Devising Theatre The Massive Way (Pt1)

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17 June 2024

Part 1: Development

SAM SCOTT

For me, devising theatre means freedom to create. It allows me and everyone I am collaborating with the opportunity to have what we want in a show - content, style and form wise. I love making the unknown known. It’s bloody scary on one level, but over the years I have learnt that as long as I feel confident and inspired by those I collaborate with, that is all I need. Anytime I feel nervous, I just envision the people and all they bring and then it turns my fear into excitement at what we might create together. 

This post is about the early stages of a devised project. How I begin and what we do before getting to the devising/rehearsal period which will have a premiere at the end of it. I am speaking about I LOVE YOU G so that you can get a real idea of how it works, and how it is specific to each project. 

I start with a hunch. With I LOVE YOU G, I had the hunch as I left Neil’s wedding, where both Beulah and Dom had been part of his groom’s party. My hunch was to focus on these three and their friendship. It seemed a particularly special friendship and so I was keen to explore why this was and create a piece of theatre about it. 

In the past I (with Carla Martell) had created two all-male shows which focused on the men within them, what was important and impacting on them at the time: Up Close Out Loud (2006-2007) and The Brave (2012-2015). I saw that this potential show might be the next one in this ‘series’ of productions. 

For this show it was of course imperative that Dom, Neil and Beulah wanted to create a show together. So, my next step was to ask them. They said YES. Because we have worked together a lot, we didn’t need to understand anything more than this to move forward and begin exploring what we might create. 

Time is always imperative for me with devising. I would never by choice only have a devising/rehearsal time of five weeks, for example, prior to opening a new show.  

I need time to nut things out and see what is possible with content first and foremost. Like I said I start with a hunch, so I want time and space together with the cast to explore what the content is, and how it might become theatre. 

I often explain this by holding my arms in a wide stance out from my body and say we start ‘out here’ and the whole process is making my hands move closer together as we create a show. BUT I don’t want to do this in my head, I want to do this with everyone on the ‘floor’ (the workshop/rehearsal space). 

So plenty of time to develop is always important to me. Time to consider and sift. Time to bring the rest of the creative team on board. Time to ask questions and change direction. 

‘Plenty of time’ for  I LOVE YOU G was always very important for Dom, Beulah, Neil and me. Dom and Beulah had very busy performing schedules, both here and internationally, so we needed to work around these as well as allow time to ‘marinate’ on what our show was. 

When we started, we didn’t know when the show would be, we just knew it wouldn’t be for a few years. I asked them in February 2021 if we wanted to make a show and we premiered that show, I LOVE YOU G, on May 1st 2024. We decided in May 2023 that we would make it for this date in 2024.  

A very brief timeline was:  

2021: Meetings and meals together, writing happening by each of the cast. 

Four development weeks of working on the floor:

  • November 2022
    May/June 2023 
    July 2023
    October 2023

March-April 2024: devising/rehearsing for five weeks full time.

May 2024: premiering the show (two-week season at Te Pou Theatre in Auckland).

There is a bit of a myth that when you devise you all just turn up and start ‘making’ and from here wondrous things will appear. For me, devising is a curious mixture of deep thinking, organisation and planning, in order to then be able to explore what is possible in the devising space and be led by what you see in front of you ( I would say this is true for all my creative endeavours actually).  

It is also a ‘squiggly’ route to devising a show, it is definitely NOT a straight line. Therefore, it is often tricky to describe the development process as there are sometimes small moments, conversations or big moments, conversations that change the direction of the process. Sometimes it’s hard to recall all of these. But I think I can recall most of the ‘squiggly’ way we travelled.  

Provocations are Massive’s way of finding content, which we then begin creating on the floor with. Because our kaupapa is to work with personal stories, perspectives and ideas, our provocations relate to this.  Provocations are in essence a question or notion that can be responded to in any way you want, but that are specific enough to not leave you having no idea as to what the provocation could yield.  

  • An example of early provocations for I LOVE YOU G 
    What is concerning you currently? Why?  
    Is there anything you worked with in ‘The Brave’ that you might like to re-visit and update, regarding your thoughts and feelings about this? 

 Dom, Beulah and Neil were always keen to start with writing their responses to provocations. This had come from Zoom writing sessions we (Massive Theatre Company members) had held during various COVID-19 lockdowns. This was good for our timeline, in that they could continue to write in between when we would meet and work on the floor in a workshop space together.  

We didn’t get properly started on this project until late 2021. They would write and send it to me. We would then meet through Zooms, read the writing, discuss it and decide where to next with ideas? It was very broad to start with, as it should be.  

The big turning point within this was when Dom sent me a piece of writing about the fight that Neil, Dom and Beulah had had the night before Neil’s wedding. I hadn’t known about this event and they hadn’t talked about it either, with me or with each other. It was a beautiful piece of writing. But more intriguing was what it revealed about their friendship and where they were at with this event and its impact on their friendship.   

Once I had ascertained that Dom was happy for me to bring this event up with the others, we discussed it together. We then moved forward where this was to be included in the writing. I asked them initially to write about ‘the night’ and anything they felt about it. I left it quite broad so they could just write. I also was aware they were writing about this and talking about this as a result of the show, not because they were talking about this. I left that aspect of how it might be for them to discuss amongst themselves, or not. For now they were keen to include this in the content of their writing.  

A note about writing. I don’t usually think of devising and writing together. Usually when I ask people to respond to provocations, I want them to capture their ideas and thoughts in any way they can. The point is to capture and focus them, so we can then devise with them on the floor. Writing is just one way of capturing.  We might end up using something someone has written at some point within a piece of devising, but that isn’t the point of the capturing.  

Writing was the way the guys wanted to capture their thoughts, ideas and feelings for I LOVE YOU G, but we rarely ended up using the writing as first written in the finished show. We always worked with it on the floor and often it changed significantly from what had first been captured and sometimes, but less often, it was closer to the original writing.  

I think it’s also important to note - we weren’t trying to create a play. We weren’t trying to create a linear narrative. We were trying to capture important moments, perspectives and insight into each of the guys, together and separately. How it might be structured was to come much later in the process. 

In Massive’s devised work we often don’t worry about the structure/form in the beginning. We often have multiple narratives. We often have a theme as the basis of everything. We choose to explore both physically and verbally in all the ways this can be. People often play themselves, alongside characters. We aren’t restrained by a particular form.  

Once we knew we were including ‘the night’ within the writing, the content of our exploration, this took it to a new level of focus. From there we used this as the ‘spine’ of the work. We still didn’t know until July 2023 what exactly the show would encompass, but we did know ‘the night’ would be in there.  Each time we met to work on the floor we had a different focus, which had been defined by either the last time working together or ideas that had presented themselves in between.  

Back in November 2022 when we met up to work on the floor, we focused on working very physically with ‘the night’ from all the different perspectives of the guys. We were also working out how they felt working with this material together. How difficult was it? How did they feel? Could they make a show where this was present? These were questions we asked throughout, but Beulah, Neil and Dom never swerved away from working with this material and it became more and more important to them that this be the focus of the show.  

We filmed everything. We chopped writing up. We worked off the writing to create physical material. We set new pieces of writing to be done. In May/June 2023 when we met up to work on the floor, the guys asked me to lead the writing. I created a process of tasks and ways of them doing fairly ‘quick, spontaneous’ writing to provocations I gave them, often on the spot and with strict timings.  

They went for several solo walks and had an envelope I gave them to open once they had come to a place of their choice and write about whatever I was asking them to write about i.e. a letter to someone about something important they were thinking about. They responded to provocations and created pieces based on “I am from….” or “How I see you”. They interviewed each other and asked specific questions which they then used to create a piece where they became that person.  

Again, we filmed everything. We scribed everything that had been created. We looked at everything we had so far and what we felt we needed? We set a lot more writing to be done before our next session together.  

In July 2023 when we met up to work on the floor, we shared all the new writing. We read out loud and listened. We then ‘stood’ all of this and previous writing up in an order we felt might make sense (very generally of course). By ‘stood’ up I mean the actors were up ‘performing’ it so I (and Scotty Cotter who was present for this) could see and hear it.  

What became very clear for me and Scotty in seeing and hearing this material was that the show needed to be about their friendship before ‘the night’, the night itself, the fracture it caused in their friendship, and how this showed itself and how they were making their way back to each other. EVERYTHING else was superfluous and unnecessary. We were in effect throwing everything else away. There were some absolutely beautiful ideas and stories in what we were throwing away, but in order for us to make the show we wanted to make they weren’t needed.   

This is the reality of creating. You have to be prepared to stay open and alive to what you want to make and what will be the best way to do this, even when there is other beautiful material there. You have to be able to let this go and keep mining for what you need.  

Our final development session in October 2023 was the guys sharing their responses to a set of provocations Scotty and I had set two weeks prior to us coming together. By now I had asked Scotty to co-direct this work with me. This had happened after our July development time.  

We created the provocations based on what we felt was missing from what we had, in order to richly tell our story with no holds barred. It required another huge act of courage from the guys.  

  • Some examples of the provocations we set were:  
    What are questions you want to ask of each other. Why? 
    Why do you choose each other? And why do you fight for each other?  
    What is a story you want to tell about one or both of the others?  
    Write everything that was going on inside your head when the fight happened. 

We shared, listened, recorded and scribed everything that was shared at the October 2023 development session. We knew at the end of this that we had everything we needed to be able to begin devising in March 2024.   

There was more to sift through and organise before the March devising/rehearsal but I will talk about this in my next blog post - Part 2.  I hope this gives you some insight into our process and what we mine into in order to create and devise a show. Making the unknown known.