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Towards an Ethnography of Rehearsal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Gay McAuley
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Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, the original Theatre Quarterly pioneered the documentation of the rehearsal process in a series of ‘Production Casebooks’ which, in a wide variety of formats – dictated by the people and the facilities available for any particular production – delved pragmatically into then-uncharted territory. That such analyses are now more commonplace is thanks not only to the active participation of academics in the field of theatre studies, but also to what Gay McAuley here describes as the postmodern ‘shift in interest from the reified art object to the dynamic processes involved in its production and reception’. But the need to refine happenstance into methodology has served only to highlight the problems of observation, selection, and presentation involved – and of how to determine the degree of objectivity that is possible or desirable. The availability of video alongside audiotape and notebook provides an important additional tool – but presents its own problems of ‘editing’ and interpretation. Here, Gay McAuley, Director of the Centre for Performance Studies in the University of Sydney, compares the dilemma of the rehearsal recordist with that of the cultural anthropologist, and proposes the value of an ethnographic model in recognizing and starting to embrace if not always to overcome the difficulties which confront the involved observer. An earlier version of her paper was read at the IFTR/FIRT conference ‘Actor, Actress on Stage’, held in Montreal in June 1995.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 53 , February 1998 , pp. 75 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes and References

1. Stanislavsky, Konstantin, Stanislavsky Produces Othello, trans. Nowack, Helen (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1948)Google Scholar; and The Seagull Produced by Stanislavsky, trans. Magarshack, David, ed. Balukhaty, S. D. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1952)Google Scholar.

2. On Peter Brook see, for example, Smith, A. C. H., Orghast at Persepolis (New York: Viking Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Heilpern, John, The Conference of the Birds (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1977)Google Scholar; Selbourne, David, The Making of A Midsummer Night's Dream: an Eyewitness Account of Peter Brook's Production from First Rehearsal to First Night (London: Methuen, 1982)Google Scholar. Stafford-Clark, Max documented his own work on The Recruiting Officer and Our Country's Good in Letters to George (London: Nick Hern Books, 1988)Google Scholar; and John Dexter's production of Galileo is described in Hiley, Jim, Theatre at Work: the Story of the National Theatre's Production of Brecht's Galileo (London: Routledge, 1981)Google Scholar.

3. For instance, Cole, Susan Letzler, Directors in Rehearsal: a Hidden World (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar; Mitter, Shomit, Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski, and Brook (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar.

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5. Potts, C. M., What Empty Space? Text and Space in Australian Mainstream Rehearsal Process, unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Sydney, 1995Google Scholar.

6. Sharman, Jim, ‘In the Realm of the Imagination’, 1995 Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture, published in The Sydney Review, No. 79 (1995), p.10–12Google Scholar.

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8. Bouvier, Hélène, ‘Introduction’, Theatre Research International (Special Issue: Anthropology and Theatre), XIX, No. 1 (1994)Google Scholar.

9. See for example Schechner, Richard, Between Theatre and Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Barba, Eugenio, Beyond the Floating Islands (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1986)Google Scholar; Pavis, Patrice, Le Théâtre an croisement des cultures (Paris: Corti, 1990)Google Scholar; La Scéne et la terre: questions d'ethnoscénologie (Paris: Babel Maison des Cultures du Monde, 1996).

10. Susan Letzler Cole, op. cit., p. 115.

11. See notably Linda Connor, ‘Third Eye: Some Reflections on Collaboration for Ethnographic Film’, in Rollwagen, Jack R., ed., Anthropological Filmmaking (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 97–110Google Scholar; ‘Representing Gender in Ethnographic Film’, paper read at Research Seminar, Centre for Performance Studies, University of Sydney, 1994; Asch, Patsy, ‘Subjects, Images, Voices: Representing Gender in Ethnographic Films’, Visual Anthropology Review, XI, No. 1 (1995), p. 5–18Google Scholar; Okely, Judith and Calloway, Helen, eds., Anthropology and Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar; Clifford, James and Marcus, George, Writing Culture: Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar; David MacDougall, ‘Whose Story Is It?’, Visual Anthropology Review, VII, No. 2, p. 2–10.

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13. Freudenthal, Solveig, ‘What to Tell and How to Show It: Issues in Anthropological Filmmaking’, in Rollwagen, Jack, Anthropological Filmmaking (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 123–34Google Scholar.

14. Timothy Asch, ‘Collaboration in Ethnographic Filmmaking: a Personal View’, in Jack Rollwagen, op. cit., p. 1–29.

15. James Clifford, op. cit., p. 1–26.

16. Kirsten Hastrup, op. cit. p. 116–33.

17. James Clifford, op. cit., p. 1–26.

18. Solveig Freudenthal, op. cit., p. 123–34.

19. Timothy Asch, op. cit., p. 1–29.

20. Terry Threadgold, ‘Performing Genre: Violence, the Making of Protected Subjects, and the Discourse of Critical Literacy and Radical Pedagogy’, in Changing English, I, No. 1, p. 2–31.

21. Dumont, Jean Paul, The Headman and I: Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Fieldworking Experience (University of Texas Press, 1978)Google Scholar.