Literature studies
Gay McAuley, Professor, French Literature and Performance Studies, University of Sidney, Australia
The practice of observing professional actors in rehearsal arose in the first instance as a means of alerting students in my French literature classes to the way play texts function as part of a complex meaning-making process and, hence, require different reading skills from other literary texts, and it was further developed as part of the performance analysis project being explored with students and colleagues in the emerging discipline of performance studies. It soon became apparent, however, that the creative process was a fascinating object of study in its own right rather than simply a means of gaining insight into the performance works being created. At this stage we turned to ethnography and micro-sociology for conceptual and methodological guidance in dealing with the range of material emerging from the observations and the research questions it posed, and with political and ethical issues arising from the observation, documentation and analysis phases of the work.
Rehearsal studies is a sub-discipline emerging within performance studies, in which the object of scholarly attention is the creative process involved in the making of performance of any kind. The word ‘rehearsal’ should not be taken to imply an exclusive focus on the processes involved in the making of traditional dramatic theatre, even though this is a subject of enduring fascination as befits practices that, since the advent of the director at the turn of the 20th century, have transformed the way theatre is made. Rehearsal studies as practised by academics in the University of Sydney’s Department of Performance Studies, pioneers in the field, engages with a vastly expanded category of performance that includes a wide range of performative practices (sport, law, medicine, fashion and politics, to name a few) in addition to genres of aesthetic performance. Whatever the nature of the performance, however, all the work is posited on the realisation that understanding of any performance is greatly enhanced by knowledge of the generative process that produced it and the creative agency of those involved.
From the beginning, studies of rehearsal at the University of Sydney were based on collaborative projects in which professional theatre companies opened their creative process to academic observers. Following the ethnographic turn that has affected many disciplines over the last 25 years, the focus of attention shifted from the performance being constructed to the creative process as an end in itself. The task then became one of documenting and attempting to make sense of complex interpersonal processes, involving weeks of intensive work by artists and other skilled workers employing a variety of media, possibly based in different locations, and subject to a range of institutional constraints. The ethnographically inflected approach typical of rehearsal studies requires many weeks of participant observation by a researcher working alongside the performance makers in question throughout the creative process. Ethnography and micro-sociology have provided analytical concepts and much useful methodological guidance in the attempt to describe the social worlds of production but, for rehearsal studies, the performance under construction remains at the centre of the analysis both in terms of its relation to the work process that has produced it and what this means for those involved.
Rehearsal studies shares with theatre genetics a concern with the genesis of performance works but is distinguished from it by this methodological insistence on participant observation. Theatre genetics, like the literary genetics on which it draws, is largely based on documents and archival materials produced during the creative process. Rehearsal studies requires the scholar/researcher to be present in the rehearsal room at all times as an observer, and its remit extends beyond the performance to reflection on relations between the work produced, the way it has been produced, and the social and cultural forces at play in the wider society which may be illuminated by the process.
Cite this item: Gay McAuley, “Rehearsal studies”, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177887
