Comfort - A Chair Balancing Act (in Cabaret Kite)

TitleComfort - Claire Heggen's use of 'protocols' applied to devising with acrobaticsA chair-balancing, slapstick, circus performance performed at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre (BMEC)Devised and performed by Dan Aubin Charles Sturt University May 21 2011The Project: This original ten-minute circus theatre piece opened the performance evening, Cabaret Kite for a sold out public audience of 200 at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre after a short but intensive creative development. Cabaret Kite is an initiative supported by Local Stages, a Regional Arts NSW program to develop community involvement in new creative works. Research Background:This creative work used Claire Heggen's use of 'protocols' in the devising process. Heggen rejects training as an accumulation of skills. She instead insists that the moment you start to work everything is 'already potentially a moment of theatre' (Keith & Murray, 2007, p. 10). This demonstrates a model where training and creativity are not separate phases. Heggen resists the word 'exercise' replacing it with 'protocol' (2007, p 10). Research Contribution: The combination of circus and theatre continue to provide interesting questions and challenges. This creative work is an investigation into the process of improvising and task-based devising with extreme physicality (handstands on stacked chairs). As the performer in this piece, I was able to investigate the relationship between the creative process and training from an experiential perspective using Heggen's 'protocols' as the devising framework. Research significance:This project had effective performance results indicating that the approach of using 'protocols' to engage in the training and creative process concurrently is a model that can be used when devising theatre with extreme physicality. Using this model enabled a deeperconnection between the acrobatics, character and story when compared to processes where the training is separated, as is often the case. References:Keefe, J., & Murray, S. (2007). Physical theatres: A critical reader. New York: Routledge.