Not Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process

Abstract

GAY MCAULEY, NOT MAGIC BUT WORK: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF A REHEARSAL PROCESS (MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012)'Your book is my legacy.' So said production manager Liam Fraser when talking to Gay McAuley about the ephemerality of work in the theatre and the lack of time for reflection upon it as theatre-workers inevitably move quickly on to their next gig/production (138). This book represents more, though, than a legacy of the work carried out by a talented team at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre when they created the premiere production of Michael Gow's play, Toy Symphony, directed by Neil Armfield (2007). This, the first ever full-length ethnographic account of a theatre rehearsal, Is also, in its way, McAuley's own legacy to a discipline - Rehearsal Studies - which she pioneered, and it isa beautifully written, highly engaging and carefully theorised contribution.McAuley turns to a favourite quote - it also graces an earlier article - for her title. Bertolt Brecht's poem'The Curtains'exhorts us to rememberthat theatre-making is'not magic but work, my friends'. McAuley rightly stresses that the 'magic' of performance is the result of many weeks or months of intensive, highly focused, repetitive and detailed thought and work. In this light, the endeavours of the director and actors (and also, to a certain extent, the playwright) in rehearsal perhaps do actually share some of the same traits as the conjuror's 'magic', where tiny movements and barely perceptible adjustments, practised, developed and repeated over a long period coalesce and become the 'magic' - the work that conceals itself before its audience. And it Is this work that she painstakingly uncovers for us in this account.Other performance studies scholars - Kate Rossmanlth's work is important here - have written compellingly about rehearsal, drawing on ethnographic method to do so, but none has yet delivered a full-length account. A few select ethnographers have written monographs on aesthetic performance (Paul Atkinson's Everyday Arios on the Welsh National Opera; Helena Wulff on the world of dance in Ballet Across Borders), but none has examined in detail a single full production from rehearsal to production, and this is the great strength of McAuley's account.McAuley opens her book with a section on 'Writing about rehearsal', in which she sets the scene for us in terms of the history of the activity itself, the nature of contemporary accounts by such 'insiders' as directors and actors who have written about their own experience, and she lays out the theoretical territory that informs her work, namely ethnography and, In particular, Clifford Geertz's notion of 'thick description' (description that not only describes something, but elaborates what it means in its social and cultural context) and 'interaction ritual' as developed by Erving Goffmann and, later, Randall Collins.The book itself is then divided into two parts: 'The Toy Symphony Rehearsals' and 'Reflections After the Event'. This choice allows McAuley to 'achieve an appropriate balance between detailed description of the daily work practices and commentary on the larger social and cultural processes within which they are located and to which they contribute' (28). Part One is a chronological account of the rehearsal process from the first day of rehearsal, concluding with the last performance some twelve weeks later. Part Two is comprised of four essays which reflect on fact and fiction in the play and rehearsal; the director, playwright and lead actor as 'authors' of the play; the director's process; and a theoretical coda chapter which applies interaction ritual theory to the study of rehearsal.Toy Symphony was Gow's first play in well over a decade; this is relevant because his play centres on a playwright who has experienced long-term writer's block since having been accused of stealing the idea for a previous play - a scenario that did indeed happen to Gow with his 1994 play, Sweet Phoebe. …

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