My professional career has seen me work as a creative workshop facilitator, performer and in puppeteering. My practice was developed at East 15, where collaboration within theatre-making and community-focussed practice were the foundation of our education. My resilience and ability to actively listen, contribute and negotiate was strengthened, but working outside the familiarity of my close-knit cohort was a significant transition. Gaining experience outside of education, working with numerous practitioners in a variety of settings and companies has provided experience in understanding the diversity of communication styles across different practices and platforms.
One of the most significant collaborative experiences I’ve had to date was working with Thingumajig and artists from many different disciplines. This created space to adapt to new challenges and processes as we came together to create a giant puppet within a short timescale. This presented numerous opportunities to share and learn skills used in other creative professions.
My experience as a facilitator requires approaching creation and communication from a different perspective. I’ve been responsible for providing feedback, information and defining the stimuli or desired outcomes of the contractor. The participants all have a part to play in this, too – as we are working together to foster spaces that are positive, engaging and allow the space for creative growth.
Dramaturgy will be a new form of practice, and over the course of my MA, I’ll be adopting a different methodology and way of approaching collaboration, at any stage of creative development. I’m no stranger to working collaboratively, but I’m now looking to identify some resonant techniques of a dramaturgical approach – and understand how the dramaturg fits into a creative process. Over the last few weeks, various workshops, discussions and reading of material have contributed to reflections on my relationship to offering feedback and working collaboratively from a new discipline, which are creating the foundations of this new area of creative practice.
Candy, in The Creative Reflective Practitioner, introduces her understanding of the many elements of structures, patterns and takeaways of collaborative efforts using John-Steiner’s findings on creative collaboration. Candy discusses four of the identified patterns: distributed, complementary, integrative and family.
(John-Steiner, 2000)
After in-depth discussions, I can recognise in more depth how different practices, goals and cultures work together to achieve a desired outcome. These patterns are familiar territory that shaped the way I have worked in the past, as an individual and collaborative artist. The unfamiliar is approaching these patterns through the lens of a dramaturg. Candy argues that “collaborative dialogue and reflection is a stimulus to ongoing exploration and a deepening of the collaborations” (Candy, 2019: 115). From this, it becomes clear that active reflection following further practice and active participation will start to provide more clarity on how I find my identity as a creative exploring a broader practice.
‘The Tomorrow Cabaret’, pitched in New Work Lab, followed this model of working. This gave me a hands-on way of exploring the purposes and functions of a dramaturg in practice. By highlighting our individual experience, strengths and studies – we understood how our skillsets could come together as co-creators. A democratic approach to brainstorming was fostered; ideas were heard out and expanded in a group effort. We left with the idea of a cabaret exploring the potential future of this world. The next meeting covered clarifying certain ideas and themes, and the feelings that we wanted to invoke.
It was useful to use this time to ask questions and offer suggestions that helped to refine the concept of the emotional journey we wanted to take audiences on. Through this, we identified how structure, acts and the use of staging, lighting and music could help achieving this. I drafted the pitch – making sure that it clearly expressed what we wanted to say. The delegating of tasks concluded the meeting, with Lara working on a track using ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie but in a more sinister key, I would refine the pitch and the group agreed to contribute images to a moodboard. On reflection, there was some imbalances in the dynamics. If this idea were to progress into a project, the need for contribution would increase.
| Imbalances | Reflections |
| We had chosen the song we wanted as an opening and a reprise, but Lara worked individually on creating the backing track only using verbal stimulus from the discussions. | We should have scheduled more time to work on the track – and utilised Company members to create harmonies. |
| Some people added more pictures to the moodboard than others. A couple of people didn’t add any. | Everyone finds five resonant pictures and adds them to the moodboard. |
| Some people in the group had more to say than others. | Creating space to ask those not as verbal for a specific opinion, rather than asking “do you have anything to add?” (Lerman’s approach to neutrality may be helpful here) |
Following John-Steiner’s Complementary approach, where “differences in training, skill, and temperament support a joint outcome through division of labor” (John-Steiner, 2000: 70) could see us all playing to our strengths, and ensuring a fair division. Regular checking in and co-reflection would also help us create a fairer process and allow different personalities and skills to have a more active contribution. It is natural that in collaboration, some people may have more they want to contribute, but another individual could bring something elsewhere, or be able to strengthen the idea in practicality.
Candy and Lerman both explore how experience, culture and background shape the way we approach, respond to and feel about creative stimulus. My relationship to criticism is something to work on – I have previously taken feedback personally when, typically, the criticism was given to aid my personal growth. When giving feedback in the past, I’ve provided compliments without specificity. I can also be heavily solutions focussed and tend to avoid criticism unless I have suggestion to navigate the highlighted issue.
The Four-Steps of CRP (Lerman, 2022)
Lerman’s Critical Response Programme focuses on actively shifting our mentality to allow us to alter “judgements, opinions and feedback itself into inquiry, conversation and useful knowledge”. (Lerman, 2022: 25) By outlining a distinct time and place for opinions, questions and suggestions, the filtering out of opinions comes naturally. Actively changing our personal bias and aiming for neutrality comes with practice, but with the delegated time and with a facilitator, can be implemented in the moment. CRP’s framework in relation to of language goes beyond how we verbalise feedback – it also encourages an artist to look beyond the ‘am I good enough’ outlook – and find specificity in the questions that they ask. (Lerman, 2022)
The framework of CRP has been valuable in developing my critical voice, as I’m reframing my approach to critiquing new work and writing. Outside of New Work Lab, the facilitated space of this framework won’t always be there. Just like opinions; there will be a time and place for it. It’s a great approach to differentiating opinions to valuable input, but the dramaturgical practice goes beyond the stage of giving feedback.
CRP has been a groundbreaking developmental tool, as it has encouraged me to compartmentalise thoughts, questions and opinions to alter judgements. I will continue to take a stance that is rooted in curiosity and finding the specifics of what the artist wants to know and build on. The Critical Response Process has helped me understand the way my mind works. Going forward, I intend to investigate other frameworks and methods that will inevitably, shape my dramaturgical voice.
Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a significant change in the way I offer feedback, and how I respond to artists’ questions in New Work Lab. I previously stated how my relationship to feedback can at times, not be helpful towards a creative process. My contribution in these sessions has improved and I no longer feel I’m saying something just to say something. Being able to understand my relationship to Lerman’s Critical Response Process has set a firm method of organising my thoughts to clearly articulate points – and has resulted in my confidence of verbalising and clearly articulating feedback in the room.
From another perspective, I have also gained an understanding of how I might ask questions as an artist with work to develop and find out how, dramaturgically, I could improve my own work and collaborate with others to expand on ideas, research and continuity.
Over the course of the last few weeks, a blend of discussion and practical-based exercises took place. One task saw us split into groups and asked to make something, using inspirational readings that were shared.
Myself, Candace, Tonicha and Lucy lost sight of the task and had an in-depth discussion about our creative backgrounds, what influences the work we want to make and what brought us to Leeds Conservatoire. While nothing was physically made, this use of time felt far more productive to the way that we worked – and creates a solid foundation for working on a longer project with others. However, when there’s a shorter time-scale, it would’ve been useful to have approached the task physically without trying to break the ice first.
The methods outlined in Robinson’s A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising were explored in small groups. The writing covered varying degrees of leadership and contribution, and we were asked to choose one of the above methods and explore it. The theme was ‘vacations’, and our stimulus became cruise ships.
We went with Choose a director, with myself as the director. With little time, I chose interpretive dance as the form – and had Tonicha on Zoom playing the role of a cruise ship host, speaking over a tannoy system.
When asked to select another method, the natural collective decision was to explore Yes, And – as the nature of this approach seemed best when it’s used on it’s feet – rather than as a discussion.
(Robinson, 2015)
The ‘Yes, And’ approach saw our movements, and Tonicha’s words influencing the choices we made during this process.
Further reading beyond the patterns and methods of collaboration has given me examples of ways that a dramaturg would be involved in collaborative production. The Process of Dramaturgy provided an awareness of skills, styles and the stages of involvement that could be expected when a company or individual gets a dramaturg on board. For example, a dramaturg could be part of the production team from the start – being a part of the meetings with focuses on production concept, continuity and being “uniquely positioned to facilitate cross-fertilisation within the artistic team, leading to a stronger sense of unity in the final live performance event.” (Irelan, et al, 2010: 63)
A dramaturg could be working exclusively on a draft of text to provide feedback to the writer. Sometimes they’ll be a sporadic presence, being able to see continuity with fresh eyes, and collating the key themes and research for audiences to engage with.
With this in mind, I intend to look further for opportunities to physically practice some of the above stages of involvement and continue to actively reflect on my ongoing participation during my studies. I’ve identified and worked with some key techniques that I’ve been able to put into practice beyond these sessions. Through reflecting on collaborative tasks and discussions, further reading and taking part in R&D week, clarity has been given on the dramaturgical process of working on a script or production. Now that the above has been recognised and considered in more depth, a new line of enquiry has been opened as I progress further into the development of my creative practice. The building blocks have been set, and now – it’s time to start building through further practical exploration.
Candy, L. (2019). The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research through Making and Practice. London: Routledge
Irelan, S.R., Fletcher, A. and J.F Dubiner (2010). The Process of Dramaturgy: A Handbook. Newburyport: Focus Publishing/R. Pullins, Co.
John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lerman, L. and Borstel, J. (2022). Critique is creative : the critical response process in theory and action. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Robinson, D. (2015). Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp.95–106.
