This proposal for an advanced seminar was developed to meet one of the stated goals of my Fulbright Fellowship to Australia, where I studied rehearsal ethnography with the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney.
Systematic documentation and analysis of rehearsals can offer scholars and practitioners a new set of tools for learning from others' practices and critically examining their own. Rehearsal studies turns the critical eye of academic performance analysis to the processes by which performances are made, yet research on rehearsal is relatively new in theatre history. The process of group theatrical rehearsal as we know it did not develop before the rise of the modern concept of a director in the 18th century, but even after the contemporary method of group rehearsal began to take shape, it was many years before anyone took a serious interest in it as a phenomenon in itself. In this seminar for advanced students of theatre and performance studies, we will look at existing accounts of rehearsal in light of their usefulness for critical performance research. For context, we will become familiar with the small but growing body of work on the ethics and methodology of systematic rehearsal studies, including identifying relevant trends in current ethnographic theory.
Course objectives:
- Students will be able to identify the four primary "modes" of existing rehearsal data
- Students will engage with current work in critical theatre studies that uses rehearsal data as its primary source
- Students will be able to develop a plan to produce new rehearsal data, and to identify the ethical and methodological complications of conducting rehearsal research
- Students will be able to engage with their own and others' observations of rehearsals to develop critical analysis of one or more of the following: a) a dramatic text, b) the working method of an individual actor/director/designer, c) rehearsal processes in general, d) acting/performance theory in general