Brilliant Theatre-Making at the National: Devising, Collective Creation and the Director’s Brand

This article assesses the health of collective creation within British devised thea-tre in the early part of the twenty-first century. Using the Royal National Theatre as a case study, I argue that while devising has recently enjoyed increased recog-nition and acceptance, this ‘mainstreaming’ has come at the cost of its identifica-tion as a collective practice. Documentation on the creative practices of Théàtre de Complicité, Katie Mitchell and the War Horse (2008) company will demon-strate that devising’s shift from the margins to the mainstream of British theatre has resulted in an increasing separation between an ethos of collectivity and a quest for innovative theatrical product.