Towards an Ethnography of Rehearsal

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, the originalTheatre Quarterlypioneered the documentation of the rehearsal process in a series of ‘Production Casebooks’ which, in a wide variety of formats – dictated by the people and the facilities available for any particular production – delved pragmatically into then-uncharted territory. That such analyses are now more commonplace is thanks not only to the active participation of academics in the field of theatre studies, but also to what Gay McAuley here describes as the postmodern ‘shift in interest from the reified art object to the dynamic processes involved in its production and reception’. But the need to refine happenstance into methodology has served only to highlight the problems of observation, selection, and presentation involved – and of how to determine the degree of objectivity that is possible or desirable. The availability of video alongside audiotape and notebook provides an important additional tool – but presents its own problems of ‘editing’ and interpretation. Here, Gay McAuley, Director of the Centre for Performance Studies in the University of Sydney, compares the dilemma of the rehearsal recordist with that of the cultural anthropologist, and proposes the value of an ethnographic model in recognizing and starting to embrace if not always to overcome the difficulties which confront the involved observer. An earlier version of her paper was read at the IFTR/FIRT conference ‘Actor, Actress on Stage’, held in Montreal in June 1995.