Encountering Ensemble ed. by John Britton (review)

John Britton’s new edited volume Encountering Ensemble explores and assesses both the historical and practical elements of forming a theatrical performance ensemble. Central to the book’s investigation is how to define it—that sense of “ensemble-ness” sometimes felt among collaborators (4). He acknowledges in the introduction that while the question may not have an answer, the exploration is a worthy goal. Much like an ensemble’s emphasis on process over product, the book’s act of exploration remains central to the end goal. In that sense, the book very much mirrors the subject it seeks to explore. Britton is the founder and artistic director of DUENDE, an ensemble-based performance group in the UK. The contributors he assembles come from a mix of academic and practical backgrounds, which gives the book a strong interplay of theory and practice. The focus here, however, is heavily weighted to Western ensemble histories and practical case studies from UK- and US-based urban ensembles, which may limit the book’s scope.

The book is divided into three parts: the first includes essays about ensembles formed around the work of well-known practitioners like Vsevold Meyerhold, Michael Chekhov, and Bertolt Brecht; the second takes up issues in contemporary ensemble formation in groups like RedCape Theatre in the UK and the TEAM and Elevator Repair Service (ERS) in New York City; the third details practical approaches to training from Britton, Meyerhold, and Jacques Lecoq. Peppered throughout the second and third parts are “Snapshots”—brief manifestos about contemporary ensemble practice that include historical perspectives, advice, and personal reflection.

Britton uses the introduction to consider the many different elements comprising ensemble work, including the longevity of a group’s work together, a shared sensibility of aesthetic, organizational structure, commitment to training as a group rather than promoting any one individual, and the specific ethics of group work. This list of ensemble attributes lays the terrain for the subsequent essay topics. Part 1 is comprised of historical perspectives on European ensemble-building. Many of the essays in this section, like Amy Skinner’s work on Meyerhold, weave history, theory, and practice together into one seamless narrative. Skinner’s essay takes Meyerhold’s 1926 production of The Government Inspector as a case study that both instructs in Meyerhold’s biomechanics technique while simultaneously theorizing the relationship between an individual and the group in this form of ensemble-devising. Additionally, Bryan Brown explains the employment of studiinost—the “spirit of the studio”—in Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Franc Chamberlain writes about Michael Chekhov, nephew to playwright Anton and a member of MAT, and his theories of evolving emotional openness within an ensemble, as expressed in Chekhov’s 1953 publication To the Actor. Jonathan Pitches clarifies the ways in which Theodore Komisarjevsky introduced and solidified Russian and French ensemble-building techniques in England during his time there as a teacher and director. Mark Evans writes of how French ensemble-training techniques evolved throughout generations of work from Jacques Copeau, Michel Saint-Denis, and Lecoq. And David Barnett uses Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble to theorize the conscious politics of an ensemble’s relationship between individual and society.

Part 2 explores the work of contemporary ensembles, mostly from the UK and United States. Like the work in part 1, these essays also weave historical perspective into lessons learned in the rehearsal room. Rebecca Loukes writes beautifully about RedCape Theatre’s 2008 production of The Idiot Colony for the Edinburgh Fringe Fesitval. The three collaborators, Loukes included, had each adopted different training methodologies prior to their collaboration; their work together meant reconciling those training histories in the rehearsal room. Loukes refers to their respective techniques as training “lineages” and asks “if it was both possible and appropriate to see our individual training as ‘cultures’ and to explore the ways that they both collide and align through selected intercultural theories” (97). These lineages are evident throughout the section as Adam Ledger writes about Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company, a UK-based ensemble that devises its own work...