IB Diploma Programme Theatre HL (first assessment 2024; current guide). This topic equips the COLLABORATIVE CREATION of original theatre — the syllabus area (60 teaching hours) that culminates in the collaborative project assessment: an ensemble of theatre-makers formulates intentions, examines how intentions are realised in collaboration, and creates original performance work inspired by a starting point. This handout teaches the devising craft — from starting point through ensemble process to performance and evaluation. All worked examples are original.

Must-know for collaborative creation:

A starting point 出发点 is the seed: a photograph, a news item, an object, a poem, a question, a memory — anything the ensemble agrees to interrogate. The craft is interrogation, not illustration: the starting point is asked what it CONTAINS (its facts, its tensions, its silences), what it CONNECTS to (whose story, which structures, which audience), and what it DEMANDS of theatre (why this must be staged, not essayed). From the interrogation comes the intention 创作意图: what this piece is FOR — not a theme (“migration”) but a performative aim (“make the audience feel a border in their bodies”). The intention is written, visible in the rehearsal room, and revisited: every material choice is tested against it, and the intention may be REVISED by the process — the two iterate.

Worked example. Starting point: a pile of confiscated border-crossing objects (shoes, a child's drawing, a phone). The interrogation: the objects are silent (their owners absent), the tension is presence-through-absence, the demand is that the audience handle what the owners cannot carry. Intention: “the audience leaves having held something they could not keep.” Every scene generated must be tested: does it make absence handleable?

Devising generates material in the room rather than interpreting a written text. The generating methods: Image theatre 形象剧场 (ensembles build still images (sculpted bodies) and the images are re-sculpted against the intention; fast, wordless, exposes staging instantly); IMPROVISATION (structured play that generates scenes — with rules that keep the intention in the room: “every improvisation ends with an object left behind”); WRITING IN THE ROOM (monologues, lists, letters generated from the material, then edited by the ensemble); and PHYSICAL/VOCAL COMPOSITION (transferring found material into the body — a rhythm from the objects, a choral list, a repeated gesture). The material accumulates on the wall; the shaping phase selects and orders it against the intention, building the piece's SPINE (its own through-line, topic 01's read now applied to the ensemble's own work).

Worked example, continued. Image theatre generates “the line at the fence”; improvisation generates the guard who cannot stop apologising; writing generates the owner's letters read by strangers. Shaping orders them: the audience enters past the objects; the letters are given to them; the piece ends when every object has been held and put down.

The ensemble 剧团 is structured collaboration, not a friendship: agreed ROLES (facilitator rotates; the scribe keeps the wall; the timekeeper protects the clock), working AGREEMENTS (how decisions happen, how disagreement is voiced, what is said at the end of each session), and FEEDBACK protocols (specific, behavioural, about the work not the person — “the third image repeated the first; cut or change”). The classic collaborative failures have names: the director-in-disguise (one member's vision silently governing), the polite silence (agreement without scrutiny — the enemy of original work) and the workshop loop (generating endlessly, never shaping). The performance 演出 is the test: the audience either receives the intention or not. EVALUATION gathers evidence — what the audience DID (held, put down, kept talking at the door), what worked in performance against intention, what the process taught about collaboration itself — and owns what failed. The reflective weight the marks assign falls here: process and product are evaluated together.

• Starting points interrogated (contains, connects, demands), never illustrated; the intention as a performative aim, written, tested, revised (intentions).
• The generating methods: image theatre, improvisation with rules, writing in the room, physical/vocal composition; material accumulated then shaped into the piece's spine (devising).
• Ensemble structure: rotating roles, agreements, feedback protocols; the three named failures (ensemble).
• Performance as the test of intention; evaluation with audience evidence, process owned alongside product (evaluation).
• The worked border-objects piece: interrogation, intention, generated scenes and shaped order understood (worked).

Boundary notes: the collaborative project is marked on the making, the performance and the evaluation together — the ensemble's reflection carries real weight. All worked examples are original.