The Devising Process: From Stimulus to Performance

Collective work, individual mark

Most people think devising means a group improvising until something good happens, and then performing it. That describes how the material arrives. It has almost nothing to do with how the work is assessed. A devised piece is assessed as a record of decisions, not as a performance that appeared. And the hard part follows from one structural fact that catches out almost every group: the work is collective and the mark is individual. A group can improvise brilliantly, produce twenty excellent minutes, and remember nothing about how any of it happened. That group has made a good piece and cannot evidence a single decision between them. So carry one question from the very first session: could I say what I decided, what the alternative was, and why we kept this one? This module is about what happens between having a stimulus and having a piece. Performing from a published script is the other practical module on this course.

Five words used exactly

The first one is the word most often misunderstood, and misunderstanding it is what produces a flat piece.

Two that do something with the chair

A group is given the same stimulus: a photograph of a single empty chair in a bare room. Five responses. Tap the TWO that take something STRUCTURAL from the stimulus rather than just a theme.

• A series of scenes about people who are lonely
• A piece in which one character is discussed in every scene and never appears on stage
• A play about an elderly man whose family never visit
• A piece where the same short scene is replayed four times, each time with one more person gone from it
• A play in which the characters talk about a chair that belonged to someone

The group that cannot remember

A group devises for six weeks. The final piece is genuinely good. When they come to write about the process, nobody can remember who suggested the central idea, what else was tried, or why the second version was dropped. What is the problem?

• The mark is individual and their evidence is collective, so a good piece will still leave every one of them unable to show what they personally decided
• They should have followed a stricter devising process
• The group needed one person in charge to make the decisions
• Nothing, since the quality of the final piece is what is being assessed

Illustrating a theme, or using a form

Almost every weak devised piece is in the left column, and it is usually the first idea the group had. The right column is harder to reach and it is what separates the work.

Five moments, five different things to record

From stimulus to piece

A group has its stimulus and its first session. Put the stages in a sensible order.

• Respond to the stimulus separately first, so several different readings exist before anyone commits
• Agree the question the piece is asking, and what you want an audience to feel
• Decide the form: how time runs, what repeats, who is present and who is absent
• Build material to test that form, expecting to throw most of it away
• Cut and reorder until the shape itself carries meaning
• Run it for somebody outside the group and change what did not land

What actually earns the marks

Three habits, and all three cost minutes rather than hours. Write down one decision and one rejected alternative at the end of every session. Five minutes, while it is fresh. By the end of the process the piece will feel inevitable, and the three versions that were cut will have vanished from everybody memory. Claim what is yours, specifically and without inflating it. Not "I helped develop the piece", which could be said by anyone in any group. "I suggested running the scene backwards, we tried it, it did not work, and what survived was the idea of starting at the end" is specific, honest and checkable. ⭐ And treat the things that failed as material. A rejected idea, an argument that was settled, a session that produced nothing: these are the parts of the process only somebody who was there can report, which makes them the strongest evidence available that you were. A group whose account contains no disagreements and no dead ends has either had a very unusual six weeks or has written the account from memory afterwards.

Is that evidence of a contribution

For each thing a student might write in their log, decide how useful it is as evidence. Three lives.

Four people, one meal

Four friends cook a meal together and it is excellent. Somebody afterwards asks each of them what they did. Three of them say roughly the same thing: I helped, I did a bit of everything, we all pitched in. All true, and if you had to say which of them was any good in a kitchen you would have nothing to go on at all. The fourth says something different. The sauce was splitting, so I took it off the heat and whisked in a spoonful of the cold stock, which is why it came back together. I also argued for serving it twenty minutes later than we planned, because the meat needed to rest and nobody was hungry yet. ⭐ Notice that the fourth person did not do MORE than the others. They may well have done less. What they can do is name a problem, name what they did about it, and say what it changed. Nobody in that kitchen could have written those two sentences for them, which is exactly why they count.

What makes a log entry count

A student writes: "In week three we worked on the ending." Select every addition that would turn it into evidence.

• What they personally proposed, in words specific enough that nobody else in the group could have written it
• The reason behind it, tied to what they wanted the audience to feel
• What the alternative was and what happened to it
• A fuller description of what the ending eventually looked like
• How pleased they were with how the week went

Finish the devising sentences

The starting point you are given is the _____, and treating it as a subject to make a piece about is what produces a flat response. How the piece is built, the order of events, what repeats, who is absent, is its _____, and it is separate from what the piece is about. What you want an audience to feel or notice is your _____, and every choice is judged against it. Because the work is collective and the mark is not, the thing you have to be able to evidence is your individual _____. The running record that holds decisions while they are fresh is the _____, and it cannot sensibly be written from memory at the end. The strongest entries in it name a decision and the _____ that was rejected.

Build the log entry

A student is writing up one session honestly. Assemble the entry that would earn most.

Six weeks, four decisions

A group of four is devising from a stimulus they have already been given. Each stage sets out where they are and hands you the decision.

• Ten minutes into the first session, the most confident person has described a whole piece and the others are nodding. Decide.
• Three weeks in, the piece is a sequence of sad scenes illustrating the theme. It is competent and nobody is excited by it. Decide.
• A whole session produces nothing usable and the group leaves frustrated. Decide what to write down.
• The night before the log is due, a student realises they cannot remember why the second version was dropped. Decide.

Plan a devised response

You are given a stimulus: a single shoe left on a bus seat. Explain how you would work from it, and how you would make sure your own contribution could be evidenced.

• Say what question the stimulus raises for you, rather than what theme it suggests
• Describe ONE structural idea you would take from it, and how it would shape the piece
• State what you would want an audience to feel or notice
• Explain what you would write down at the end of each session, and why memory will not do
• Give one example of a log entry you might write, including a rejected alternative
• Finish by explaining why a piece everybody enjoyed making can still leave a group with nothing to show