Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Devised Theater by Chloe Johnston, Coya Paz Brownrigg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Devised Theater by Chloe Johnston, Coya Paz Brownrigg Jake Hooker Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Devised Theater. By Chloe Johnston and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Second to None: Chicago Stories series. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; pp. 224. Chloe Johnston and Coya Paz Brownrigg’s Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Devised Theater is an important, even essential addition to the growing body of literature concerning the history, theory, and practice of devising, ensemble theatre, and collective creation in the United States. Devisers, fresh-faced and seasoned alike, as well as educators will find this work illuminating and, better yet, enormously useful. The book is a collection of relatively short, reader-friendly case studies of fifteen contemporary Chicago-based performance ensembles that use devised theatre methods in creating their work. The authors have successfully filled a hole they identified in the existing literature—namely, that no single volume provides adequate historical, geographic, and social context for the practice of devising while also offering practical guidance and examples of ways of working from the professional field. While they are quick to note that it “is representative, not exhaustive” (x), Johnston and Brownrigg have created a book about devising, collaboration, and ensemble that feels like a collective performance made by all of the fifteen companies assembled therein. The authors’ scope is at once laser-focused and expansive—the book includes Chicago-based devising companies that range from very large, venerated anchor organizations (Lookingglass Theatre, The Second City) to quite young, tiny upstarts (Southside Ignoramus Quartet, The Young Fugitives), and every imaginable shape, size, mission, and aesthetic in-between. In their brief but compelling introduction, the authors offer another way of thinking about the glue holding these companies together beyond the experimental aesthetics often associated with devised theatre. They write that all fifteen “have developed a way of creating performance that is predicated on collective, rather than individual, agency” (ibid.), highlighting the importance of the ensemble nature of these practitioners. The variety of the collected companies is, indeed, one of the strong suits of this book, at once signaling that devising comprises a broad spectrum of aesthetics and practices, while positioning deep collaboration as a central shared element of devised work. Importantly, Johnston and Brownrigg are not dispassionate, objective observers of the field, but are themselves “ensemble practitioners” who were “interested in documenting ensemble practice in such a way that celebrates . . . the practice, not the product; the way of making, not what has been made” (xi). Brownrigg is the cofounder of Teatro Luna, a Latina theatre ensemble, from which she subsequently departed, and the current artistic director of Free Street Theater, a company that devises work explicitly addressing issues of racial and economic segregation. Johnston is a long-time member of the Neo-Futurists, the progenitors of the highly successful late-night cult shows Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and The Infinite Wrench. These two Chicagoan artist-scholars are the perfect tour guides through Chicago’s devising community, from its Magnificent Mile to the residential streets and backyards of its many diverse neighborhoods. The introduction also offers a necessarily condensed though rich history of collective creation in Chicago, stretching as far back as Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr’s founding of Hull House in 1889. This history may be known to many, and maybe not to some, but the way the authors position it is important for a number of reasons: it reflects that devising is first and foremost local and rooted in community that then may become national and global; it shows that devising is by no means “new”; it demonstrates that its roots are radical and political. At Hull House, where “well-meaning educated women, mostly white” worked in the community to counteract the effects of the industrial boom, Addams discovered “the profound effect theatre had on the children” (xii) attending their events. It was there and then she began exploring creating plays by, for, and about these children and their families. By the time Viola Spolin arrived at Hull House as an 18-year-old aspiring social worker, the Hull House Players were well-established, and she...