The interaction of a theatre rehearsal : Professional practices in a rehearsal process from script to performance

This thesis builds on three studies that explore a professional rehearsal process as situated interaction and as a longitudinal process. Primarily, the thesis contributes to the area of interactional linguistics, but it also seeks to contribute new knowledge to theatre studies. The empirical focus is on the participants’ interaction during the rehearsal process and how the performance develops procedurally over time. The main questions driving this research are: 1) What interactive, professional practices do the participants engage in during the rehearsal process, and in what way? 2) How is the script coordinated with other multimodal resources in the development from written text to performance? The theory and method used for this work is multimodal interaction analysis, that is, Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) developed towards multimodal analysis of verbal and non-verbal resources in communication. The data collection was carried out at Riksteatern, Sweden’s largest touring theatre, where Effekten, by Lucy Prebble (2013), had its Swedish premiere in the fall of 2015. I followed rehearsals of a selection of five scenes from the first rehearsal day to opening night. The data consist of field notes, as well as video recordings of a total of 85 hours, filmed mainly with three cameras. In addition, the data include approximately four hours of audio recordings. The three studies focus on different practices involved in the theatrical rehearsal process. Study I follows the participants as they laminate (Goodwin 2018) eight lines in a scene where the characters are quarrelling. The aim is to document longitudinally how the actors develop, use and coordinate these and other multimodal resources in different phases of the rehearsal process. Study II focuses on one line in the script, with the aim of uncovering how the participants develop the performance by framing (Goffman 1974) various theatrical contexts in situated interactions and over time. Study III focuses on how the participants at the end of the rehearsal process create timing in transitions between rehearsed scenes by developing and using cues. The results show that, and how, rehearsing is a longitudinal process of collaborative creativity, in which the production team together, and moment by moment, develop the performance. Multimodal resources are used in different ways at different points in the process, and there is a shared authorship behind the theatrical performance. The results challenge previous research on theatre and theatre work, in which rehearsing has often been described as an asymmetric interaction between a director and an ensemble. Linguists’ interest in theatre has mainly focused on written scripts, also when the subject has been the relationship between scripts and performances. This thesis argues that the situated and collaborative process of rehearsing should be considered in order to understand the relationship between scripts and performances.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.