The significance of Barney Simon's theatre-making methodology and his influence on how and why I make theatre: an auto-ethnographic practice as research

Abstract

In this autoethnographic Practice as Research (PaR) I will reflect on the significance of Barney Simon’s theatre-making method as a primary influence in my body of work asking how and why it is still useful today. Specifically, I will reflect on the devising process of the play Batsamai in which I applied my embodied knowledge of Barney Simon’s play-making as a ‘test-site’ for my research question. By structuring his methodology into six distinct organic stages: (sensitisation; gossip; research; biography; improvisation; writing); and weaving present (Batsamai: 2013) and past (devising Simon’s Score Me the Ages: 1989) I will argue Simon’s methodology as a rigorous and therefore useful South African theatre-making tradition; and I will advocate the pedagogical and theatre-making uses, with particular focus on teaching play-making as well as some acting-teaching benefits. I will argue that useful methodologies evolve – as interpreted and used by others besides the ‘originator’; that in essence my record (this document) and use of Simon’s methods is interpretative and therefore a record of my methodology with Simon acknowledged as primary source; and that if students who devised Batsamai use what they learnt (their embodied knowledge) the methods will evolve further. I will use these arguments to demonstrate Simon’s methods as a dynamic force for contemporary South African theatre; and to examine the value of embodied knowledge in enriching contemporary practices. In my own methodology I will explore three core creative impulses (the personal, archive and loss); reflecting on how these manifested in Batsamai, and in a sample of my body of work. I will apply Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003) as a theoretical framework to deepen my exploration. Besides literature on Simon and related theories I will refer to my Batsamai rehearsal journal, student interviews and a Score Me the Ages journal.