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In the silences : a text with very many digressions and forty-three footnotes concerning the process of making performance

This article is a reflection on and account of the creative process of devising theatre performance, drawing on my experience leading the ensemble Forced Entertainment over a period of more than 25 years and on my experience working with other groups and collaborators over a similar period to produce innovative works in installation and performance.

The article identifies and classifies the different types and stages of discussion which take place during the rehearsals, as well as mapping the diverse types of improvisational work which characterise different stages and conditions of the collective making process. Whilst exploring and charting the systematic understandings gained in and generated by creative process the essay also focuses on the role of unplanned and unplannable factors – aberrant incidents, unanticipated breakthroughs, associative leaps, jumps of logic and connection and so on – which are, at the same time, paradoxically both ‘unpredictable’ and reliable ‘commonplace’ features of the process. The significance of disruption, play and the breaking of the established or implicit rules of a project are all explored.

In line with my approach since beginning to write about creative process the essay attempts to develop a form that in some way reflects and arises from the work itself. In particular, in this instance, it explores using footnotes to gloss, add layers and associations to the main thrust of the narrative and argument, creating a text which both attempts to produce and celebrate a systematic understanding of creative work, and which, at the same time, appears to disrupt and contradict its own understanding. The essay develops, in line with my research in performance itself, an approach rooted in a conception of reading (like spectatorship) as an active, participatory and authorial act.