School of Performing Arts - Theses
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ItemThe eye of the storm: an examination of directorial strategies and dramaturgical structures in the creation of a production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt( 2010)Daniel Schlusser proposes that his particular style of theatre directing includes three main threads: (1) working with large groups of actors, (2) keeping the whole group present on the stage at all times, and (3) facilitating for the actors a new approach to authenticity – his distinctive version of a contemporary realism. Very specific directing vocabularies and dramaturgical strategies have been developed to deal with the rigorous demands of a complex process. In articulating the current phase of his work, he turns to the theories of French literary critic and philosopher René Girard, specifically his theories of violence as infection, mimetic desire, the scapegoat and the sacrificial crisis. Schlusser examines how these concepts provided a lens through which he could read and understand text, the mechanics of the large group in the rehearsal room and his own directorial impulses. The research question is put thus: how do Girard’s theories concerning violence and group cohesion translate to the theatre stage, and in what ways do they support Schlusser’s directorial aims. Schlusser directed a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with twelve Victorian College of the Arts drama students, four alumni and two child-actors, a professional design team and support from the Victorian College of the Arts Production School. In this production, he utilised and further articulated his process of theatre-directing that has been developed over the last two decades, applying Girardian theories to his reading of the play, his shaping of the rehearsals and to his development of an interpretation that underpinned the final production. In this exegesis, Schlusser unpacks Girard’s concepts of mimetic desire and the sacrificial crisis and traces how they influenced the process of making Peer Gynt. More specifically, he details the process of articulating his three strands of theatre-making mentioned above, and how they work in the rehearsal room. “Bad reading” of the text, casting with mimetic desire in mind, facilitating authentic performing by using props and design in the rehearsal room, the actor’s imperative to operate both inside and outside the fiction, and the director’s role in “applying heat” in the rehearsal room are explored in depth. Schlusser also explains how, using Girard, he developed a dramaturgical strategy termed “storm dramaturgy” in order to work with large groups in which multiple narrative threads, images or events are happening simultaneously in any given moment on the stage. He elucidates the effect that this kind of theatre has on the audience. Schlusser concludes that Girard’s theories became a defining feature of the production, profoundly influencing both the dramaturgical and the narrative structures of the project. He further suggests that Girard’s theories could have wider dramaturgical applications.