The definition of ‘devise’ is to plan or invent a new way of doing something, and the goal of devising is to develop something new. Devising happens when a group of creatives collaborate through improvised activities, games and exercises. There is no definitive method, starting point or roadmap. Instead, a fluid, iterative process allows the group to begin teasing out the kinds of stories they want to tell and how exactly they want to tell them. Included in this group are the performers and director as well as the wider creative/production team (set, lighting, sound, AV and costume designers, dramaturgs and producers) when available, drawing everyone into the process of creation and problem-solving from very early on.

It’s both an exhilarating and terrifying way to work. It’s liberating, creative and contemporary. It requires you to engage your imagination, which will in turn engage the audience’s imagination – the best transaction of all.

We love the challenge of creating a show from scratch, but with this freedom comes a significant catch: there’s no script; no safety net; no defined path. Each group finds its own way. Even for those practised at creating original work, there are always challenges – both tiresomely
familiar and unique to a particular work.

You may not know exactly where you are going, but it’s incredibly helpful to begin the process of devising a production with a collective purpose to your work, with the seed of an idea, and with an understanding of the thing you are trying to say and why. This will be helpful later, as you are weaving all your strands together, but it is also important for getting your team of collaborators on board. It can also be helpful to know what the show isn’t, especially if you are trying to get away from tried and true tricks. For our production of Owls Do Cry, the core creative team were all in agreement before we went into rehearsals with the actors that the show wasn’t a hero’s journey, a straight narrative or literal. For another show, Dust Pilgrim, we banned large pieces of fabric in the room as we had used it extensively in other productions (especially as water in our show SEA). We expanded our explorations of materiality until we landed on using sand. We then interrogated the use of sand until we felt we had completely exhausted every possibility – and then pushed just a little further. For another we investigated books. We had boxes and boxes of them and kept provoking the cast to find more and more ways to explore this object that was central to the work in both a literal and figurative way. We found the richest stuff – free of clich. and full of meaning – when we were fed up with trying and were instead responding emotionally.

In the early days, depending on what your original source material is and how open-ended it is, identifying theatrical languages that work with your material can be the key to unlocking the path of the production.

Some languages worth exploring include:

• physicality
• narration
• design
• puppetry
• imagery
• materiality
• text
• song, sound and music
• dance
• character
• set and props
• naturalism vs abstraction
• elements
• stylised action

It is also worth pinpointing at the beginning any special skills you may need to start training early for. For various shows, we have learnt acrobatic lifts and throws, accents, fight training, our own invented language, puppetry and a range of instruments – as I write this, we have an actor learning to play bass guitar in ten days.

As you begin to develop scenes, moments and longer explorations, start to order them into some kind of instinctive sequence. You may choose to follow a three-act structure; or your narrative may have more of a montage feel, or be made up of a series of seemingly unrelated scenes – choose what feels strong to you. Whichever way you go, chances are you will have a beginning, middle and end of some sort.

We often work with an energetic dramaturgy that dictates the shape of the work from an emotional and instinctive place – ‘We need something really dynamic here’, ‘We need some stillness’, ‘This place could do with some dialogue’, and so on. And then amongst the bits that are working, start noting the things that aren’t there. What’s not clear? What needs a bridge between ideas or scenes? Where are the holes? Return to the floor to keep making and problem-solving. You will end up with an unwieldy beast with far too much material. This is good: it’s much easier to throw things away than realise you don’t have enough material and rush to make more.

• Company contract
• Photo inspiration - what they brought, what you have found
• Object table - precious objects they have brought in
• Theatrical conventions we like from the devising process
• Scenes/makes we like - broken into images - post it notes

Generating, Constructing, Refining
Being firm with committing to each part of the process, not flicking between modes. Generating should take the lions share of the process. There will be an area that you/the students feel more comfortable in and you will want to gravitate towards that.

For Red Leap, with an 8 week process

• 6 weeks generating
• 1 weeks constructing
• 1 week refining/rehearsing

Generating

The Red Leap rules of devising engagement

• No language - have to engage other ways of storytelling
• Nothing is impossible - steer away from the mundane to create something that could only be seen on a stage, live
• Make fast and without judgment (no sitting and talking and planning)
• Listen to each other, grab a good idea and build on it
• If you’re going to fail, fail magnificently (not from lack of conviction) - the importance of this and how to foster it within a classroom
• The importance of feedback - the audience is just as active as the performer - the class thinking of themselves as a whole company working together to create the work, using each other as a resource (steal ideas)
• The audience is hugely intelligent at reading imagery. Make them work. Allow them to find meaning through creating their own connections.

Provocations

• Fast time frames - 5-10-15 minutes and then show
• Lots of rules - trust they can remember them
• Action based

Scaffold

• Physical tool
• Fast devise exploring a theatrical language
• Image generation
• Soundscape
• Combine these into one sequence. Encourage them to steal any images they loved from other groups.

Feedback on scenes - Manaakitanga

• The audience are just important in the process as the performer
• Always looking for something that worked, that was interesting, an image you saw, something that was sparked in your imagination, something that was inspired
• Follow what worked
• As director you are taking note of when something needs more interrogation

Feedback on whole project

• Schedule time to discuss what's working on a whole project scale. Group around your lists on the wall - what conventions are working for what, what is interesting? What hasn’t quite worked yet? What are the excited to explore further, or try again? What are they nervous about?

Structuring devising

• Keep it interesting for the performers - moving through different areas of the production, or very different approaches.
• Great to attack a scene from different angles eg. a soundscape, creating images, creating a character. End with bringing these together. You can scaffold this by starting with what you want to achieve, and what you think the performers will need to successfully achieve this eg. some great single images, some interesting approaches to bringing in text, a soundscape. Write provocations that build all of these individual elements, and then bring them together after they have collectively seen what is working.
• The trick is knowing when to do deeper into something and when to move on - which is to read the actors and their capacity to keep digging into something. If there is inspiration there, or when you can push them even if they are tired because you feel on the edge of something interesting. You figure out your own groups capacity for this through trial and error.

Constructing

• Take post it notes of your favorite images and make an order and run it.
• Restructure, without refining moments
• Mash things together
• Keep doing this - don’t get focused on perfecting things until you know they are definitely in the show after the constructing process
• When you find holes, you can work to fill them if you don’t have the material, but don’t get drawn back into too much generating

The definition of provocation is ‘something that provokes, arouses or stimulates’.

We use the term ‘provocation’ to refer to both a prompt we give the company to get them devising material – either as a group or solo – and the resulting short piece of devised theatre. Using provocations to create material is a way to break a larger production into bite-sized chunks – to turn explorations and questions into tasks that can produce results. Focusing on short, building-block provocations invites the performers to be creative and proactive in the devising process without the burden of creating a whole piece.

It’s common to find that a provocation, game or exercise that was an absolute winner for one group or show is a dead duck for another – same with how the group best likes to communicate. So we try to be responsive to each unique situation. For Owls Do Cry, we found all our old tools to be irrelevant; we needed to invent new tools. This came about in the form of long improvisations (which some people loved and others dreaded). They generated potent material, and the initial not knowing was responsible for the unique atmosphere of that particular production.

At Red Leap, we encourage making lots of material really fast. An initial quickfire devise can give you a little spark of something to develop into a longer provocation. But working quickly is also useful as a tool to switch off the judging brain, to avoid overthinking things. You can use this approach throughout a project – the initial development, the fleshing out and the fine-tuning at the end. At all stages, if something isn’t quite working we prefer to return it to the floor to problem solve, rather than trying to fix it intellectually. This can be harder and more time-consuming, but invariably produces a breakthrough that makes everything worth it.

Paradoxically, putting rules and limitations around provocations seems to allow more creative freedom and engagement. Some of our ‘rules for engagement’ include:

• Make fast and without judgement.
• Listen to each other, grab a good idea and build on it.
• If you’re going to fail, fail magnificently (not feebly from lack of conviction).
• Nothing is impossible!
• Play a lot with qualities and elements to step away from the literal and to engage the imagination and physical body.
• Make up your own rules, specific to your world.

If you get stuck at any time, try things in a completely different way:

• Change your space – perhaps go outside.
• Make sure you’re not sitting down.
• Change the soundtrack or add one in.
• Have a go at transforming the scale you are working in – try creating something tiny.
• Change your perspective – put yourself into the audience for a while.
• Try working in complete silence for a time. No words allowed!
• Ban props from being used literally – if you choose a chair, for example, you can use it for anything apart from sitting on. It can be easy for groups to fall into patterns that mean some people don’t speak up or get heard. It can be worth taking some time to acknowledge the habits of the group and then together decide what is positive and what is not helping. Habits can be revealed by very small things – like asking, what is the first thing the company does when they get a task? If the initial response is always the same – perhaps being led by the same person or in the same set of words – then you may have fallen into a pattern. Try to find different ways of entering a task to crack any moulds that may have set and keep the dynamics fresh. If you notice someone consistently not being heard, cast them as the leader or director for a while. Changing up the size of the group can also help. It’s most difficult to devise in a large group, so setting provocations for small groups, pairs or solo work can be rewarding.

In the early days of rehearsals, provocations include lots of broad and quickfire making as we investigate the tone of the piece and the different languages we are interested in. As the process goes on, provocations on the floor are more often led by the questions we have or what we perceive to be missing and become more prescriptive. We might simply say, ‘You have one hour to make three possible endings’ and add some elements that have to be included such as consideration of space, a transformation or a song.

Red Leap work very often comes together more like choreography than a scripted play. You can tell when the process is succeeding and connecting well – the work has a sort of flow and is easy to remember. There is often a particular feeling attached. Then the next day it might all feel wrong. You can’t put your finger on what’s different, but it’s lost the very thing that made it special. Sometimes you can identify the problem quickly – perhaps it’s attached to timing or a shift in energy levels. Sometimes it remains an enigma and you can never quite recreate the feeling. If necessary, you may have to regretfully abandon what is now a dead end. Even if something is clever/funny/effectively physical, if it no longer serves the show, then it has to be left aside.

An important discovery for us was learning to show the work early to a sympathetic audience (ideally one who understands the devising process). We now always show way before we are ready. Though we never want to do it at first, it is invaluable. Getting this outside perspective will help you to see the potential of material more clearly, plus the pressure will push you to commit to ideas much quicker. You’ll be quicker to sense when things are interesting or dull. Your audience should initially be very small, perhaps just the designers and a couple of trusted wider company members. We now try to begin showing material every Friday from the first or second week of rehearsals. By the fourth or fifth showing, you will be amazed at how far your work has come. Keep a couple of consistent viewers while also building your audience up, getting fresh eyes on the work. Afterwards, ask for structured and honest feedback.

Some of the questions we ask include:

• What were the most compelling images and why?
• Where were you uninterested?
• What did you think the main themes of the play were?
• What aspects of the design did you think worked or didn’t work?
• Were you interested in the beginning?
• How did XYZ make you feel?

It’s really a process of slow, incremental building – reflecting on feedback, refining what’s working, dropping what’s not, adding what’s missing – block by block.

Sometimes you might be able to identify a specific, necessary but lacking skill or technique. In these cases, try to enlist some expert help in the area. There aren’t a lot of devising practitioners who are also great at dramaturgy, movement, voice, accents, design, scripting, structure and character development – we all have strengths in different areas.

While the backbone of the devised production as it develops is the performers’ work in the strung-together scenes, we are continually adding in layers of design elements and effects – sound, audio-visuals, lighting, set, further dialogue or spoken text. Ideally, you would be exploring these layers as you go along, but this not always practical or possible. So particularly near the end, we increase our focus on using these effects to heighten and support the underlying performance work.

As well as our Post-it record, we like to film the work in progress and review it at the

end of the day. We create digital folders of some of the strongest devises, and keep the ‘b list’ in a separate folder, to be reviewed occasionally in case we have a hole to fill. Not everyone likes this method, though – some say they can’t think of anything worse than going back over the day! But we find it relaxing and useful and a handy record to draw on for getting devised scenes quickly back on their feet. Even better, have the director or directors – and perhaps the design team and dramaturg – use the last scheduled hour of the day to do this review while the actors are getting on with another task.

Top tip: When you are stuck you need to ask more questions.