I’d set out to work collaboratively, my own need for control and

to meet deadlines meant that I felt pulled, constantly, towards a hierarchical

structure. Perhaps it was me rather than the actors who had to learn to trust.

I’d give the actors a scene or set of circumstances and then ask them to

start an improvisation based on these. If the improvisation seemed to be

collapsing I’d call out new circumstances or give the actors an objective to try to

attain.

What I was collaborating in was turning out to be exactly what I’d been

trying to subvert: the sort of top-down process where most of the ideas were

originating from and controlled by the playwright. This was borne out by the

feedback I received from one of the actors at the end of the workshop process:

… it feels as if in this process the improvisation is rather

secondary to the creative process as a whole … it seems as if

The Collaborative Impact / 72

the improvisational scenarios are being utilised as possible

sources of inspiration or for pockets of discovery and

experimentation rather than the main platform of creation. It

does feel like a play that ultimately is being 'written'.

(Attachment Two, line 86-90)

At the end of the workshop process, as I was writing the first draft of the

play, I asked each of the actors to send me their feedback on the process and to

let me know whether they felt it had been collaborative or not. Two of the three

sent detailed emails, the third had only been involved in the last few workshops

and didn’t feel able to comment.

While much of the case study is my own interpretation of events and the

conclusions I have drawn are my own, I have been informed throughout by the

feedback and suggestions offered to me by the actors.

Eureka Moments

Although much of the scene work that came out of the workshops was defined

by the actors and myself as repetitious and less than inspiring, there were,

thankfully, some eureka moments where the improvisations brought something

new and startling to the mix, something that I would never have imagined one

of the characters doing or saying. The characters and the plot both grew and

expanded exponentially because of the experiences and ideas of the actors

involved.

One of the most important elements in the play, Ned’s crippled body,

came out of a discussion before we commenced the workshops. We were about

to start our first improvisation and Kaye was expressing her concerns about the

whole concept for the play. She couldn’t fathom why Ned didn’t just get up and

leave. “Surely,” she kept saying, “he would have gone out and explored the area

and found out that his mother wasn’t telling the truth long ago.” (Workshop, 2

April) I was forced to come up with reasons to explain why he hadn’t. Her

questioning and doubt in the feasibility of the story made me suggest that

perhaps Ned was crippled and that was why he had never left.

The fairy story parallel that goes through The Woods came about when

the actors started to engage in the process. They had already asked “why?”

which had led to Ned’s crippled state, and now they asked “what if?”

“Would they have anything to read?” Dan asked.

“Maybe.” I replied. “Maybe a bible or a dictionary … or a first aid manual.”

The Collaborative Impact / 73

“What if they had a book of fairy stories?” suggested Kaye. “The Brothers

Grimm! Something really dark that would reinforce everything that Martha said.”

(Workshop, 2 April)

And so Hansel and Gretel became an integral part of The Woods.

Actors as co-creators

All evidence of the actors’ interest and commitment to the project thrilled me. I

had been inspired by a principle found on the website for Théâtre de Complicité:

A piece of theatre is, ultimately, in the hands of those who are

performing it. The actors. It is they not the director who must

have the whole piece in their every gesture, hearing the

meaning in each word. And to do that I think, as an actor, you

have to feel that you possess the piece. And to possess the

piece you have to be part of its creation. Involved intimately in

the process of its making. (McBurney, 2006, website)

I brought this quote with me to our workshop on 23 April 2006 and was

surprised by the actors’ response. They didn’t agree with it, stating instead that,

as actors, they felt fully capable of the sort of passionate possession and sense

of ownership McBurney describes, without having been part of a play’s creation.

This was a revelation for me and made me look again at my assumptions

about collaboration. If the actors didn’t feel a greater connection and sense of

ownership to the characters that they had helped create, then what was the

worth to them of being part of a collaborative process? Wouldn’t it be easier for

them to receive just a final script and take their part from there? I set about

earnest discussions with the group, wanting them to feel that this was their

project too and that their ideas were valued and respected.

These discussions led to another important research finding: talking gets

in the way of action. I’d read about the pitfalls of too much talking, but had to

experience it first-hand to realise it for myself. “It is a serious error to discuss

the suggestions rather than rehearsing them. The writer and the director will

produce a stronger piece in the end if they arrive at a script by rehearsing

rather than talking about things.” (Keßler, 2002, p. 69)

This has been a key finding for me and one that our group struggled to

action. Talking is the safest option when the alternative is to improvise and

potentially fall on your face. Many hours can be spent discussing ideas and

analysing characters and storylines – it takes courage to try out those ideas in

an improvisation. Having a script in your hand or deciding on how a scene will

The Collaborative Impact / 74

play out before you start playing it acts as a safety net, taking some of the risk

out of improvising, but also inhibiting the potential of the scene to come up with

something new and unexpected. I wanted us to take ideas and run with them, I

wanted the actors to surprise me with the things they brought out of the

characters. It was to their credit that they still managed to do this despite the

constraints I had created by writing scenes in advance.

In one memorable workshop (2 July 2006) after we had introduced the

third actor there was an improvisation where Steve, the stranger, was forced out

of the house by Ned and Martha. The scene ended fairly uneventfully and Peter,

the actor playing Steve, came back in and we started to talk. As he described his

sense of frustration and impotence in the scene he got to his feet and told us

what he’d really wanted to do. He described his rage as the character and the

way he’d wanted to burst back in with a petrol can and a lighter and finally get

everyone to listen to him.

His energy fired the group and this is where I should have suggested that

we go back to that scene and try it out. Instead we all sat down and talked

about it. We discussed it until there was no energy or enthusiasm left. I was

kicking myself as we left the rehearsal room. Why had I let it all fizzle out? The

answer that came to me was simple: fear. In trying to keep the actors involved

in the process, I had taken on board Kaye’s implied dislike of violence (in our

first meetings she had stated her apprehension that the subject matter might

lead to violent outcomes) and was trying to steer clear of it even though the play

was heading naturally towards a violent outcome. I had never signed any

contracts with the actors and I was always afraid that they might leave before

the end of the process. This manifested in me taking an appeasing and placating

role at times, instead of pushing for the involvement that I wanted from the

actors.

When Collaboration Harms

There were many instances in addition to those above when the collaboration

with the actors was extremely beneficial to the developing characters. But there

were also times when the collaboration hindered the process.

Times like the last workshop (16 July 2006) where I asked the actors to

improvise three different endings for the play. One was an ending where I

wanted Ned and Martha to leave the house. One of the actors refused to even

begin the improvisation, saying that there was no way her character would do

this. I completely understood where she was coming from – it would be

The Collaborative Impact / 75

extremely difficult for Martha to leave her home – but what I wanted was for the

actor to participate in the improvisation and see if there were some

circumstances under which Martha would choose to leave.

There were many times where suggestions were blocked or refused so

that doors were closed before we had the chance to explore the room beyond

them. This may have been due, in part, to the actors’ backgrounds and levels of

experience. Kaye is a consummate performer, she has decades of experience in

theatre, but most of it has been in scripted, established plays. Working as

loosely as we were was a new experience for her. Dan is young and much newer

to theatre. Most of the work he has done has been on new plays where exploring

and improvising are part of the process. Peter, because of his role as the

stranger, came into the process late, once Kaye and Dan had already established

a working relationship, and it was hard for him to find his character and

contribute to something that he didn’t feel a part of.

I realised that the role I had chosen to play in the collaborative process

was that of a mediator, trying to appease and please everyone involved. And,

oftentimes, this was a process of guesswork – imagining what they wanted to

have happen and trying to reach that conclusion. When I was writing scenes for

the actors to work from, I was writing scenes that I hoped they’d be comfortable

playing. This is at complete odds with what I now see as a playwright’s role;

which is to find a way to surprise, shock and, sometimes, make people (the

audience) extremely uncomfortable.

We all know instinctively what ‘mad’ thought is: mad thoughts

are those which other people find unacceptable, and train us

not to talk about, but which we go to the theatre to see

expressed. (Johnstone, 1989, p. 85)

Whether I wrote the scene before the workshop or from the transcriptions

of the workshop, we would analyse it before moving on. The danger inherent in

this is that looking back at written scenes and dissecting them too deeply before

the play is finished stops the play from moving forwards. “As Shakespeare knew,

and we sometimes forget, plays are meant to be seen. Some plays deserve

study, but almost any play will reveal holes if examined too closely.” (Simon,

2003, p. 53)

And if this is true of a finished and produced script then how much more

true is it of a work-in-progress; still rough, patchy and inconsistent because of

its nascent state?

The Collaborative Impact / 76

I entered the collaborative process quite naively, imagining that all the

participants would embrace it and that there would be a whirlwind of creativity

at the end of which I would simply shape the outcome into the right format for a

script. I didn’t expect the drudgery often involved in improvisational work. Scene

after scene where the actors didn’t know what to do and so simply repeated the

same things over and over again.

Improvising needs trust and daring. When these were in short supply it

was too easy for the actors to negate what their colleagues offered and stick to

the safe ground – often a position of power from which they could belittle or

snap at the other characters. My solution was to take a directorial role and

instruct the actors on what I’d like them to be doing. Sometimes this meant that

I would give them secret objectives and get them to improvise a scene where

they tried to get their objective met without letting the other actors know what

that objective was. While these improvised scenes worked much better, they

changed the structure of the process and placed me in a position of power and

control. Lessening the potential for true collaboration or ‘shared creation’ as

espoused by Schrage (1990, p. 140).

As a result, while the actors gave a huge amount to the characters and

the process, I was unable to get rid of the hierarchical structure and the impetus

for ideas and scenes remained in my hands. Like most traditional companies, we

ended up working with the playwright creating scenes and plot and the actors

fleshing out the characters. Instead of sharing the creation as collaborators we

were working in a playwright led group devising process. Anything that’s led by

one person maintains some sense of hierarchy and can be seen, as Kaye

suggested, as: “ … a benign dictatorship. A writer who has strong ideas but is

open to input from respected colleagues. In the end the play is theirs.”

(Attachment Three, lines 38–40)

A Changing Process

When I began, I had imagined a process where we would all be creating this play

together. If the play started off as a seed when I conceived the starting idea for

it, then collaborating with actors in its early germination would be a way of

adding fertiliser and shaping the prolific growth that would ensue.

I had brought expectations to the process and so had the actors. I

expected them to throw themselves into the workshops, take risks and be

creators. They expected me to write scenes for them and to tell them what they

should and shouldn’t do. I was conscious of not wasting a second and when the

The Collaborative Impact / 77

actors showed themselves to be bored or frustrated I felt responsible and as

though I was failing them. Instead of letting the seed for this idea grow naturally

into whatever plant it chose to grow into, I found myself adding fertiliser, trying

to make it grow more quickly and clipping its tendrils when they went in

directions we didn’t have time to follow.

But this experience of working with the actors as co-creators did allow

some wonderful cross-pollination. Two aspects of the cross-pollination that took

the play in whole new directions and ended up being crucially important to it, as

previously detailed, were the inclusion of fairy tales and the decision to make

Ned crippled.

It’s possible that, left on my own, I would have come up with the idea of

crippling Ned so that he couldn’t leave the house even if he wanted to, but I

doubt whether the weaving of the fairy story through the script would have

occurred. This is an example of the positive impact of collaboration on a new

work.

As Hansel and Gretel started to become an integral part of the play, it

suddenly became important to understand the role of fairytales in society, and to

know the history of witch beliefs. Each new book read had a subtle impact on the

creation of the play. My new knowledge was shared with the actors via

handouts, summaries and photocopied sections of books read. And the actors

reciprocated, pointing out websites and doing their own research on feral

children and people living in isolation.

Having been an actor, I know that many actors do extensively research

their parts when they are given a role. They do background reading, volunteer in

positions that might teach them something about the person they are playing

and immerse themselves in music, art and literature that can add something to

their understanding of their role. All of this makes for a deeper understanding of

character and can help create a wonderfully detailed portrayal. But none of it is

relayed to the playwright and none of it impacts on the script. It’s all used for

the actor’s interpretation of the script. The research that the actors did during

The Woods impacted directly on the script as they brought it along to workshops

and we discussed its possible applications to the story we were creating. The

collaborative process enhanced the developing themes of the play.

The Collaborative Impact / 78

From Collaboration to Isolation

A good play reaches deep. A good play reminds us about the

preciousness of life. A good play gives us the hope of something

that life doesn’t usually provide – the possibility that

understanding is out there, though we have to knock down old

ways of looking at the world and start our thinking all over

again. (Simon, 2003, p. 212)

The first draft of The Woods was written based on the improvisations we

had done as part of the collaborative process. In compiling them into a play

script I felt compelled to keep true to the actors’ contributions. This meant that I

was often transcribing scenes and then cutting and pasting to try to make them

work theatrically.

The scenes we’d workshopped were mostly self-contained and had little

flow in them to open up to other scenes. I was cobbling them together and the

feeling of the first draft was of different textured cloths, stitched together in any

order even though the weave and the pattern didn’t fit or flow.

As a result of this the first draft was often clunky – going from one

improvised scene to the next with very little in the way of transitional scenes

(necessary for the heightened naturalism that I wanted for this play.). My own

creativity was hampered, as I felt it was imperative that I stayed true to the

actors’ interpretations of their characters. My overall feeling on looking at the

first draft was frustration. I wanted Martha to turn on Steve. I wanted her to

attack him to defend her child. But because this was something that hadn’t come

up in our workshops I couldn’t impose it on the script. Martha always seemed to

be angry with Ned and I wanted her to be kinder to him at the start. I wanted

the audience to see her gentle side. But, again, this hadn’t happened in our

workshops and so I couldn’t include it.

After the peer group reading and assessment of the first draft I went

away to work on my own to create a second draft. This was always a possibility

in the project design and, when I had come up with the methodology, I had

imagined that I would be upset to lose the contributions of the actors. Instead I

felt a great sense of relief. At last I would be able to take this play on the

journey that I wanted to take it on. At last I would be free to manipulate the

characters and the plot in whichever ways I wished.

And working on my own was greatly enhanced because I had the actors’

voices in my head for the characters. I could see them moving across the stage

as I wrote the directions. The characters were flesh and blood people to me.

The Collaborative Impact / 79

(Not the same people as the actors who played them, but people brought to life

by them.) The collaborative quizzing in the early days meant that I knew the

characters’ back-stories intimately. I felt that I knew them inside and out, and

now it was time for me to work in a more traditional framework, as the writer in

isolation.

In some ways this echoes the process that Caryl Churchill used when

writing Cloud Nine. She workshopped the play for three weeks with Joint Stock

Theatre Group and then went away and worked on her own for twelve weeks

before coming back to the company for a process of rehearsals and rewrites for

another six weeks. She notes: “Though the play’s situations and characters were

not developed in the workshop, it draws deeply on this material, and I wouldn’t

have written the same play without it.” (Churchill, 1979, introduction)

Reflections

At the end of the workshop process I asked the actors to send written feedback

to use as part of this exegesis. Dan, who played Ned, gave a lengthy and

thorough answer to the questions I’d posed. In answer to the question of what

he was or wasn’t getting out of the process he said:

The hazard I was trying to circumvent was that of imposing a

character into the process … as far as improvisation goes there

is a strong instinct amongst actors to find a character … as early

as possible … In my experience this is heightened in scenarios

whenever the given circumstances are especially thin.

At the end of the process having experienced and

reviewed the improvisations on video a number of times I am

adamant that a definite character has been created and one

possibly more subtle, complex and internal than I have ever

had the opportunity to experience before. (Attachment Two,

2006, Lines 56–68)

What is interesting about these comments is what they show about

working collaboratively and through improvisation to reach a character, and the

realisation that Dan has that this is a process that is often not fully explored. The

other characters in the play aren’t as fully developed as Ned, the son who has

been deprived of all outside experiences, who is an amazing character. I feel a

sense of pride in my part as playwright in creating him, but also feel that he is a

character who came into being thanks to Dan’s willingness to engage in the

process.

The Collaborative Impact / 80

Dan is the actor who has had the most experience of working

collaboratively and his final paragraph about the process is revealing. “If there

was a scale with total power share collaborative creation at one end and the

popular hierarchical creative tree of playwright–director–actor [at the other end].

I would slot this one at 80 per cent popular hierarchical 20 per cent equal power

share.” (Attachment Two, 2006, Lines 90–94)

I feel that playwright led group devising is something that lends itself

more to the popular hierarchy as espoused by Dan. While I went into the

research hoping for complete collaboration, I can see that the end result was

strongly in the hierarchical model as Dan suggests. There was an almost

gravitational pull towards a hierarchical structure and I ended up structuring the

workshops, starting and stopping the improvisations and setting the scenes for

them. By the end the actors were assisting me in my vision of the play and

workshopping scenes at my behest, but they had no control or power in the

process.

This is corroborated by Kaye in her feedback: “I'm not sure that this is a

truly collaborative process. In this particular situation I feel that the actors have

been trying to serve the playwright to flesh out her original idea.” (Attachment

Three, 2006, Lines 26–29)

For all my hopes for collaborative work I ended up in many ways

replicating the dominant paradigm and perpetuating the hierarchy of playwrights

at the top and actors at the bottom. (Oddey, 1994, p. 4)

If we go back to the colour scale that I proposed in the introduction it

would appear that my collaborative endeavours were not the inky grey I had

hoped for, instead we’re looking at a pale, pearly sheen at the other end of the

spectrum, far closer to the writer in isolation than had been planned.

I had imagined that at the end of the process I would be able to credit

each of the actors as co-writers, but that is not the way that it transpired. As I

was unable to use most of the transcripts from the workshops in the final draft

of the play, and as I had to go against some of the actors’ stated beliefs

regarding what their characters were and weren’t capable of, the play ended up

being written by me as a playwright working solo.

Trying to work collaboratively gave me inspiration, deadlines, an onus to

achieve so that I didn’t waste people’s time, and new skills in leading a group.

Which brings me back to my starting question; were four heads indeed better

than one, as I had assumed they would be?

The Collaborative Impact / 81

Conclusion

At the end of this research process I am unable to say whether working

collaboratively makes writing a play a faster or more creative process. This is

because the process I engaged in failed from the outset to be truly collaborative.

I am, however, able to make an assessment of the efficacy of playwright led

group devising as a process. From this assessment I can draw some conclusions

about the possible benefits of collaborative working for a playwright, but these

would need to be tested by another researcher. My findings could be a useful

tool for other playwrights wanting to work with actors to generate their texts.

Playwright led group devising, as I have come to understand and

articulate it, is a process where a playwright works closely with a group of actors

to generate ideas and create characters for a new work. The playwright brings

the story idea or inciting incident to the group and then orchestrates

improvisations to flesh out the idea and try out different scenarios. The

playwright chooses what to include in the first draft and what to leave out and

suggests new scenarios for improvisation as necessary. The actors are able to

bring ideas for plot and character to the improvisations and can become

advocates for the characters they play. At the end of the group devising process

the playwright goes away to write a second draft and brings it back to the group

for reading and feedback. If there is an avenue for performance the actors will

then perform in the finished play.

The impact of working with actors at the creation point of a new play was

that it gave me access to new material (Hansel and Gretel) and also helped

create highly detailed and complete characters for The Woods. When it came to

the characters I didn’t feel that I was dealing with generalisations or non-

specifics because I had had the actors there questioning each choice I made and

arguing for their characters’ actions. They helped make the characters flesh and

blood, real people to me. I imagine many playwrights reach this point with their

characters after spending months or years internalising them. The beauty of

working with actors at the creation point was that the characters were fleshed

out rapidly. In this regard working semi-collaboratively had its desired effect,

which was to facilitate the speedy writing of a play.

The Collaborative Impact / 82

In summary, the benefits of playwright led group devising are:

1. efficient use of time and effort – a playwright with just a

hazy outline for a play can have his/her ideas tested, expanded

on and fleshed out in a very short period of time.

2. a faster writing process – writing scenes that have been

previously improvised is an extremely quick way of working.

The playwright knows what worked and what didn’t and it’s

just a matter of getting the useful sections down on paper. If

the scenes are recorded then they can be watched again at

later stages of the writing process for further inspiration.

Having tried both writing scenes from scratch to use for new

improvisations and writing scenes from improvisations that

have already taken place I can say that writing from scenes

already improvised was by far the speediest process.

3. opening up to experimentation – no idea is too crazy or

strange to try in an improvisation. As a result all sorts of new,

previously unthought of developments can occur within the

script.

4. increased ideas – having other people to talk to in depth

about the play while it’s in its infancy gives it the chance to go

in all sorts of unexpected directions as they share their ideas

and insights. This goes beyond character development and into

areas of thematic and symbolic development of the play. Areas

that actors are normally excluded from.

When I look back at my initial question – are four minds better than one

when it comes to writing a play – the answer is an equivocal yes and no.

Four minds can indeed be better than one – generating more ideas and

coming up with new possibilities – but, to make a unified play, at the end there

does need to just be the one mind, using all that’s been gleaned from the other

three, making final decisions and choices and creating a dramatically effective

script out of all the ideas presented. One hand does need to hold the pen, and

one person makes the final decisions. It is fitting if that person is the playwright.

The Collaborative Impact / 83

Attachment One

I’m doing a Masters in Playwriting this year and applied for it on the basis of

doing a group devised project where I would work closely with a few actors to

construct a play based on a starting idea I would bring to the project.

The premise I want to work with is a woman who takes her infant son and runs

away from society, going to live somewhere remote. She and her son live in a

small hut and she never lets him leave it. She is legitimately terrified of the

outside world and instills this fear in her child.

The play starts when the son is in his 30s. He has never met another person or

heard a different view to that given by his mother.

I want to look at the effect of isolation and fear on families.

I’m imagining breaking the play into 3 sections (I’ll call them ACT 1, 2,3 – even

though I envisage this being a one act play.)

Act 1 – Set up – mother and son interacting the way they do normally. How do

they entertain themselves? What do they talk about? Do they still talk? Etc…

Mother has to leave to get supplies – biannual trip – causes great fear and stress

to both of them. Mother doesn’t return when she should.

Act 2 – Son alone. Stranger arrives. Turns all son’s perceptions and beliefs

upside down. His whole world and reality would be shattered.

Act 3 – Mother returns and finds stranger there. Battle of different ‘realities’.

Someone wins. Someone leaves.

I’ve deliberately left it very vague as I want to be open to all impulses and

different tracks the actors might bring to it.

I’d like to meet once a week for about 3 hours (evening or weekends is good for

me with work) – this can be worked around the actor’s availability.

(Taken from email correspondence with actors. Sent 24 March 2006.)

The Collaborative Impact / 84

Attachment Two

Email feedback from Dan: received 21/07/2006

Have you worked in a devising situation before? 1

My actor training at Usq had a strong focus on improvisation and

collaborative creation. The most notable during this period was with

Mark Bromilow on Arabian Nights. My involvement in the Angry Mime

and its associated summer schools contained strong self devising and

group devising scenarios.

2

3

4

5

6

Two shows were developed through this process for the Woodford Folk

Festival. My most recent work the Boy and The Goat also utilised

collaborative improvisational elements in its execution.

7

8

9

If so, how is this different/the same? 10

In certain projects where there has been a delineated hierarchical

structure i.e Director, Playwright etc this project has shared many

identical processes towards its development. From other scenarios with

regard to equal power share towards creation this project has been very

different.

11

12

13

14

15

What made you agree to do the project? 16

The project sounded intrinsically interesting in regard to my own

personal artistic sentiments.

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Secondly, as far as exercising, developing and experimenting with my

craft as an actor this project provided a solid opportunity.

19

20

What did you want to get out of it? 21

To learn and experience something new and different. 22

To contribute creatively. 23

What are/aren't you getting out of it? 24

Particular times you've felt empowered/disempowered in the process. 25

The Collaborative Impact / 85

This improvisation process has probably been one of the most

challenging I have been involved in. The major reason would have been

the challenge with developing a fertile starting point for the character of

Ned. Although characters can be 'discovered' through various modes of

experimentation and recognised acting processes this character

provided certain obstacles not encountered before. Ned is so dependant

on the environmental influences that have shaped him. The most major

of these influences is his interpersonal relationship with his mother,

Martha. From the starting point of character development Ned is

immediately dependant on the nuances of his mother's behaviours. In

the opening stages of this process whenever the Director/Playwright

changed the given circumstances or character traits of Martha in an

improvisational scenario no matter how subtle this had a huge influence

on the Ned character. This was compounded by the major theme of the

Director/Playwright's intentions. This being a rather complex

investigation into the possible outcomes of unconventional childhood

conditioning. As far as my input was concerned I felt a strong duty to be

sensitive to this theme. Otherwise it would end in generalisation which

improvisations have a strong tendency to do. On top of this was Ned's

physical disability. This created another challenge in which physical

expression was severely curbed. All of this resulted in the landscape of

Ned's character becoming an intensely internal one.

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To navigate around these obstacles I chose not to pull the normal levers

associated with acting in an improvisational context. Rather, I

attempted to 'let things flow' and 'keep it a bit messy', even close to the

point of banality. At the same time I was conscious of making decisions

to further develop the charac