Exploring Moments of Transcendence in Devised Theatre: Implication for Practice

This thesis concerns moments in theatre where the audience and the actors have an embodied, emotional shift of experience. Previous researchers (for example Dolan, 2005, Fischer-Lichte, 2008, Heim, 2020) claim that because of a phenomenon’s ephemeral nature, its emergence is inexplicable and unmotivated, and meaning is generated unintentionally by the perceiving audience. I would argue, however, that because the moments of transcendence are perceived from the observer's perspective ‘from the outside’, these claims form a rather limited knowledge of how these moments are generated, constructed, and perceived by the ones who create them. This research aims to bridge this gap between the limited academic knowledge and the wealth of experiential knowledge generated by those participating and creating theatre. The research questions establish an original understanding of the phenomenon’s structure and that the moments can be developed intentionally. In this thesis, I construct a formal structure (three-stage model) of pedagogy to create such a phenomenon. The absence of academic practical research instigated various methods to capture the experiences to investigate the many-faceted nature of the phenomenon. This research used the socio-phenomenological approach during the creation of a new performance, Tiger Lady, by my company, Dead Rabbits Theatre. The research consisted of three phenomenological phases. The Phase One (interview phase) involved Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) interviews with the theatre experts; Phase Two (rehearsal phase) involved Stimulated Recall Method (SRM) interviews with actors and recorded observations of the three weeks rehearsal period; and Phase Three (performance phase) contained SRM interviews with ten audience members and actors during two weeks of performances. This novel research argues that the phenomenon can be intentionally constructed through a three-stage process that requires the Compound Incongruity Trigger Event (CITE) of surprise, vastness, and disturbance. It proposes a pedagogy for constructing the model in live events. This research’s significance lies in making the first steps of gathering experiential knowledge and offering the first pedagogical model for constructing and re-creating the phenomenon of moments of transcendence. It also demonstrates the phenomenon’s importance as a transformative and deeply engaging experience in people’s lives.