Month: March 2016

• During the reading week (22^nd – 26^th February) I did some research on the site specific subject.
• The notes from the beginning of this blog are based on a document I found from a book names “Making a Performance” written by an actress, Katie Normington, and two others name Emma Govern, Helen Nicholson.

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• SCHECKNER – Environmental theatre works through creating a living in styled performance.
• A style of performance based on the natural state of everyday life whilst having an alternative meaning.
• Polish Director – GROTOWISKI – Created living environments through witnesses.
• GROTOWISKI – “Dr.Faustus” – His perception of the table scene, his audience members were seated within the scene, around the table.
• This is an example of how his audience would witness his workings. They would live that specific moment of his performance with his actors. They would be just as involved within the making of the scene just without dialogue. Mute characters.
• GROTOWISKI’S style of environmental theatre gives the witness’s a sense of community. If not because they are being involved within a situation with others both actors and the other witnesses. But the community created for the witnesses alone because they are all just as on edge and apprehensive as each other. This gives them a sense of security that they aren’t alone.
• The reading itself refers to this ‘community’ as similar to the spectators in a religious situations – VICERS vs WORSHIPERS. – Due to the living moment that is lived by all within that situation.
• TRADITIONAL THEATRE IS AS FOLLOWS:
• ON STAGE – INSIDE –the living moment
• AUDIENCE – OUTSIDE – only spectators to the event.

 

• Within Living Environment Theatre the boundaries set in place by traditional staged performances are completely banished. The audience are invited in to closely witness the ‘living happenings’.
• LIVING SPACES – A techniques used frequently within the workings of a theatre company called ‘RECKLESS SLEEPERS’
• RECKLESS SLEEPERS group was founded in Nottingham in 1989. Their works are a combination of all the following:
• DURATION PIECES – On going performances that are detailed/repetitive.
• SOUND INSTILATIONS – Performances based on the sense of smell to create an outcome.
• EXBIDITIONS – Travelling performances that include more techniques such as activities to engage the audiences to focus and think about the topic of the entire piece.
• OUT DOOR PERFROMANCE – Performance that involve all of the above but outdoors.
• One of their very famous pieces was when the group were commission to create a piece of living theatre based on ‘The Last Supper’.
• The groups research Brief was to elaborate the phrase ‘Eating your words’
• To gather information and practical evidence the group took to the streets and read text from pieces of paper. Once they had read the entire piece of text they would move onto the next after putting the previously read one into their mouth.
• They continued this process until they had no other room spare to talk their own words. This thought of having the words but not the voice gave the group a solid stimulus.
• They looked at convicts that had been sentence to either be executed or live a life on Death Row. The autobiography’s that were written but convicts were used by RECHLESS SLEEPRS, the exact words from the convict’s mouth and their case numbers, table number, and a number with no significance.
• The result performance was performed in GLASGOW at the Tramway Theatre, 2005. All 39 audience members were given an invitation to a dinner party at this location. Before they entered they all received a table number, an incident number and number.
• The audience were escorted to their specific seats. An actor dressed as a chef would appear and shout a number across the hall. That person with that number would be fed 1 dish from the three optional: CHOCOLATE CAKE, COTTAGE CHESE, and LIVER AND ONIONS.
• The dishes were specific to the performance due to these three items were the exact things that Death Row occupant Lennie White asked for as his last meal before his execution in 1997.
• LYN GARDNER- a Drama and English graduate from Kent university – Gave a review of this piece in which she mentioned that “it gave a voice to the voiceless” This being due to the actually words wrote or said by the convict before their death.
• She spoke of how the imaginary words spoken buy some of the actors would be relatable to that of those unfortunate souls who were murdered by the chemical explosion Hiroshima.
• These aspects of a performance, use of imagination, are created by many different techniques: A director’s encouragement of using non-performing throughout the research and rehearsal process.
• Also by the reportage and down playing of emotion within the piece, deliberately just reading the text from a written script.
• As well as emphasising the game playing from each actor, they also play up to the audience. They continuously refer to the audience as themselves: “I don’t know what to say this.”
• This leading to an all matter of questions:
• ARE THEY THEMSELVES?
• ARE THEY INVENTED PERSONA’S AT ALL?
• ARE THEY MOMENTARILY REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PEOPLES WHO’S WORDS THEY SPEAK?
• This performance was performed at the TRAMWAY THEATRE in GLASGOW, Scotland. This buildings history is as it sounds. It was a building created to be a tram shed on the edge of GLASGOW. This building was also used by PETER BROOKS when his performance of “MAHABHARATA” toured.
• The building itself is a quintessential industrial due to its –
• CONCRETE FLOORING
• EXPOSED BRICK WORK
• DUCTING- Air ventilation systems
• GIRDERS – Support beams for a structure.
• During the performance the tables themselves were cluttered with wine and food – this heightens the irony of the building due to the unhinged effect of the derelict building.
• The Last Supper performance it’s self-acted as a realisation for both the actors and the audience. That both fact and fiction can be equally unreliable as each other. That history’s stable entity is and can be banished.

This week’s session saw our group discuss influences for our performance. Our main influence is Marc Auge and his theory on places and non-places. As we discussed further, another possible influence could be Adrian Howells and his performance Salon Adrienne. We saw similarities between his work on confessional exchange with audiences and our developing idea of inviting members of the audience into our newly transformed place and talking to them. With this in mind, we can start to develop a structure for how we will approach interaction with audiences and what we want to get from them (and even what we want them to get from us).

During this session our group also conducted research into our idea; this included doing a survey and getting the public’s opinions (the results of which will assist how we form our final performance, we will ask more people each week), and conducting experiments regarding connections between the public and the archway. To start, we counted the number of people walking through the archway in the space of two minutes. The results we received from this was:

Between 11.56am and 11.58am on Monday 29^th February:
66 people walked through the archway heading down the high street
49 people walked through the archway heading up the high street
115 people in total walked through the archway

This information gave us an insight into the mass of people travelling through the archway on a standard weekday. With the numbers being very high for only a two minute period, it left us with no doubt that there will be people walking past our performance and therefore many potential audiences for our piece. We also conducted a sound test for two minutes, as we believed this recording would assist our understanding on how social or unsocial the space under the archways is. The results showed that any conversations were only spoken in transit and there was never anyone who stopped and used the space as a social place to talk. This also supported our theory that the archway is a non-place for the general public and not somewhere where social life is generated. I found the sounds of footsteps very interesting to hear as they echoed around the stone arch, filling the archway with an endless sound of footsteps mixed with distant chatter.

I also gathered a video of the feet of passers-by. This was my favourite form of media to collect as the video showed people not only walking far away from the camera but also walking very close to the camera, showing urgency as well as a feeling of negligence by the public not taking enough time to avoid or even notice the camera.

Later we organised a tour of the Guildhall, which is the building occupying the top of the Stonebow Arch, to learn more about the history of the site (which I voice recorded for reference). We discovered that the building is a council room where council members still meet. Inside there is a bell which is rung for five minutes before each meeting starts. We were curious about the use of the bell being used as a method of summoning and allowing conversation/discussion, we questioned whether this could be incorporated into our performance; this is something we are currently exploring.

Steve sent us away early in our groups to discuss where we were in the devising process and what we thought was the next logical step. I was concerned with our piece and its attempts to engage with history because our location (the raised seated area outside the waterside shopping centre) doesn’t have a particular history. During Steve’s introduction to the seminar I began thinking about what that area was particularly used for. The answer to this I thought of was conversation/communication.

After discussing the theme of communication we created an idea which involved playing a recorded conversation and miming over the top of it. This brings up the question of authenticity and ownership and whether someone else’s words become mine if I speak them and do the words lose their meaning. We are going to attempt to introduce palimpsest using the following means:

1. Document people’s conversations (We began doing this in this week’s seminar). This methodology is similar to that used by George Pereck in his work ‘an attempt at exhausting a day in Paris’. We found that we only caught snippets of conversations which gave a brief glimpse into people’s lives ranging from the random and chatty to deep and meaningful conversations. We are going to select a few of these and stitch them together to create a manuscript in the same way the Pereck did.

 

2. Record someone on site reading the manuscript. It is this recording that would be used in the final piece. Doing it this way creates a palimpsest both in the text (asking different people to speak) and in the location (many different people have spoken the same text in the same space).

 

 

As well as Pereck our piece relates with a number of practitioners. The idea of taking people’s personal stories and performing them links with Dee Headon’s autobiographical scriptography whereas Erving Goffman’s theory of ‘every day life being a spectacle correlates with the social and public aspect of our piece. The physicality aspect of the piece also relates back to a few weeks ago when we went out into the city with instructions (I am going to look at how we talk through our bodies in more detail later on).

 

Whilst we all agreed on the initial concept and location there are many elements which create a number of discussions. Different people had different ideas about  ways in which to perform the piece which we will experiment with over the next few weeks including costume or no costume, miming or speaking with the track and learning the text or having it in front of us.

 

Basically our piece is trying to recreate a moment in life on site. Our main theme is authenticity and exploring questions of whether someone elses words become mine if I speak them etc. Ultimately a moment in life cannot be recreated accurately no matter how hard you try.

 

Over the course of this week I am going to research Pierre Bourdieu and his piece delegate as well as Miwon Kwon and her ideas surrounding the community and performance.

Joe Turner