Different Ways of Working, Part II: Ensemble Theatre Companies

After having established a foundation with The Viewpoints, we spent a little bit of time talking about "ensemble performance," and how/whether or not it's different than any theatre performance. As anyone knows who has worked hard on a theatre production, it always depends on the successful interaction of a group of people. But I thought it would be interesting to look at a couple of cases in which companies defined their work as "ensemble based" to try to identify what that means in the current context of theatre in the United States. Part of the goal of this course is to find ways in a University setting to practice ensemble-based theatre and incorporate some of these ideas, techniques and ways of working into the training of artists who will be trying to establish their lives in theatre after they graduate. My hope is to introduce students to ways of working that might fall outside of what they encounter in acting or directing classes so that they'll have a broader set of tools from which to choose when deciding what kind of work they want to make after graduation.

But also, I don't necessarily think of "University Theatre" as being irrelevant or not legitimate artistic work in and of itself; I'd like to acknowledge that the distinction between "professional" and "educational" theatre is, in many ways, based on the exchange of funds ... the work itself has meaning and potential for communicating important ideas regardless of whether or not people are being paid to do it. In some ways, the University can be a place where experiments can happen and risks can be taken that professional work might not allow, so important discoveries are made and real knowledge is produced through our work here.

The SITI Company is an excellent example of a company that operates as an ensemble, and given the ideas about group creation written by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, which I cited in the previous post, it's important to note that their work has inspired the design of this course a great deal. But they are, in fact, one of many companies in the United States whose work challenges the "traditional" roles defined in modern theatre production. We actually began by discussing the introduction to The Joint Stock Book (now apparently out of print), about the Joint Stock Theatre Company whose work in England in the 1970s and 80s introduced an innovative method of play production that was rooted in actor-initiated research and workshops. (You may be familiar with plays by Caryl Churchill that came out of this process - Cloud 9 is one.) A few important thoughts that arose for me from this reading:

• This work is not easy, and it came out of a lot of frustrating debate, conflict and hard work. The success of some of the productions might overshadow the difficulties of their creation.
• Nonetheless, those difficulties and the ways the company worked through them provide not only a strong model for the process of theatre, they operate as a model for how a more democratic society might solve problems, as well. Working through conflict is an important part of the process of creation, not a hindrance to it; and taking the "easy way out" is not always the most productive.
• This quote:
  
  

  The Joint Stock Process allows the actors to develop a more complex view of their characters. Where the workshop explores lives that are incorporated into the final play, the actors bring to the rehearsal text a rich supply of observations that enable the characters to be more densely realized ...
  
  ... The benefit of the research is that it complicates received ideas about the subject. ... As the work progresses, as people begin to talk and tell stories, the generalisation breaks down and much more contradictory impulses and feelings are caught. To see these contradictions, to recognise the conflicting tensions within an individual life, is to restore a complexity to character work that, in practice, is so often denied in the name of consistency. (31)

  
  

So it's not only the Joint Stock Company's way of breaking down hierarchies that provides a good model for citizenship, it's also the difficult process of research that deepens an actor and audience's understanding of human identity. In other words, through engaging closely with community, maybe we as actors can include the people around us, our audience, in the ensemble; and through that inclusion we can also help to create a model for a society that appreciates and allows for the complexities and contradictions in human identity.

In addition, we listened to this NPR story about ensemble companies who worked at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville last year. It was interesting to note that, although this way of working has been happening for decades, it's still considered a "new" or "innovative" approach to playwriting and the creation of theatre. I wonder if this means less rigid hierarchical ways of working are inching into "the mainstream," whatever that is, very slowly. I also think it's interesting that they focus on this as a method for creating new work. This semester, we'll be doing both: we're doing Joint Stock-style research to develop solo character study performances that are new work; but we're also trying an ensemble method of creating a production of an already-written play.

Again, students, what's your take on all of this? Post away, or comment!