From Label to Method: Questionnaire-led Devising and DV8’s Performer as Thinker in Drama Training

This article argues that a key inheritance from German Tanztheater to British physical theatre is methodological rather than stylistic: a devising logic that treats the performer as a thinking subject and uses individuality as compositional material. It re-reads DV8 Physical Theatre through this lineage, emphasising risk and performer authorship as rehearsal principles rather than reducing DV8 to a hybrid genre label. The article then addresses a persistent reception problem in mainland China, where DV8 has often been classified as ‘dance theatre’ or ‘modern dance’, encouraging work-centred interpretation of recordings while marginalising rehearsal method. In response, it proposes a practice-led model of questionnaire-led devising for drama training. Here, written prompts operate as generative constraints (not verbatim sources) and are translated into embodied tasks, improvisational material, and a repeatable rehearsal score. The article shows how scoring (fixing parameters while keeping controlled variables open) enables repetition without homogenisation, making ‘performer as thinker’ teachable and revisable.