Devising place and social history: a regional perspective on teaching devised performance in the tertiary sector

New performance-making practices are so central to contemporary theatre production globally that a course on devised performance is an obvious critical and practical learning experience to offer students of Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies in the higher education sector. I use the term ‘devised performance’ here to indicate a new performance work for which there was no pre-existing play text or performance score. Within the limited timeframe of an undergraduate course, however, it is simply not possible to teach the many different categories of devised performance that are prevalent in contemporary Western theatre practice; this is particularly true for courses that maintain a focus on practical exploration and collaborative outcomes. Autobiographical performance, site-specific performance, time-based performance, verbatim drama, documentary theatre and site-responsive performance are just a few of the genre categories currently applied within the eclectic field of contemporary performance-making. When one reflects on the fact that there is no singular or overriding process of creative experimentation that can stand in for the wide variety of strategies employed by contemporary devisers, the prospect of teaching a course on devising performance can initially appear problematic. The obvious solution is for the tertiary teacher to choose which sorts of performance-making processes and outcomes will suit their specific teaching environment and their available resources. This article discusses the pedagogical strategies currently employed for teaching collaborative performance-making within the School of Drama, Fine Art and Music at the University of Newcastle.