Devising methods vary: collaborating groups tend to develop distinct methodologies based upon the backgrounds and talents of their members.
[8] Theatre historians Kathryn Syssoyeva and Scott Proudfit have argued that the modern, European tradition of collective creation follows rapidly upon the emergence of directing as a profession, and unfolds in three overlapping waves (marked by distinctive processual, aesthetic, and political characteristics): 1900-1945, 1945-1985, and 1985 to the present.
The period from '68 and on into the 1970s witnessed an explosion of collective creation practices in the Americas and Europe (East and West); as in the 1930s, this wave of interest in collectivism and collaboration in art was deeply influenced by contemporaneous political developments, such as the rise of the New Left.
Davis and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Joseph Chaikin and the Open Theater, Luiz Valdez and the Teatro Campesino, Ruth Maleczech, Joanne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer and the Mabou Mines; Richard Schechner and the Performance Group; and Elizabeth LeCompte and the Wooster Group in the US; the Gardzienice Center for Theatre Practices in Poland; the Work Center of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Italy; the Odin Teatret in Denmark.
[21] Beginning from the mid-1980s, with the emergence of a new generation of ensembles and collectives, and increased dissemination of devising models and training methods through theatre festivals, training workshops, and college courses, a shift occurred, away from the more political drivers fueling much collective creation during the civil rights era, and toward more decidedly aesthetic and economic drivers; this is the period in which such practices come to be more expressly associated with the term "Devising."