Working with source material

I’m currently preparing a “prac” session on using source material for Theatre Works​ Directors Lab next week.

A bunch of theatre directors in a room and me giving them tasks ! Theatre directors, that’s their bag right?

But I’m going to use some of our projects to explore the following aspects of using source material…

1. Collaboration/portraits – whose autonomy?  Looking at working with Restless Dance Theatre on “Necessary Games” and “To Look Away”
2. Ethics of using someone’s story – keeping your self implicit and culpable in the discussion.  Looking at Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure and when using someone’s story is compounded by making a film about someone who is using someone else’s story.    
3. Noone’s story, everyone’s experience.  Looking at 52 Tuesdays and how we critiqued a character choice while being bound to the same self-created rules. 
4. Fiction and non fiction – writing the “truth”  Thinking about the use of someone’s archival footage in Life in Movement and Sam Klemke’s Time Machine and us using it to speak our viewpoint as well as how we might consider fictionalising (or being playful with) some stories in the most unusual and enjoyable ways. 

It’s going to be fast and furious and quite daunting with all those directors in a room…but fun too. I don’t think i can recall a room of directors before – is there a term for a group of directors?  A gaggle? A pod?