Devising Physical Theatre - PT1

There are many ways to create physical theatre. In this video series PUSH's Ashley Jones and Heather Stevenson (with a little input from Darren Stevenson) show you one possible method. The challenge was to create a work of physical and perform it for the camera in only three sessions.

Rather than aiming to create the perfect choreography PUSH invites you to watch the process of being creative on a short schedule from beginning to end. Then try creating your own physical theatre piece using a similar structure.

More PUSH: https://www.pushtheatre.org/
More about classes and studio at our new home in the Hochstein School: https://hochstein.org/

--------Here's the basic structure that you might try:

1. At the beginning don’t get stuck talking about ideas. Just get up there and try things out. Be comfortable failing in front of each other and realize that 90% of what you try will fail - have a laugh about it and try something else.

2. Do some improvisations (no talking). Have someone watch or video tape so you can discuss what you did.

3. Discuss what characters and relationships the movements might suggest. Or find a few ‘sticky images’ great moments that you remember.

4. Improvise some more based on this information.

5. Discuss what kind of ‘story’ or theme is growing out of this work.

6. Try building a few ‘moments’ or ‘movement sketches’ that might fit into the final piece. You can split into small groups to do this and then come together to show each other what you did. Most of this won’t make the final piece but it will help you decide what might work.

7. Go away and think about it, you might want to add words here and flesh out the story.

8. Now try creating enough of a structure to run the whole thing in a rough form.

9. DON’T BE A PERFECTIONIST. Nothing needs to be finished…

10. Edit out anything that doesn’t quite work (be ruthless, don’t get emotionally attached to your favorite ideas)

11. Rehearse like crazy - BE A PERFECTIONIST.

12. Do one last edit to remove/change anything that isn’t working.

13. Perform it for your class to riotous applause. Get an ‘A+’. Become the most popular person in your school. Write the Hollywood movie version. Win an Oscar (don’t forget to thank PUSH during your acceptance speech).