Month: April 2016

Over the course of today we had individual tutorials with Steve. I found this helpful because it gave me an opportunity to reassure myself that I understood the theory. Steve asked the question of who inspired our piece and who inspired me personally and I was able to speak for a good 5/10 minutes which sent my confidence through the roof. It was also a good opportunity to speak to him about the final blog post and what it has to engage with to achieve a positive result (historical engagement, telling the story of our rehearsal process).

In terms of our group work we were limited to what we could do because we were unable to confide any changes in the piece with Steve. We managed to source and obtain all of our props including the remnants we are going to leave behind (CD’s, dummies etc.) and a box to but the speaker and laptop in should it start to rain on performance day. We also documented some more conversations and recorded the final section of the script. Over the next few weeks before performance we are going to focus on the choreography of the piece and how it looks aesthetically. We don’t want to over rehearse with the track as we want a sense of spontaneity to it.

Monday 4th April

After a period of two weeks off for Easter in which we were unable to do much in the space because the risks hadn’t been assessed etc. I was eager to return to work on our piece. During that period Steve spoke with module leader Conan so that he could give a second pair of eyes and ears. Fortunately there wasn’t much which needed to be changed, instead Conan made us aware of potential downfalls in our piece and asked if we had considered practical elements such as weather, speakers etc.

When listening through the audio track with Steve (the one Lucy had made over the Easter break) we soon realized that, whilst the track was good, the piece lacked visual stimulation and that the invited audience’s attention could easily waver. To combat this we used the rest of the session to create a more visually entertaining piece. We started by laying out chairs in studio X to recreate the layout of the site to help us visualize the space. After a few moments of discussing I suggested we look at logical actions for the sound effects in the track (for example doing the action of feeding the birds to the sound effect of birds tweeting/cooing), this created a surge of interest amongst our group with suggestions flying in for the other sound effects including engaging with the audience by handing them written text messages and doodling on the pavement for the child noises.

The next thing we discussed and ironed out in our minds was the difference between acting and performing. We eventually agreed that acting was being a character that is different from you and performing is yourself doing an action in a performative, over exaggerated way. In our piece we are not portraying fictional characters but merely portraying everyday life in a performative manner.

We have been unsure over the last few weeks about whether to speak with the track or mime alongside it. Today we made a final decision to speak with the track. We are going to divide the script into section and allocate a section of script and a movement section to each performer so that Steve is able to distinguish individual performances as well our performances as an ensemble.

Theorists have been constantly underlying our rehearsal and research process. This week the two that were of specific significance were Mark Auge’s concept of space and non space and Sue Palmer’s statement that people are needed to activate a space. Whilst the city high street has much potential to be a significant space, it is only when the people walking down the street engage with it that it becomes activated. On a practical level we are going to portray this concept by leaving the space empty for a minute or two at the start of the piece. We are then going to enter the space and literally ‘activate’ it by starting the track and, in turn, activate the piece. At the end of the piece we are going to exit the space, leaving remnants of us behind (breadcrumbs, dirt, colourings etc.) The theory behind this is that the piece shows evidence of people coming into a space, activating it and leaving remnants that space was significant for a period of time. That specific moment in time is gone and only glimpses of what went on can be seen.

We are contemplating the idea of creating moving sound throughout the piece. We intend to achieve this by having the tracks playing on mobile devices in people’s pockets so that when they move around the space the sound moves with them creating even more layers to the piece. We are not sure about the practicality of this idea as of yet but we are going to experiment with this over the next week or two.

On the Tuesday Emma went to Tesco to research and buy speakers. The woman in the store assured her that one speaker would be enough for the space. We then met up in the space and tested the speaker with our audio track. We were all surprised at the volume of the speaker and the ‘audience’ who were nearby all turned the heads to see where the source of this noise was. This bodes well for our performance because it will hold the audience’s attention and, when combined with visual stimulation, create a stimulating piece of performance art.

We also finished recording our script which means that by next week we can rehearse the speaking and physicality of the piece with the actual track that will be used for the performance.

Joe Turner

We have become very aware that our performance is exceedingly reliant on our audience. This is exceptionally risky as audience members may not be willing to give interesting interaction and therefore our performance will not be fully productive or of value. Because of this we began discussing ideas of how we can become more in control of the performance.

Some of these ideas involved collecting the conversations beforehand and taking these recordings and scripts to create an installation piece. We considered whether we wanted the performance to be passive or interactive, and what were to happen if we were to combine the two: by bringing installation art and conversations in real time together. We then asked questions about our piece, such as how confessional exchange fits into our site, and whether we can alter that aspect.

We were suggested to watch Curious – On The Scent. We loved how the artists controlled the situation and did most of the speaking, and audiences had to listen and watch. We got an eerie feeling from the set and artists actions/speeches, and wondered if we could explore making a domestic setting creepy.

We began analysing the motivations for our performance, seeing how we can adjust our performance. Immediately we identified the focus we have on binaries:

• place/non-place – the site fluctuates between place for the homeless, and non-place for passers by,
• safe/unsafe – safety can relate to the lights we aim to put in the space,
• comfortable/uncomfortable – which appears when we include a sofa and blankets, and friendly conversations,
• trapped/not trapped – passing place means no one considers being trapped,

All of these hold connections to the historical reference of the Stonebow arch where there was once a prison. We explored how a prison is a temporary and involuntary home, and therefore can again fluctuate between a place and non-place for prisoners. A prison also clearly relates to the feelings of being trapped, discomfort, and being unsafe. We began to wonder whether we could bring these binaries into our performance and play with them.

These binaries could be explored through how we perform. Our actions could make an audience member feel uncomfortable, and we could make them feel trapped by asking them to stay in a particular place and leaving them there (this can also relate to the idea of transit and non-place, will they just get up and walk away?).

We can fluctuate between these binaries by making them uncomfortable/trapped/unsafe through one action, and then doing another action that will make them feel comfortable/not trapped/safe again, therefore pushing the boundaries of the binaries.

Thinking about our idea of having a sign, we discussed what could be written on it. An idea we has was a ‘menu’, where we price our tea and biscuits according to what we want out of them. After discussing binaries and watching On The Scent, we decided that the prices could be something like: “1 biscuit = tell us a time when you felt trapped”.

We are going to rehearse ideas with the sofa and other props to discover what could be done with this new idea.

Weeks 9-11 sessions

This time period of three weeks consists of a two week vacation for Easter.

• During this period, as a group we had decided to meet once (on the last Friday of the vacation).
• In this meeting we managed to source and create the visual aids we needed for the final piece: Card – created by using folded card that we stood the stories of our couples inside of.
• Also finalising the measurements for our structure
• Having now completed the content for our final piece this allowed our group during week 11’s session to develop and ‘play’ with the dynamics and volume of each piece within the performance – We added movement to the callers within the piece to see if it gave them more of a presence in the piece – However we decided it wouldn’t be beneficial for our piece because callers were known for standing in one specific spot and preaching – They did not move so why would our callers need to move.
• One change we have made is to remove the exchange segment of our performance – the giving of a flower for information wasn’t engaging for a passing audience member. We only saw this as an advantage for our piece as it sticks to the minimalistic style we have developed.
• The plan for the next session is to take the structure into the space and conduct half an hours’ worth of rehearsal to alternate the carver between our group to see how it works, if we like it, if we don’t.