ABSTRACT
Playbuilding is a dramatic art form with its own established set of structural principles which require students collectively to become the playwrights, directors, actors, designers, and critics of their ensemble work. The playbuilt or devised work is created from scratch. It is an original work derived in the main from those who participate in the creation of it. These participants collaborate to fashion out a play through experimenting and critically shaping a whole piece of dramatic art. The starting points and creative processes used in playbuilding are varied, experimental and because they result from collaborative art making, playbuilt works are by nature, multiple in perspective, multi-layered in nature and multi-vocal in the sense that they represent a collective composition of stories, ideas and images drawn from the particular group of devisers. There is not one preferred way or approach taken to playbuilding in schools nor in theatre companies that create devised theatre.
