Re-formed – Drama: Shock Therapy Arts – devising processes

Shock Therapy Arts

Jane McDavitt:

The following podcast is brought to you by the Creative Arts team from Secondary Curriculum, the Curriculum Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. The creative arts curriculum team recognises the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live here on Darug country and on all the lands on which you are listening today, we pay respects to elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in New South Wales achieves their potential through education.

Tahnae Luke:

founded on the Gold Coast in: 2015

Their vision is to create transformative arts experiences through telling stories that explore what it is to be human: provocative, challenging, uplifting, impactful. They collaborate with others, driven by their epic values to engage, provoke, inspire, and connect, and this results in creating arts experiences that have positive social, economic, environmental, and cultural impact.

It is an absolute delight to be joined by them today to discuss their devising process. Hello, Sam and Hayden. Welcome to Creative Cast.

Hayden Jones:

Tahnae, thank you so much for having us. We're thrilled to be with you.

Tahnae Luke:

Let's jump straight in and have a look at how you have structured your company to include collaboration and innovation. Why is this approach so important to you?

Sam Foster:

Well, look, I think it starts at the beginning. I mean; to give you a very brief history, we started this company as a vehicle for ourselves essentially 10 years ago now. We were both actors for hire or actors, and you know, directors and, and working in the industry as freelance artists. And we both got to the point where we'd worked for a lot of other companies and toured schools extensively. And when we came together to, the first production we did was a ZEAL THEATRE production, actually. We put together a production of the Apology under Stefo Nantsou’s guidance and we were sort of touring as a Queensland arm of ZEAL for many years prior to that. And we, we basically went, we wanna start our own thing and create our own work. And at that point, Stefo was actually one of the ones who suggested, well, you should probably brand yourself as your own entity and create your own idea. And you know, you don't just have to be a proxy of ZEAL.

So, we kind of started the company and we only ever really saw it as a vision for ourselves to work. We went, we wanna work, we don't wanna sit around and wait for the phone to ring and wait for someone else to give us an opportunity. We wanna go out there and create stuff and share it. And we'd got to a point in our career, where we'd had enough experience and enough runs on the board where we felt ready to do that. And so, we started the company just with this vision of providing ourselves quite selfishly with opportunities to work and provide employment for ourselves. And then it quite quickly, it evolved into something bigger than that where we then went, oh, well, we're now in a position where we can bring in other artists to work with us to achieve our goals.

Because as anyone who's worked in the arts knows you can't do it alone, and there are so many various elements that require a whole bunch of other people with skills that we don't have, that, whether that's administrative skills or technical skills or creative ideas, other aspects of putting a show together or touring other actors, writers. There's a massive kind of network and, you can't do it all. So, we very quickly realised that in order to achieve what we wanted to achieve, we were gonna need to collaborate with other people and that this vehicle that we created could be an opportunity for other people to work and to express their own creative, ideas and put them out into the world.

And yeah, now it's evolved into that much more so, where, where we have, 4 permanent staff and a bunch of, regular artists and creatives that collaborate with us. We've got a board that come from a very diverse background of skills, and all of that feeds into us being able to kind of continue to do what we do and improve what we put out into the world.

Hayden Jones:

And I think where those, other artists plug in with the, their collaboration really sort of depends on the work at what phase they come in. Because our works are so varied. You know, we do a lot of issue-based theatre shows in high schools, but we've done, you know, large scale performance installation works at music festivals, for examples. It's about creating moments and those other creatives are, you know, a vital, part of, of how those moments are shaped and the story that we're all telling together. We have to sort of share a vision for what, what that story is and what each moment in that story is.

Tahnae Luke:

And so that collaboration also then supports this philosophy of epic values that was mentioned earlier. Could you elaborate a little bit more on what do you actually mean by epic values being part of your philosophy?

Hayden Jones:

Yeah, well, it's not a reference to Epic theatre, although we do a lot of, what you could call Epic Theatre. That's an acronym for us, of what, what's really important to us and the, those serve as kind of, you know, the beacons for us when we're making the work to check in with and make sure it sort of aligns with our values and that we're making work that is authentic to that. So, it stands for Engage, Provoke, Inspire and Connect. So, engage, you know, first and foremost, a show, it doesn't matter how important the subject matter is or how interesting the process is, the end result needs to be engaging for people. And I would say that's especially important in an environment like when you're doing issue-based work for secondary schools.

At the end of the day, if the kids aren't engaged with what you're doing, then the rest doesn't mean anything. So, although we're not in the business of creating pure entertainment, it has to be a good show, has to be an engaging story, engaging characters. You know, we use comedy, we use a lot of different conventions. It has to be fascinating to watch, you know, just the mechanics of how we execute the performance.

Sam Foster:

Yeah. And that people might think, oh, E, they must mean entertaining. Must be one of the things. But we talked a lot in creating this value system where we went, well, it's not always purely entertainment. There are many instances where entertainment is not the goal actually, and so a more appropriate fitting word that covers everything we ever do is engagement. We have to engage in the process as artists making it, and the audience has to engage with what they're experiencing.

Hayden Jones:

And then I would say, you know, if we go to provoke, provoke is an interesting word, you know, for us it's not about being just provocative for the sake of being provocative. It's more like one, now that we've got you engaged, how are we challenging you to reflect and analyse and interrogate certain ideas and interrogate your existing opinions. We always try and respect the intelligence of the audience and just present something that is complex and has multiple points of view, and then you're provoking people to reflect upon that, you know, in their own time, in their own way.

Inspire: I think there's a couple of ways that this can happen. You know, a young performer is inspired by watching us perform and, and think, oh, that was really great, and they feel inspired by that. I also think in the narratives we tell; we want to challenge people. We tackle things that are often tricky or often, you know, sensitive territory, tough things, complex things to sort of unpack and tell a story about. But ultimately we wanna leave people with… either kind of motivated to go out and make a change in the world or… with a sense of hopefulness, you know, that they can look at an issue and although the issue itself might be disturbing or troubling or, you know, just something that's really like sort of current and relevant challenge of our times, that they leave with a sense of hope and feeling inspired and that in some way that that show has a sort of an echo long after we've left that that's our ultimate hope.

Sam Foster:

Yeah, and I would add to that, that inspiration comes from a lot of different places and we have to stay inspired to keep doing what we do.

And then I think the fact that that connects to, we often talk about the why. Why are we making this show? Why now? Why this story? And that, for me, comes from inspiration. You have to be inspired, and if you go, ‘I feel totally inspired’, that we have to share this story right now, there's an urgency to that. It has to come out. Well, you have to do this. There's many different ways and reasons why you can be inspired to do something, but if there's no inspiration, then you're never gonna get out of bed and bothered doing it. It's too hard.

Hayden Jones:

And the basis for that, I guess is our, our strong belief that, idealistic belief that theatre can change the world, that art can change the world, you know, and give people a way to find meaning in their life. Like we genuinely believe that. And if that wasn't there, then you wouldn't sustain in it.

Sam Foster:

And the last letter in the acronym C, it stands for connect and for us that connection, again, a bit like we were talking, it sort of relates to we have to be connected to what we're making. We have to be connected to the themes and the ideas, and passionately and intimately feel that it's an important thing to share.

And theatre, unlike a lot of art forms, has this. It's a connecting point. It's a conduit for society and groups of people to gather to come together. It's the most ancient form of community in the sense that in order to create community for thousands and thousands of years in every culture around the world, people have gathered together to connect over stories.

We see what we're doing as just a continuation of that very, very long ancient thread of culture. Connecting people, connecting in a community to share ideas, to understand who they are, to understand why we do what we do, to improve our sense of wellbeing as a community. And theatre to this day, when a group of strangers gather in a space and they sit down and they watch a story we're doing that, we're doing, yeah. It's a bit different, we're not sitting around a campfire in the middle of the bush or whatever. We're sitting in these nice plush seats in a theatre, but we're still connecting. We're still coming together. We're connecting with a story. We're connecting with each other. So that's our values. They're our epic values.

Hayden Jones:

That's our TED talk on values. Yeah.

Tahnae Luke:

It is so clear that in your work that these values heavily impact each of your performances as your shows use those multi-discipline techniques. I've seen you use multimedia, film, transformational acting, and props, as well as a variety of styles such as verbatim, Epic Theatre or physical theatre. There's just so many. How does playing with those techniques and styles excite you?

Sam Foster:

It starts with the story to be honest. We don't have any particular one style that we go, we only make work in this style, So, we always start with the theme or the issue or the story that we wanna tell, and then from there we start to go, what form could we use to tell that…to best tell that story? What form should it take? There are a couple of exceptions to that where we might have an idea. You know, a recent play that we've just been finishing off is, we sort of knew from the beginning that we wanted to create something in an Absurdist kind of style, so that was in the back of our head as we were making it.

Hayden Jones:

Again, that came from the subject matter really. It's quite an existential concept, and so that style kind of fit. Setting is a, is a consideration for us as well. You know, in terms of space and style. Like if we know something's gonna go into a school environment, you know, we'll start with what are the givens, you know, and we kind of work from there.

You know, if we're making a big, a large-scale work for a music festival, you know, how do we still engage, provoke, inspire, and connect in that massive space. In an open field with, you know, in that is a transient space with tens of thousands of people moving around who aren't gonna sit down and watch a narrative.

And, and we might start with a theme or an issue about, you know, environmentalism or destruction, whatever, but we still have to hit those points, and we still want people to walk past and go…and it pulls their attention…and they go, ‘Whoa, that's cool!’ And they get something out of it or wanna engage with it.

Sam Foster:

Yeah, So, the form then we start having discussions about the form it should take, what's the most appropriate form for that story and what's gonna make it land in the best, in the context of all of those parameters that we're working within.

Tahnae Luke:

So, you've just touched on some of this devising process that you go through. So, you're talking about it, starting with an idea, a concept. What are the next steps that you take when you are coming up with an idea in that devising process?

Sam Foster:

Usually, we spend a lot of time together running the business and we still perform the shows as well as write and direct, even the ones we're not in. So, we spend a lot of time in our company van, driving around from gig to gig, and usually starts with a. ‘Hey, do you reckon this would be a good idea?’ or we'd start just riffing. We'd just start talking back and forth about an idea or a theme or something comes up at a school or someone mentioned something, or one of us has seen a show or a TV series or a film, and we're like, oh, there's this great thing.

And so, we get inspired by something. We start a conversation, and then if that conversation keeps going for a period of time, we tend to go, ‘I think that's got legs. I think there's something in that’, because if it's grabbed our interest and our attention and we can't stop thinking about it and can't stop talking about it. For me at least, I don't know, and I'm sure Hayden is probably the same, it's a bit of a clue to go. I think we're onto something here. So, then at that point we'll go, alright, let's start to dig into this further. And of course there's other factors, like we know if we wanna do a new show for our education program or we've been given a commission for a festival or whatever. And so, we might have a deadline, and we go, what are we gonna make something about? But once we decide that theme, that idea is what we wanna explore, we then start this deep-dive process of research, and we just start finding as many references, and that can include specific research into the theme or historical references. It could also be research into like, this is where form and style kind of merge in, where we'll read or watch other pieces of art and films and things that sort of are doing something in a similar vein or that might feed into the work just as a reference, as a bit of an inspiration and so we'll just start with a document.

Hayden Jones:

Yeah, just a brain-dump document, or anywhere where we can just dump anything, because you know, we're like bower birds or treasure hunters, where we try and go and open-minded and just learn as much about the subject matter as we can and anything that we think might be interesting or a good theatrical moment, you know, oh, that's a good idea for a scene. Anything.

Sam Foster:

Or a photo, yeah

Hayden Jones:

Cause at the end of the day it has to, yeah, you know, it has to work in a show. Anything. Yeah, we just put it in there. Dunno where it's gonna fit in, but that caught my attention.

Sam Foster:

So, this document becomes this bible really for any work that we're making. We've got a bunch of these over the years of the different projects we've worked on, and you know, it'd be quite interesting to look back at some of them 'cause they're just these random dump of ideas and like say there's images, video links, website links, specific bits of narrative, quotes from books, other play references, everything.

So, we just look for anything that we think might be interesting and often at that time there's a bit of courage and bravery that you have to go, I don't know how this is gonna make its way into the finished product of this play or this work that we're making, but it's interesting and it might make its way in the form of a character. It might make its way into the form of a design element in the show. It might make its way into the show in a music reference where we go, there's something about the tone of that sound that, might make its way into the soundscape that we use in the piece. So, it literally can be anything.

Hayden Jones:

But it's more about how you remix things. You're taking these, you know, disparate ideas and pieces, and you are remixing it into something that is new and feels fresh. And so that's how, that's how we do it. And then we, we've got it all there. We can go through, and we'll find that like a story starts to emerge, or a structure. Like with our show, Undertow, we wanted to talk about mental health, and it's such a broad topic. It's like, well, how do you capture that in one character without just focusing on one particular kind of ailment? You know. And it's like, well, okay, we need multiple protagonists. So, that leads us to a choice of structure to do, like a tandem narrative with multiple protagonists. So, deciding on a structure for the piece is a really important next step.

Sam Foster:

Yeah, and that usually comes, that and the forms sort of come together at the same time as we're collecting all of this information and raw data about the theme that we are interested in, we start thinking, ‘What's the narrative?’ Is it a narrative structure? What narrative structure is it? What styles should we lean into? What form should it lean into? All of that stuff starts to emerge.

The next thing we tend to do is like a timeline, or a just a bullet point, where we map out the beats of action of the whole piece. So we go, what's the first thing that we know? What's the first thing that happens? And then what happens? Or as a result of that, what's the next thing that happens? And then what's the next thing that happens as a result of that? And then what's the conflict and why does that change the story?

So, we start to then create this. We've got a giant whiteboard in our office, and we just start to put the, the show in this kind of, almost like, I guess how a filmmaker would storyboard a show actually, when I think about it, It's very similar to that process where they use visual images and they'll map out the show in a series of storyboard images. We kind of do that in beats of action where we go, this is where we meet that character. This is where the conflict happens. This is where the resolution happens. And as we do that, we start to kind of, see is it a traditional three act structure? What kind of form does it take? And we start to move things around and we go, I think that needs to happen earlier. I think we need to find that out earlier about that character. Or we need to plant the seed for that at the beginning in the first act so that in the third act there's a payoff. So, all of that stuff, when you've got it sort of laid out in this form, we find that really useful to be able to move things around.

Hayden Jones:

I think this is a way, particularly when we're working with narrative, a way for us to have a sort of a blueprint or, you know, just those barriers that that kind of keep it driving in a certain direction that is thought out. And of course, that still leaves room for discovery and play.

Sam Foster:

Yeah. So, once we've done that. Once we've got that map, that blueprint, then we start scripting, then we start writing. So, then we'll go, alright, if that beat…we'll look at that beat and then we'll go, is that one scene? Is that 2 scenes? Is that 3 scenes?

So, then we'll start to kind of, from the blueprint, we'll work out exactly how many scenes there might be. And so, if we've decided that there's, for example, a 3-act structure, we start to break down how many scenes are in each act. Where do the beats of action that we've laid out in the blueprint, where do they, in which scenes do they fit specifically? And then we have sometimes then written a bullet point version of the scene. So, we'll go scene, act one, scene one, and we'll just go, this happens, that happens, this happens, that person enters this, that. And so, it won't even be dialogue or anything, it'll just be what actually happens in the scene., and then we go on.

And so, then we'll have that, which is a bit more, of a more detailed version of that blueprint with a little bit more meat on the bone. And then we go away and we…'cause we co-write a lot of the time…we'll go, all right, you write that script scene, I'll write scene 2, you write scene 3, and we go away and we write it. We write, start writing the dialogues and the characters. And then we swap over, and we get proofread, each other's work, and we go, ‘Oh, I liked that bit, and what about this?’ And so, then we'll have a second set of eyes on the idea. And of course, this is informed…we decide on the blueprint and the beats of action together. We're completely united on that.

And I think this is where we're unique and we've done this not only with ourselves, but when we co-wrote Crossing the Divide with Benjin Maza, who's an amazing First Nations artist in his own right, and we asked him to co-write that work with us, and we did the same thing. We all decided on the whole blueprint of the show, and then we all went away and the 3 of us all wrote different scenes. And so, what you get is this kind of unique voice and you start giving notes and feedback to each other's writing, and anything that gets missed or any holes or any dramaturgical problems, you can kind of cover it because you're like, oh yeah, right, I thought that was obvious.

Hayden Jones:

Yeah. We'll find links to actually, ‘I worked that link into this earlier scene that I wrote’, so it ties together. So, actually in the end result, we've all worked on each scene and it becomes, it becomes more, more muddy as to whose actual scene it is. We all share ownership.

And, where the devising kind of works its way in for us. I mean, we've made shows together where the script was only ever a bullet point beat sheet, and then we improvised from that. But within a scripted show, often that's how we'll do it. We'll go actually, let's create that scene on the floor, but we know what marks it has to hit and then the actors can play and the actors might make offers that are even better or funnier and you keep it. And there's been a lot of sequences we've made like that. We made a kids show where we predominantly worked in that way. Where there would be structured improvisations, not just free rambling, but this is a structure, improvise within that. We do a bunch of different versions of it, and we sit there and writing down, you know, recording it, and writing down what was good about that run. And then we'll go home that night and we'll do a Frankenstein of all the best bits. And we go, that's now a scripted scene that we can bring in tomorrow and give it to the actors and go, cool, learn that. It came from you, but now it's set and we'll learn that version.

Sam Foster:

We have also done the other way or slightly different variation, where we'll draft a scene, or we'll draft the whole script and we'll go ‘cool’. We'll do multiple drafts, and we'll get the script to a certain point. And then what's unique about us is because we're not only writers, we're makers as well, so we write the thing and we direct it and perform it. What that allows us to do, and where I think this is a bit different to how other companies might work, 'cause the writer then hands it over to a director and a bunch of actors to bring that to life. We take that script, as developed as it can be, where we get to a point where we go, ‘I think that's as good as it can get for now’. We then get on the floor, and as we start moving that script and we start bringing those characters to life, other things emerge and we go, this feels too wordy. I feel like I don't need to say that line. I feel like I can do that with a look to the audience and then we'll go, yeah, agree and we'll go, ‘cut’. We just cut the line and then we'll go, I feel like what we thought was obvious, isn't obvious, and maybe we need to add a line to make that a little bit more clear, or this transition is not working, it needs something to bridge that gap.

And so, then when you get on the floor, we start making these edits in real-time very quickly. Like we just go ‘Nah! It’s not working. Cut it.’ We're not attached to the script at all. So, like we're constantly tweaking and adding or, and little things too. So, the process never really ends.

Hayden Jones:

Yeah. Every time you do a theatre show, is an opportunity to try and get it closer to the mark or further realise what it is kind of destined to be.

Tahnae Luke:

It sounds like such a fun, rewarding, and quite a unique process that you've been using throughout all of your performances. I'm gonna challenge you now to have a think, if you could go back to your teenage self, who was devising a performance at school, what advice would you give yourselves?

Hayden Jones:

Think about your unique voice. I think before you can make a work. It's like being a songwriter. It's like you have to know what you wanna kind of talk about and put into the world. Which is a really exciting, you know, empowering thing to go, I can have a voice this way through my art and put it out there for people to consume and have their own thoughts and feelings about. But I think you have to have a certain sense of yourself. You know, none of us are…are finished products, we're all works in progress, but, you know, you have to have a sense of some of your, I guess, core values or thoughts, or even if you're just exploring that you, that the work could be about that. But you, I guess you have to know what you wanna talk about or what questions you want to ask. And then I think it's about being open, being playful, being willing to experiment, and being willing to fail publicly. I think there's a lot of great artists that aren't willing to fail publicly, and they, as a result, they never share their work with anybody. And they might be creative geniuses, but they don't get their work outta their basement, and I think that's really important. You're better off making something that is full of problems and imperfect and putting it in the world than having a masterpiece that no one ever sees.

Sam Foster:

Yeah. For me, it's really simple. The simple advice is don't expect it to be perfect on the first draft or the first time you get up and do something. I think a lot of young people we see, their creativity is stifled, and they're restricted to even try, because the expectation that they place on themself is that the first version of that is meant to be the penultimate version that's meant to be this award-winning, you know, amazing piece of work. We've been doing this for 20 plus years, and the first I can tell you the first draft of any script you write is not the final product, and it's quite often not very good. But there's the bones of an idea in there that we can tease out and flesh out and make into something that we're proud of.

So, we just trust that process now. We know that that's the case. You just gotta start somewhere. Start with one page of dialogue. Start with one scene. Don't worry about writing the whole play. Just have you got an idea? You just need a starting point, and you don't need the whole thing fully formed in this perfect structure from the outset.

Hayden Jones:

Well, that's…well that’s why you have to trust the process. It's impossible to know what it's gonna end up being. But you might have an idea of what the finished product will be, but you can't possibly know because the, that's informed by the process and you don’t know what's going to come up.

Tahnae Luke:

That's great advice and I really hope that if there are students listening that they're hearing that, ‘trust the process’, because that is fantastic for them to kind of understand that. So now looking forward towards your future self, what excites you most about the future of Shock Therapy Arts?

Sam Foster:

I'm excited 'cause I can see, a potential where I think, you know, Shock Therapy is in our DNA. So much of us, as people, is in the company, is in the ethos of why we do what we do. It's in the work itself. That's not gonna change. That will always be the case. As long as we're involved in the company, that will always be the case.

But what excites me is that more and more we're bringing in these new artists with fresh ideas. We've just cast a new actor in one of our shows who's fresh. It's her first professional job and to be able to provide that opportunity for her to kind of express herself creatively, through our vehicle that we've created, that's really rewarding. Of course, it's rewarding for us to make work ourselves, but it's equally rewarding to see other people be able to have an opportunity to put their stuff out in the world. And if we can continue to do that into the future, that's quite an exciting prospect for me.

Hayden Jones:

Yeah, fully, and…and I think being excited, like I'm excited about the shows we haven't made yet. That next opportunity to try and make something that's even better or that might stay with somebody, you know, there's nothing more rewarding than having somebody come up to you and say that they were impacted by something that you made. You know.

Sam Foster:

So, I think we're drawn to, if something excites us and if it scares us, the more I get into my career, if I go, ‘That kind of terrifies me. I've never done that, but I'm really interested to try it’, I wanna challenge myself to kind of lean into that, that thing that scares me, and to try something new. So, I think there's a lot of things we haven't done that would be exciting to explore.

Tahnae Luke:

Thank you so much for joining me today, Sam and Hayden. You have created such inspiring and powerful work and now, especially after hearing about your philosophy and more about your process, it's only made me love your work even more. So excited to see what you're doing next and all these possibilities that you've just talked about. So, thanks again.

For more conversations, check out Creative Cast and be inspired every listen.

Jane McDavitt:

This podcast was brought to you by the Creative Arts team from Secondary Curriculum, the Curriculum Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. Get involved in the conversation by joining our statewide staff room through the link in the show notes, or email Jane McDavitt at CreativeArts7-12@det.nsw.edu au.

The music for this podcast was composed by Creative Arts advisor, Alex Manton.