Artistic Statement
My approach to collaboration comes from my work as a musician, particularly within choral music where a successful whole is not achieved unless numerous individuals are working cohesively. I believe this cohesion relies on a strong sense of trust, as well as an understanding of one’s individual role within a work and how this interacts with other contributors roles within the a performance. As a musical director the foundations of my collaborative ethos often translates with ease into the typical performance settings that I encounter within my work, such as in the pit with a band or in a rehearsal with a cast. More recently my work in education has granted me a new found appreciation for other aspects of collaboration, such as leadership, communication, and adaptation.
Line of Inquiry
My experience of the first six weeks of ICP has been far from smooth sailing. I have often struggled to see my own personal discipline as a musical director reflected within the concepts presented, nor found ways to successfully transfer many of them from the discipline of origin into my own musical one. The heavy focus on devising both within the room, as well as in the reading throughout this module has often been the root cause of my struggle, particularly as an individual who has historically not been involved in the development of new work and doesn’t see it developing as a core part of my professional work as a musical director.
Street posits that ‘it’s far harder to collaborate than dictate’ (Street, 2024), and in large part I absolutely agree with this statement, and perhaps it is this difficulty that strengthens my reluctance to engage. Coming from a musical background where autocratic approaches are the established norm and if you aren’t following a conductors lead then you aren’t doing your job, has probably further contributed to my animosity to some of the collaborative practices presented in ICP.
Therefore, within this essay I aim to reflect on work I have been involved in across the past six weeks through the lens of some collaborative practices presented during workshops and seminars, in order to start developing an understanding of myself as a collaborator in both musical and non-musical settings, and try to reconcile my differences with this module.
Reflection and Analysis
Musical Collaboration
As a musical director, a significant part of my work involves leading and teaching within a rehearsal room. In order to reflect on my own personal practice with regards leadership and teaching, I shall frame my work as a musical director on the Our House Performance Project, through the lens of Butterworth’s Didactic – Democratic Framework. Whilst Butterworth’s framework is built around the relationship between dancer and choreographer, primarily within the context of devising work, interrogating this approach through the eyes of a musical director I hope will provide useful insight into my personal approach to collaboration.
The framework positions five versions of a collaborative process between a dancer and a choreographer along a spectrum where the processes are ‘organised in such a way as to demonstrate the value of approaching some aspects of choreography from a directed, ‘teaching by showing’ approach, termed ‘didactic’, and dialogically, the value of learning to work in a shared, co-operative, collaborative approach termed ‘democratic’’(Butterworth, 2018). Butterworth outlines this spectrum of processes in the table below:
(Butterworth, 2018)
In applying this framework to my work on Our House, immediate pit falls are revealed. Firstly, within the context of a musical, the notes on the page are in large part set in stone, with little room for variation, just like the text in a play. Therefore, Processes 3 to 5 on the surface become redundant as there is little room for ownership or contribution, due to the creation of the project having already occurred. Whilst the core concepts of these latter processes are largely redundant, this not to say there aren’t aspects of Butterworth’s more specific ideas within them that I find useful to apply to my work, such as her views on social interaction, which I shall come to address shortly.
The title of the chapter in which Butterworth presents this framework in is an apt description for why the first two processes were most suitable for my work as musical director on Our House: Too Many Cooks? When working as a singular musical director with a cast of sixteen, there is little room for democracy, as allowing for each individual voice does not promote a productive rehearsal environment, especially when under intense time constraints, which was the case in Our House. Within her more detailed breakdowns of each of these processes, Butterworth describes the teaching methods of the first and second processes as ‘Authoritarian’ and ‘Directorial’ respectively, where in both instances the performer ‘receives and processes instruction’, ‘conforming’ to it within the first process and ‘utilising own experience’ within the second process.
Whilst terms such as ‘Authoritarian’ and ‘Directorial’ often bear negative connotations, for very valid reasons in wider contexts, within my work as a musical director I find these approaches are the most useful and efficient. To briefly draw on Robinson, ‘If there is no leader, devising [and rehearsal] can be a long, turbulent process with conflicting artistic opinions and no agreement on how decisions get made’ (Robinson, 2015) and as a musical director, often working in time sensitive environments, turbulence is best avoided.
However, where I find myself disagreeing with Butterworth’s framework is with her direct correlation between the style of collaboration and style of social interaction. The authoritarian teaching style being associated with social interactions that are ‘passive’ and ‘impersonal’ (Butterworth, 2018) whilst more positive social qualities are found within the latter processes. I find that my subversion of this expectation over the past six weeks, leaving the authoritarian approach in the rehearsal room and engaging socially with my collaborators, has allowed me to run an even more successful and effective rehearsal. Furthermore, verbal feedback from my collaborators has highlighted that through engaging fully with them as equals in social interactions, I have earned the respect to run a more disciplined and efficient, even if somewhat authoritarian, rehearsal.
Whilst Butterworth’s Didactic – Democratic Framework for teaching and devising dance initially might have seemed a framework that, as a musical director, I would be unable to relate to my work, through reflecting upon my work through the lens of this framework, I am able to draw upon aspects of all her processes, without feeling a need to totally conform to a singular one and subsequently better understand my approach to leadership and collaboration.
Non-Musical Collaboration
One of the largest reasons for my initial sense of disconnection from this module has stemmed from the limited opportunities to actually perform my primary role as a musical director. In large, ICP so far has focused on the creation of work either in the room or in the short weekly cycle between workshops, and like how Rome was not built in a day, a musical is not written in a week. Therefore, I have had to develop an understanding for what my role as a collaborator in non-musical settings might be.
I have found New Work Labs to be the most efficient space for me to develop this understanding, particularly once I removed the pressures of an expectation to create and embraced that I could be just as productive a collaborator in the room when functioning as purely an active observer and responder.
For example, the first piece of work presented, and my first experience acting as a non-musical collaborator, within these labs came in the form of an excerpt from a developing one-woman show following the life of an aspiring young journalist and her relationship with both her family and world of work she desires to join. The excerpt focused around the central characters attempts to break into the industry. As neither a young woman, nor a journalist I felt ill equipped to comment and allowed more experienced voices to engage with feedback frameworks with which I was very unfamiliar. However, several weeks later, having developed a clearer understanding of how I could start to function as an active responder, the writer returned with a fresh excerpt, this time exploring more of a relationship with familial grief, than journalism. In particular, before the work was presented a request was made by the writer for feedback to focus specifically on the role of a dictionary within the scene, as the writer personally felt it was unnecessary. Due to a clearly established line of questioning for feedback, after the presentation I found I had very clear thoughts focused on what I thought was in fact a vital role for the dictionary and was able to actively engage as a responsive collaborator in the space. In engaging in this focused dialogue with the writer and other responders in the room, the dictionary has since taken on a key role in the wider work being developed, providing me with a feeling that there are opportunities for me to act as a key part of a collaborative process when music is not involved in a developing project.
The framework that has contributed most to my development as a responder within non-musical collaborations has been Lerman’s Critical Response Process, that outlines roles and relationships between Artist and Responder, adding in a Facilitator who acts as a mediator for feedback through an established four stage process (Lerman, 1990). The process emphasises focused questioning from both the maker to the responder (Stage 2) and vice versa (Stage 3), and ensuring any personal opinions are kept until the fourth and final stage and that these opinions are only heard with the artist’s permission. As an individual who functions best in a rather blunt environment and always benefits from hearing feedback that gets deemed ‘something you might not want to hear’, it would be fair to say that I was initially hesitant to engage with the process. This hesitancy was not aided by one of my earliest exposures to the process being in response to a spoken word performance of We’re All in This Together from High School Musical, which made the use of the process feel borderline farcical.
However, in seeing the process used in response to a far more serious subject, exploring childhood autism, in a later New Work Lab, I could begin to properly appreciate the controlled environment that the process established. The focused questioning and mediation of the process allowed for sensitive and productive discussion to occur around the work and the topic it was presenting. Whilst I respect the consent based approach to opinions, I still struggle slightly with the formulated approach, ‘I have an opinion about… would you like to hear it?’, as I feel this specific phrasing so far hasn’t always been taken seriously, but I’m sure familiarity over time or finding a slight rephrasing of the question that works best for myself and my fellow collaborators will help in this regard. Regardless, engaging in Lerman’s process, where a responder has a clearly outlined role that is just as important in the process as that of the artist, has allowed me to properly understand and appreciate that I can play a key collaborative role within a process, even when music is not involved.
Conclusion
To conclude, I feel that my somewhat distant relationship with ICP may continue due to the absence of a fully formed musical focus for me to dive deeper into. However, in taking the time to reflect on, and in many instances breakdown and translate dance and directorial concepts into musical ones, as I have done with Butterworth’s framework, I am able to reveal that even though I may not be comfortable in a devising heavy environment, there is still plenty of beneficial ideas that I am able to engage with and draw from within ICP. Furthermore, through my experiences within New Work Labs and my wider engagement with Lerman’s Process, I am able to understand and appreciate that an important role can exist for me within a collaborative environment, even without a baton in my hand.
Bibliography
Butterworth, J. (2018) ‘Too Many Cooks? A framework for dance making and devising’, in Contemporary Choreography, pp. 89–106.
Lerman, L. (1990) ‘Critical Response Process | A Method for Giving and Getting Feedback’, Liz Lerman. Available at: https://lizlerman.com/critical-response-process/.
Robinson, D. (2015) A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising. Palgrave.
Street, S. (2024) ‘All together now: time to embrace the power of collaborative theatremaking’, The Stage, 19 June. Available at: https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/all-together-now-time-to-embrace-the-power-of-collaborative-theatremaking-stephanie-street?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Stage%20daily%20newsletter.
