A collective or group blog is one ‘where ownership of the blog is a collective enterprise, rather than an individual one’ (Philip & Nicholls 2009, p. 683). I feel the collaborative nature at the core of the blog directly supports and strengthens one of the integral capstones of the devising process itself; the nature of collective creativity:

 

When groups of individuals work together to generate a collective creative product, the interactions among group members often become a more substantial source of creativity than the inner mental processes of any one participating individual (Sawyer & Dezutter 2009, p. 83)

 

As I opted to use a collective creation approach to devising the work, the notion of the collective itself became paramount. It is my belief that reflecting collaboratively on the work supports and strengthens the cohesiveness of the group of participants, thus strengthening the dramatic work itself. 

 

Monica Prendergast (2004) suggests that in a collective ‘we see chorus not as the erasure of identity for the good of the group, but rather as each unique voice adding to the harmonious/cacophonous totality of being’ (p. 141). This statement supports my assertion that in reflecting collectively, we will hear each individual, and simultaneously knit the collective voice of the group.

 

The model employed for this collective blogging drew on work used by Waxman, Bellomo, and Bable of People’s Light Theatre in their ‘Teen Summerstage’ program. This 2009 program utilized a collective blog that was overseen by Sara Waxman as the teacher/facilitator, projected in the rehearsal space at the end of each session, and written collaboratively. Commenting on these blogs, Samantha Bellomo, the company’s director suggested that:

 

The blog… was another mode for communication in the rehearsal room and a tool for the teens to connect via the Internet. Our hope was that this increase in the number and type of exchanges between the teens would develop ensemble, strengthen the connection between the teens and the theatre, and inspire peer to peer dialogue about what they were making in Teen Summerstage. (Bable, Waxman, & Bellomo 2011, p. 228)

 

Bable, Waxman, & Bellomo (2011) suggested that the 2009 iteration of the collective blog was successful for three reasons:

 

1) It elicited a communal engagement of the ensemble;

2) It provided the ability to record a dramaturgy of the project;

3) It made use of the cognitive similarities in making meaning while the teens viewed mediated images and when viewing theatre.

 

As such, I wanted to explore how using a collective blog might foster similar engagement in my participants whilst simultaneously allowing for dramaturgy and reflection.

 

Heathcote describes the importance of reflection as part of issue-based drama as a moment where participants can ‘take a breather’, and examine the work in a cooler manner. She suggests:

 

So as you struggle through, you have to reach a stage that ‘Oh, it feels a bit better now’. That is, for instance, when children reach a point in their struggle where they can say, ‘I could leave it for a bit now. I understand it a bit, enough to know a bit about it.’ (Heathcote 2008, p. 201)

 

She goes on to explain that because drama [of the nature I explored] involves participants moving into situations [or ideas and topics] that pressurize them and causes them to work through a problem, we [facilitators] must understand the need for breaks in order to allow a lessening of the pressure. I therefore provided opportunities for reflective blogging sessions to be held at either the end of each session, or as appropriate, at the end of a section of work, hoping that these sessions would  provide my participants with some time to reflect on the work from a distance.  

 

Although reflective, or process journals have long been used in the process of devising, the literature suggests that they are not always used effectively. O’Toole (2006) suggests that most students don’t understand how to create and structure a reflective journal. He suggests that ‘the automatic response of a beginner to the task is either just to describe what happened in a simplistic narrative of the explicit action, or to dive into unstructured stream-of-consciousness personal feelings about the experience’ (p. 107-108).

 

Philip and Nicholls (2009) go on to explain that such reflection lacks called analytical reflection (how something was done), and evaluative reflection (how well something was done). As such, within this project, I attempted to ensure that the reflective blogging process was more structured, and collective, so that the reflections could  become similarly more structured and refined.

 

Samantha Bellomo writes of the 2009 Teen Summerstage program’s blogging process that ‘[o]ne of the many benefits present in a theatre-making process is that our successes and our failures are not private. They are enacted in full view of our co-creators and our audience, who, through their corporeal response to what they witness, offer immediate feedback.’ 

 

As the blog is co-authored, participants’ thinking is shared and given immediate feedback in the form of the reaction of peers. As the participants viewed the projected blog and discussed what to include to document that day’s work, I hoped  that they would be ever aware of the ‘audience’ of their fellows, and seek to contribute meaningful and rich reflections. 

 

As a result of the rich nature of Web 2.0 applications, and their ability to provide opportunities to post items in a plethora of media forms, the collective blog also provided a unique opportunity to create a digital modellbuch. A modellbuch (model book) is a term borrowed from Brecht, and cited in Kershaw and Nicholson (2011). I intended to use our collective blog much the way Brecht used his modellbuch: as a media-rich means of mapping the progress of the work the participants create. The blog was able to accommodate text, images, embedded video or sound files, as well as links to outside pages and data sources. As such, it served as a modern example of the pasted in photos and notes with explanatory instructions Brecht employed. 

 

The participants were also given the chance to decide how the work should be documented, and what should be included within their collaborative reflection sessions, and were given access so that they could blog at home should inspiration strike when they were away from the rehearsal space. 

 

The modellbuch also served as a means of evaluating the work as the participants went along. Oddey (1996) suggests that ‘[a] [devising] company has to find a way to monitor the process in relation to the developing product in order to evaluate the progress of the work’ (p. 121). In this way, the modellbuch lays out the decisions and fragments the participants have made and can serve as a visual representation of the ‘bits’ that can later be selected for the final work. Also, it serves as a means of group decision-making, as the participants’ ideas begin to converge as one. 

 

It is my assertion that a collective blog, functioning as a modellbuch helps to accomplish this goal. By affording collective responsibility for the dramaturgy of the work, the participants are more able to track and select ideas for later use. 

 

The selection of the type of blog used became very important in allowing the facilities for the creation of the media-rich moddellbuch. Borrowing from Philip & Nicholls’s (2009) evaluation of several online blogging tools, I conducted my own evaluation in order to determine which platform I wanted to use. After examining several platforms including Blogger, Wordpress, Wiki, and Edublogs, I decided to use Edublogs. Although most of the platforms I looked at allowed for the attachment of text, pdf, images, as well as the embedding of audio and video files, Edublogs’ privacy and authoring permissions, as well as the capacity to create a ‘class blog’ (the collective blog) as well as individual blogs that are attached to the class blog, swayed my decision.

 

The collaborative (or class) blog was accessible only by myself and the participants of the project. The chosen platform allowed the authoring permissions to be set so that each participant could view and comment on posts in the collective blog, but could not edit or delete each other’s contributions. The collective blog, YT Modellbuch 2018, has been coded as (M.B. Date), with the date being the date of the entry being referenced.