I am fucked today...so tired..have been up since 5.30..shit that was yesterday now....I am insane.....but its all for a good cause.
Spent the day with Olu...so much stuff to say...where to start..hmm...I think I will start with Olu's work and then move on to talk about how it helped my work....yep that's what I’ll do...I have just enough energy left....need to get it down while it is fresh in my head.
Generous Avatar- The Process
its about creating a space in which all can experience.
Avatar as embodied spirituality (Jesus, Buddah)/Avatar as a virtual image, as digital representation of self.
creating an event, not a work, an embodied space.....stations, the artists giving generously to us a part of them, a piece of them....taking risks...laying themselves bare....laying themselves open...to us, the audience...to gaze..to construction...to multiple meanings of self.
Creating an experience, improv, devising, giving to us....like a gallery....a living space...living, shifting objects and artefacts...including the audience...they become subject and object at the same time.
The possibility of numerous gazes, looking at looking, multi-views, multi eyes, multi lenses, multi representations...
Not perf/audience space....all in one..all together...our space is one and the same.
Generous Avatar-The Performance
audience seem nervous and apprehensive to actually enter the space, they seem to linger at the entrance until there is no more room, tentative steps to enter in.....They seem to follow each other in a strange crocodile line.......confused...self aware....aware of the other audience members gaze on them.....I am aware of the gaze of the others.....quite whispers among each other....touching the art objects and artefacts....looking at themselves looking at the screens.
They are hesitant and suspicious of the offer of a sandwich....they stay in a group avoiding being alone...they flock around specific action....very few make an independent decision of what to look at......they move away from the performers...keep backing off and making an artificial performance space..they keep making a separation between them and the performers.
Hmmm...there is so much more to say but I grow weary now...i have it all in notes but those are the bits that really roused my interest...
The Lecture-
Olu introduced me to some of his students, I explained the project and my research...have had a few students give me there details....all women....i hope that this is just the beginning.......bed now
Friday 27 April 2007
Thursday 26 April 2007
Reflective Practitioner: moon text
The moon text is an exploration of femininity and suicide. In making this text, I have drawn from a variety of conceptual ideas and sources: media representations, fine art, film, literature, dramatic literature, autobiography and poetry. I have drawn together a plethora of representations and used them as the starting point and springboard with which to write the text. What fascinates me as an artist, is that so many of our representations of women are flawed and tragic, Western History also paints a similar picture. I am interested in the fact that so many of our cultural icons that are female have been portrayed as victims, many of them taking their own lives; Marilyn Monroe, Dusty Springfield and Sylvia Plath…to name just a couple. That is really the head space that this piece comes from and it obviously fits into the discourse of the work through the themes of woman and trauma. For me the moon and the sea have really interesting relationships with the idea of femininity.
One of the key devices that I have employed in this text is that none of the voices within the text actually converse with each other or enter into dialogue. Each voice directly addresses the audience. It is all about blurring the presence of the audience and problematising the notion of acting/presence. The text is presentational in style and is full of holes and gaps, it forces the audience to take up the slack, they have to work to construct the narratives that run throughout the piece and find their own context and meaning within the text.
Each new voice changes the pace and tone of the text, picking it up and taking it off on a new or shifted narrative; a changed perspective. The text is split into three sections and in this way mimics the construction of a traditional or well made play. It becomes mico, several mini narratives crammed into one short text. There is not plot, rather the text has narrative threads or strands, no tension is built and the narratives are not accumulative to a singular idea or story. We are given new information but it does not serve to illuminate, explicate or clarify the previous section; instead each new narrative thread exists along side the previous, their relationship left for the audience to devise.
The overall text is not written in a naturalistic style, it is not a dramatic text per se. Each section uses a different device for the narrative and tells its story in a different way. This pushes the audience to have to do work, they have to work hard to make their own sense, to carve their own set of meanings from the multiple possibilities. This means that they are in a constant state of flux during the text, having to re-evaluate their relationship and position to the text.
Repetition is a theme of the text, and as a writer, is something which really fascinates me. The pattern that this repetition creates serves to replace the plot, giving structure and pace to the writing.
One of the key devices that I have employed in this text is that none of the voices within the text actually converse with each other or enter into dialogue. Each voice directly addresses the audience. It is all about blurring the presence of the audience and problematising the notion of acting/presence. The text is presentational in style and is full of holes and gaps, it forces the audience to take up the slack, they have to work to construct the narratives that run throughout the piece and find their own context and meaning within the text.
Each new voice changes the pace and tone of the text, picking it up and taking it off on a new or shifted narrative; a changed perspective. The text is split into three sections and in this way mimics the construction of a traditional or well made play. It becomes mico, several mini narratives crammed into one short text. There is not plot, rather the text has narrative threads or strands, no tension is built and the narratives are not accumulative to a singular idea or story. We are given new information but it does not serve to illuminate, explicate or clarify the previous section; instead each new narrative thread exists along side the previous, their relationship left for the audience to devise.
The overall text is not written in a naturalistic style, it is not a dramatic text per se. Each section uses a different device for the narrative and tells its story in a different way. This pushes the audience to have to do work, they have to work hard to make their own sense, to carve their own set of meanings from the multiple possibilities. This means that they are in a constant state of flux during the text, having to re-evaluate their relationship and position to the text.
Repetition is a theme of the text, and as a writer, is something which really fascinates me. The pattern that this repetition creates serves to replace the plot, giving structure and pace to the writing.
Makers Diary: Text 3
Here is the new text…yey...I am really happy with that!
HIM: She was a woman, you know, the kind of woman who wears suits, good suits with heels. And when she passes by you catch a soft heady waft of her oriental smelling perfume, sweet and exotic. The kind of woman who carries an extra pair of champagne coloured stockings in her leather purse, just in case.
Go on, close your eyes and picture her.
The kind of woman who chooses not to be a mother and has an Siamese cat, called Digby waiting for her when she gets home late, in the dark from the office.
The kind of woman who enjoys opera and always has a glass of good red wine during the interval.
The kind of woman with a pre-Raphaelite beauty hanging in her light and spacious entrance hall.
The kind of woman who eats Thai food and sushi with chop sticks. The kind of woman who sips her champagne from a crystal cup that sings when you tease the rim. The kind of woman who's snap action umbrella always matches her bag and shoes.
The kind of woman who similes without ever really opening her lips. The kind of woman who doesn't own a biro and has a pink grapefruit for breakfast. The kind of woman who always seem to know what she wants.
The kind of woman like you and you and you, yeah and you.
You know the kind of woman who is snooty and independent
(Pause)
The kind of bitch who thinks that she is above all men, above me, the kind of woman who/
HER: What he means to say is that she was beautiful and powerful but that was never enough, like you and me and all women, she wanted more. More beauty, more power, to be more feminine, to have more choice.
To have better shoes, a smaller arse, for her tits to be more full and pert, her skin more fresh. She wanted more glamour, fame, recognition, praise. She wanted a bigger heart, fuller heart, more hopeful heart, a cherished heart. Her stomach to be flatter, her thighs more slender, her feet smaller, her nails longer, her love deeper. She just wanted more; more love, more passion, more power, more sex, more chocolate.
She wanted to be special.
She wanted to be special.
She wanted to be woman.
So one night, when the moon was full and fat, she stretched her arms up out of the waves, she opened up her big red lips and swallowed the shimmering silver orb whole.
And so the sea stood still, the night turned black and in the darkness we were found wanting.
SHE: I am celestial.
I am a nymph.
I am a goddess.
I am the woman who swallowed the moon.
The one the sea didn't take. The limp lady dangling stretched from the rope. The woman with her wrists slashed and her arteries pumping, spilling out their crimson honey into the bathtub.
The woman with the stomach full of paracetemol, co-proximal and drain cleaner.
The girl they laid low.
The beauty queen fizzing in the heart hot tub, rickled fingers clutching her hair dryer.
The rock chic jacked full of junk, petrified and gaping.
The sleeping beauty in the front seat sucking on invisible death.
The pallid diva stiff and slouched, head lolling on the porcelain rim, life leaking from her perfect nose.
The desperate housewife, fixed pupils, empty starring through the misty, scratched plastic.
The fem fatale with a knife in her gut.
The ancient figure head with an asp grasping her teat.
The smudge in your diary, the stain in your heart.
The woman with stale spittle and vomit on her lips.
The tragic smart feminist with her head in the gas oven. The woman who left a dark stain on the pavement. The woman who blew her brains across the dashboard. The woman tangled in the mud amongst the duck weed and lily pad stems.
(Pause)
That is I, The celestial, goddess, nymph; the woman who swallowed the moon.
But tomorrow I will stop. Stop butchering, stop crying, stop shouting, stop dying, stop killing myself and listen to the silence song. I will shut the door and find that I have breasts, thighs, ankles and a womb. With my soft delicate fingers I will pleasure myself. Reclaim my lips, my cunt; from the men, from the lovers. Who have had me, used me, fucked me, screwed me, buggered me, raped me over and over and over. I will rip the moon her fat silver roundness from my belly and stagger into the street drenched in my own blood. Letting my sinew and song soak their sidewalks. Leaving a trail of where I once trod. I will hold up my face to the sky, fingers raised to the heavens, letting my insides paint me.
I am woman.
I am celestial.
I am a nymph.
I am a goddess.
I am the woman who swallowed the moon.
I am fascinated by the idea of the woman who swallowed the moon and so have carried some concepts through from one of previous productions.
I have not yet had any interest from my casting calls...getting a little worried, I know its only be a few days but still, I though the undergrads would jump at the chance...seems not!
HIM: She was a woman, you know, the kind of woman who wears suits, good suits with heels. And when she passes by you catch a soft heady waft of her oriental smelling perfume, sweet and exotic. The kind of woman who carries an extra pair of champagne coloured stockings in her leather purse, just in case.
Go on, close your eyes and picture her.
The kind of woman who chooses not to be a mother and has an Siamese cat, called Digby waiting for her when she gets home late, in the dark from the office.
The kind of woman who enjoys opera and always has a glass of good red wine during the interval.
The kind of woman with a pre-Raphaelite beauty hanging in her light and spacious entrance hall.
The kind of woman who eats Thai food and sushi with chop sticks. The kind of woman who sips her champagne from a crystal cup that sings when you tease the rim. The kind of woman who's snap action umbrella always matches her bag and shoes.
The kind of woman who similes without ever really opening her lips. The kind of woman who doesn't own a biro and has a pink grapefruit for breakfast. The kind of woman who always seem to know what she wants.
The kind of woman like you and you and you, yeah and you.
You know the kind of woman who is snooty and independent
(Pause)
The kind of bitch who thinks that she is above all men, above me, the kind of woman who/
HER: What he means to say is that she was beautiful and powerful but that was never enough, like you and me and all women, she wanted more. More beauty, more power, to be more feminine, to have more choice.
To have better shoes, a smaller arse, for her tits to be more full and pert, her skin more fresh. She wanted more glamour, fame, recognition, praise. She wanted a bigger heart, fuller heart, more hopeful heart, a cherished heart. Her stomach to be flatter, her thighs more slender, her feet smaller, her nails longer, her love deeper. She just wanted more; more love, more passion, more power, more sex, more chocolate.
She wanted to be special.
She wanted to be special.
She wanted to be woman.
So one night, when the moon was full and fat, she stretched her arms up out of the waves, she opened up her big red lips and swallowed the shimmering silver orb whole.
And so the sea stood still, the night turned black and in the darkness we were found wanting.
SHE: I am celestial.
I am a nymph.
I am a goddess.
I am the woman who swallowed the moon.
The one the sea didn't take. The limp lady dangling stretched from the rope. The woman with her wrists slashed and her arteries pumping, spilling out their crimson honey into the bathtub.
The woman with the stomach full of paracetemol, co-proximal and drain cleaner.
The girl they laid low.
The beauty queen fizzing in the heart hot tub, rickled fingers clutching her hair dryer.
The rock chic jacked full of junk, petrified and gaping.
The sleeping beauty in the front seat sucking on invisible death.
The pallid diva stiff and slouched, head lolling on the porcelain rim, life leaking from her perfect nose.
The desperate housewife, fixed pupils, empty starring through the misty, scratched plastic.
The fem fatale with a knife in her gut.
The ancient figure head with an asp grasping her teat.
The smudge in your diary, the stain in your heart.
The woman with stale spittle and vomit on her lips.
The tragic smart feminist with her head in the gas oven. The woman who left a dark stain on the pavement. The woman who blew her brains across the dashboard. The woman tangled in the mud amongst the duck weed and lily pad stems.
(Pause)
That is I, The celestial, goddess, nymph; the woman who swallowed the moon.
But tomorrow I will stop. Stop butchering, stop crying, stop shouting, stop dying, stop killing myself and listen to the silence song. I will shut the door and find that I have breasts, thighs, ankles and a womb. With my soft delicate fingers I will pleasure myself. Reclaim my lips, my cunt; from the men, from the lovers. Who have had me, used me, fucked me, screwed me, buggered me, raped me over and over and over. I will rip the moon her fat silver roundness from my belly and stagger into the street drenched in my own blood. Letting my sinew and song soak their sidewalks. Leaving a trail of where I once trod. I will hold up my face to the sky, fingers raised to the heavens, letting my insides paint me.
I am woman.
I am celestial.
I am a nymph.
I am a goddess.
I am the woman who swallowed the moon.
I am fascinated by the idea of the woman who swallowed the moon and so have carried some concepts through from one of previous productions.
I have not yet had any interest from my casting calls...getting a little worried, I know its only be a few days but still, I though the undergrads would jump at the chance...seems not!
Wednesday 25 April 2007
Reflective Participant: Looser
I went to see Looser at the Nuffield tonight..mixed feelings about that. There were moments of pure stunning brilliance but overall it did not gel for me. I will not totally go into that now but I will talk about some things that struck me about the show:
There were moments when they would let the audience in, when we were invited to take part in the work, to help them build the work but then they would push us out again, push us back.
There were other moments when we could not hear what they were saying, when they excluded us completely.
We got to eat drink and chat as part of the work.......The dripping water fascinated me, drip, drip like a slow erosion from the minute she was gone.
The after show talk:
I asked- How far and to what extent do you consider the audience in the making process?
They said- The audience is integral but the story comes first and then they think of the best ways for the audience to experience that story,,,this is what inflects their making process.
I asked-What was their intention and what did they hope to achieve by our participation in the work?
They said-They use participation a a way of injecting spontaneity into the work. To draw us into the story and as a way of breaking down the fourth wall. they want to include us and make us a part of the fictional world, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. They are interested in sharing a dynamic relationship.
I asked-did they intend to with-hold from us at certain points, to shut us out?
They said-There was no intention behind that but that it was an interesting observation that they had not considered before.
I also met another doctorial student from Solent uni, called Matt Fletcher....such a small world, turn out he did his MA at Exeter with Olu my supervisor. He is also looking at participatory work but from a live art and performance art perspective rather than theatre. We have swapped details and agreed to keep in touch....always good to find someone toiling away in the same field, I am sure this will be the start of a very fruitful scholarly relationship.
Blimey I am bushed now..bed for me.....up early tomorrow to get right back to it. I am hoping to get the 3rd text written tomorrow.
There were moments when they would let the audience in, when we were invited to take part in the work, to help them build the work but then they would push us out again, push us back.
There were other moments when we could not hear what they were saying, when they excluded us completely.
We got to eat drink and chat as part of the work.......The dripping water fascinated me, drip, drip like a slow erosion from the minute she was gone.
The after show talk:
I asked- How far and to what extent do you consider the audience in the making process?
They said- The audience is integral but the story comes first and then they think of the best ways for the audience to experience that story,,,this is what inflects their making process.
I asked-What was their intention and what did they hope to achieve by our participation in the work?
They said-They use participation a a way of injecting spontaneity into the work. To draw us into the story and as a way of breaking down the fourth wall. they want to include us and make us a part of the fictional world, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. They are interested in sharing a dynamic relationship.
I asked-did they intend to with-hold from us at certain points, to shut us out?
They said-There was no intention behind that but that it was an interesting observation that they had not considered before.
I also met another doctorial student from Solent uni, called Matt Fletcher....such a small world, turn out he did his MA at Exeter with Olu my supervisor. He is also looking at participatory work but from a live art and performance art perspective rather than theatre. We have swapped details and agreed to keep in touch....always good to find someone toiling away in the same field, I am sure this will be the start of a very fruitful scholarly relationship.
Blimey I am bushed now..bed for me.....up early tomorrow to get right back to it. I am hoping to get the 3rd text written tomorrow.
Makers Diary: Casting Call
Right.....this should be it now...my worries should be over!
I have put a casting call on the VLE as a portal message...I will do this daily until I have had a good uptake from performers.
I have e-mailed the administrators for Drama, Dance and Perf Studies...asking them to e-mail all of the students. i have also given rob Conkie the go ahead on the casting call bits that I sent to him.
It should all be go now...oooh I am so excited I just can't wait to get into the rehearsal room....where I should be.
I have put a casting call on the VLE as a portal message...I will do this daily until I have had a good uptake from performers.
I have e-mailed the administrators for Drama, Dance and Perf Studies...asking them to e-mail all of the students. i have also given rob Conkie the go ahead on the casting call bits that I sent to him.
It should all be go now...oooh I am so excited I just can't wait to get into the rehearsal room....where I should be.
Monday 23 April 2007
Reflective Practitioner: Meeting with Olu
Here are the main points:
Has invited me to come on Friday and help him with the tech for his performance. i will also get the opportunity to attend one of his lectures and speak to the students directly because I have not yet had any uptake at all. this will be a great opportunity to meet staff and students and help me to feel more a part of the faculty.
we sorted out AHRB application...now I just need to run around and put it together...not long left to get all the bits signed and sealed.
We went through my paper and Olu agreed with my concerns about the film stuff but suggested that i take a look at Birringer and dimensionality, so I will.
He also suggested that I look at Whitehead and DeQuincey for Cognitive Materialism.
He said that i need to illustrate some of my points..basically explain what I mean by reflective participant and the daisy chain model.
I need to work on getting some of the theoretical constructs into the actual title of my thesis.
I think that is about the gist of things...I am really looking forward to Friday now...I think it will be exciting.
Has invited me to come on Friday and help him with the tech for his performance. i will also get the opportunity to attend one of his lectures and speak to the students directly because I have not yet had any uptake at all. this will be a great opportunity to meet staff and students and help me to feel more a part of the faculty.
we sorted out AHRB application...now I just need to run around and put it together...not long left to get all the bits signed and sealed.
We went through my paper and Olu agreed with my concerns about the film stuff but suggested that i take a look at Birringer and dimensionality, so I will.
He also suggested that I look at Whitehead and DeQuincey for Cognitive Materialism.
He said that i need to illustrate some of my points..basically explain what I mean by reflective participant and the daisy chain model.
I need to work on getting some of the theoretical constructs into the actual title of my thesis.
I think that is about the gist of things...I am really looking forward to Friday now...I think it will be exciting.
Makers Diary: lots of little bits
A few things to record today...this evening....
Had a message from my Chico Jo just updating me on the progress of sound...has not heard at all from Leah..so that is not looking too hopeful.
Had some proofs from Kirsty...logo is done and dusted..looks very smart...you can see it in my pics if you so desire. the promo pics are coming alone great..starting to look very very sexy....just looking at them has reinvigorated and excited me.
Also had a message from Anita at tower arts just confirming costs and asking about dates ect...I will work it out and get back to her soon as possible. it is not a expensive as I thought so is looking very promising indeed.
Had a meeting with Olu...I will post that separately..under reflective practitioner...more suited to the issues. the on thing that I will mention here is that he has managed to get the go ahead on doing a casting call for me...did it right there in the meeting on the phone...what a star.
Had a message from my Chico Jo just updating me on the progress of sound...has not heard at all from Leah..so that is not looking too hopeful.
Had some proofs from Kirsty...logo is done and dusted..looks very smart...you can see it in my pics if you so desire. the promo pics are coming alone great..starting to look very very sexy....just looking at them has reinvigorated and excited me.
Also had a message from Anita at tower arts just confirming costs and asking about dates ect...I will work it out and get back to her soon as possible. it is not a expensive as I thought so is looking very promising indeed.
Had a meeting with Olu...I will post that separately..under reflective practitioner...more suited to the issues. the on thing that I will mention here is that he has managed to get the go ahead on doing a casting call for me...did it right there in the meeting on the phone...what a star.
Saturday 21 April 2007
Reflective Practitioner- Metalepsis
I was flicking through my notes from the JAM symposium and I came across some interesting notes that I think are very interesting in relation to the texts that I posted up earlier.
Metalepsis- is taking hold of the story telling or narrative by shifting the level or perspective (comes from film theory). There are two types: type one and type two. Type one is a film within a film or a narrative within a narrative. Type two, involves crossing into another universe or construction of time, space or dimension. (For example, a character who is narrating might move across and become a part of the action or narrative that they were narrating). They gave Punchdrunk’s work as a really good example of this.
I think that I use both types of Metalepsis in my two pieces of text. I should research into sutre theory some more. (this is when the liminal space becomes the concern and the audience is required to complete the discursive structures) This might be useful in trying to identify a term with which to refer to the work that I have encountered and will be making which puts the audience in the role of material creatorly participant.
Metalepsis- is taking hold of the story telling or narrative by shifting the level or perspective (comes from film theory). There are two types: type one and type two. Type one is a film within a film or a narrative within a narrative. Type two, involves crossing into another universe or construction of time, space or dimension. (For example, a character who is narrating might move across and become a part of the action or narrative that they were narrating). They gave Punchdrunk’s work as a really good example of this.
I think that I use both types of Metalepsis in my two pieces of text. I should research into sutre theory some more. (this is when the liminal space becomes the concern and the audience is required to complete the discursive structures) This might be useful in trying to identify a term with which to refer to the work that I have encountered and will be making which puts the audience in the role of material creatorly participant.
Makers Diary: text 21-new draft
SHE: 1,2,3
HIM: 4,5,6
HER: 7,8,9
SHE: 10,11,12
HIM: 13,14,15
SHE: 16, 17
HER: 18
HIM: 19,20
SHE: 21. Shit!
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Is she?
Which will it be?
SHE: So I slipped off my pumps…..
One at a time
Let them drop, wriggling my bare toes on the coarse wet wood, cool under the pink soles of my feet.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I dropped the handset back into its cradle and tentatively let my tongue slip along my bottom lip, making it gleam with moisture; the gentle fizz of anticipation and excitement bubbling up from my stomach as an aftertaste of his breath on the line.
I hadn't been serious
When I screwed up my face, wrinkling my nose, as the backdoor yawned open, threatening to give me away.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I eased my fingers down over the gnarled and frayed hem, sliding the fabric up my thighs til it bunched up into a fist full of creases at the top of my thigh. Not even when I swung my leg over the cross bar and standing up, pushed down on the pedal.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I took a man-sized swig of Kiwi 20/20, let it scorch down my throat, fuelling my bravado, voiced in giggles.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I triumphantly announced 21, apathetically tossed them dare with a shrug.
I hadn't been serious
When I swung off the track between the trees, gravel crunching under the swerve of my sun bleached, salt bitten tyres.
I hadn't been serious
When I let the handle slip from my grasp, its hollow frame clattering onto the grey stone, waving to them as it landed.
(Pause)
Her: I don't believe you
Do you think she will?
She always does
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I could feel their eyes on my feet willing my nakedness to travel past my knees and infect the rest of me.
I could almost/
HER: See
Smell
Sense
SHE: Their breath catching
Shallow
Eyes wide, on the brink of belief.
HIM: Not him though
Breath streaming out of his nose like a stallion
Only still. Calm. His faith steadfast, she could sense it.
His eyes like polished chocolate never left hers.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My denim mini and cropped, faded Tee, folded neatly in a pile on the coarse wood boards.
Black cotton pants sitting on top like a twisted knotty whipped topping. Her flip flops carelessly discarded, huddled beside.
HIM: Behind him their scuffed and raggy school shoes mumbled, toes to her.
Fidgeting, fumbling, secretly towards him
Towards her.
He could feel them pulling tight around him in a gaggle.
Their anticipation prickling the back of his neck, tongues trapped in suspense.
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers.
SHE: I turned my back and curled my toes to grip the unfinished wood, on the end, raw and splintered. Spray dowsing my lips with its stingy salty kiss. I imagined it was his excitement I could taste.
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My skin puckered into millions of tiny pimples as the wind slipped around me. Wrapping me in its evening song grasp.
HER: Will she?
Whisper
Hold your breath
SHE: I closed my eyes, lifted my heels, rocking my naked pink, puckered body towards the nothingness of the milky green rhapsody.
Teasing them, it, him, myself
And let them root again.
(Pause)
1,2
HIM: 3,4,5
HER: 6
SHE: 7,8,9
HIM: 10,11
HER: 12
SHE: 13,14
HIM: 15,16,17
HER: 18, 19,20
SHE: 21! Shit.
(Pause)
I never could say no, not when it mattered.
(Pause)
So I jumped.
HIM: Cold
Biting
Wet
Silence
Disappear
His chocolate, polished eyes, never left hers
Bubbles
Wet
Cold
Wet
Disappear
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I surfaced
HIM: His polished, chocolate eyes never left hers…hers.
Gulping
Gasping
Sharp air
Bursting through the green, green surface
Her naked pink toes propelling her up, up
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers….hers.
HER: Closer
Whisper
Don't breath
Will she?
Are you?
Don't breath.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered
His polished chocolate eyes on me, steadfast stallion in his faith.
HIM: Pulled up tight around him in a gaggle
jaws slack, mouths wide and gaping
SHE: I surfaced like a bobbing Holy Mary mother of God
A naked pink beacon
The flesh incarnate
Dripping wet defender of his faith
Him, you, you.
HIM: Gaping, slack, lolling tongues they looked on.
Not him though, his polished chocolate eyes on her, on her.
Drinking her up, setting fire to her intestines
Flames, licking and tickling her lust. He could taste the same salt that clung to her body, his siren song of the sea. Still he stood, his eyes on hers, on her. Touching her with his gaze but his fingers stayed siren
Clean.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I climbed up refusing their outstretched fingers, that green, green liquid fleeing my flesh as I hauled up and onto the coarse, wet wood.
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
SHE: 1,2,3
HER: Will she?
SHE: 4,5,6
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
16:30 Makers Diary: Woman text draft two
HIM: Cascading through the skylight, the moon danced across her cheek, reflecting in her green eyes as she spun. Seductive and lilting to the melody. Meandering and weaving like lazy beasts through the brush, the glowing candles cast their reflections on the flock wall paper. Her laugh melting into the air like liquid chocolate, rich and smooth. God I want her. (beat) Her scent radiating, washing over me as I let myself fall into her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be. Bare toes pushing off the carpet as she spun, whirling, infecting me with her pleasure. God I want her
HER: They danced. Tight to one another, rhythmic flesh on flesh, becoming whole with the ambience of the moment. He leant in, brushing her neck with his lips, pushing her hair back from her face. He tipped his head and closed his eyes in readiness of his lips on hers.
SHE: There's something I need to tell you.
HIM: Shhh
HER: He kissed her, long, deep and full-bodied.
(They kiss for a long while. Once they stop she whispers in his ear and the kissing turns to a struggle. She is trying to cling to him and he is trying to push her away. He pushes her hard onto the floor…there is a very long pause as they both catch their breaths and she gets up.)
Standing there before him, eyes wide, so vulnerable and broken.
Tears making their blue grey mascara trickle across her high flushed cheeks; gracing the edge of her lips and then absorbing into her collar.
Her, she, gasping, rasping in a whisper she extends her hand towards him and pleads.
HIM: "Don't go" she begged as I threw my eyes to the floor avoiding her watery gaze. I couldn't answer, couldn't look. Her, she; the swelling dark welt spreading around her left eye.
SHE: Look at me
(She extends her hand to touch his but can't reach.)
You fuck! (Beat) You fucker.
Look at me when I am talking to you.
If you walk out that door its over. Do you hear me? If you leave were through. Are you fucking hearing me?
You can't even bear the sight of me can you? Can you?
Say something, anything, don't just stand there. Fuck.
Please.
HER: Her hand still extended, she stood rooted to the floor, shaking, her body shuddering, frail and needing; racked with silent weeping. Her eyes boring into the top of his head, willing him to her.
HIM: I couldn't move, keeping my eyes on my shifting naked, bloody feet. Shards of green glass and thin maroon liquid adorning the floor in a crystal carpet of rubble. But still I can't face her. Her, she, that malignant swelling flesh around her wide, wet eye.
SHE: Say something, don't just ignore me, I can't bear it.
Look at me
Christ what the fuck do you want me to say.
Say something. Speak, yell, anything please.
I'm sorry.
HER: she stepped forward, only a little, tentative, rocking into movement. The crystal green glass sheen crunching under her weight, pressing into her soles releasing scarlet bubbles onto her milky skin. She touched his hand, a brush with her fingers but she didn't take hold.
SHE: It doesn't matter.
Please don't do this.
HIM: I drew away, her cold delicate long fingers churning my stomach.
I swung my body clumsily to the side, retching, heaving and I vomited. Once, twice; my puke spreading out amongst the glass blood and shallow maroon lake.
SHE: Please baby, I…
HER: She dropped to her knees and wailed, wretched, lost and broken, yowling her pain to the vaulted ceiling; her floral print dress stretched tight across her bump, her unborn flesh. She laid her hands flat, palms to the floor as she wept.
HIM: I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, took a shallow breath, bile burning in my nostrils. I stood upright and put my back to her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be and that, (beat) that black puffy wet eye. I began to make for the door, slowly, lumbering, so heavy and sore.
SHE: Go on then, piss off, that's it fuck off.
Useless fucking cunt (beat) get out.
HER: As he moved to the door, she leapt up, lunged at his back, holding him to her, to her body, to her bump.
HIM: I was stuck
SHE: I didn't mean it, don't leave. Please (beat) please, shit, don't go. Fuck, you know I, I mean, fuck, fuck. You can't I need you, we need you.
HER: she held him to her, clinging, her limbs wrapped about his sore, bleeding body, her head resting, no nestling in his damp sweaty hair.
SHE: Don't go! Don't leave me.
Oh god, don't leave us.
HER: She flailed and clung as he wrenched at her limbs.
She flailed and clung, her, she, his lover, mother to be.
Her, she, his lover, mother to be.
SHE: (Screams)
HIM: 4,5,6
HER: 7,8,9
SHE: 10,11,12
HIM: 13,14,15
SHE: 16, 17
HER: 18
HIM: 19,20
SHE: 21. Shit!
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Is she?
Which will it be?
SHE: So I slipped off my pumps…..
One at a time
Let them drop, wriggling my bare toes on the coarse wet wood, cool under the pink soles of my feet.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I dropped the handset back into its cradle and tentatively let my tongue slip along my bottom lip, making it gleam with moisture; the gentle fizz of anticipation and excitement bubbling up from my stomach as an aftertaste of his breath on the line.
I hadn't been serious
When I screwed up my face, wrinkling my nose, as the backdoor yawned open, threatening to give me away.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I eased my fingers down over the gnarled and frayed hem, sliding the fabric up my thighs til it bunched up into a fist full of creases at the top of my thigh. Not even when I swung my leg over the cross bar and standing up, pushed down on the pedal.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I took a man-sized swig of Kiwi 20/20, let it scorch down my throat, fuelling my bravado, voiced in giggles.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I triumphantly announced 21, apathetically tossed them dare with a shrug.
I hadn't been serious
When I swung off the track between the trees, gravel crunching under the swerve of my sun bleached, salt bitten tyres.
I hadn't been serious
When I let the handle slip from my grasp, its hollow frame clattering onto the grey stone, waving to them as it landed.
(Pause)
Her: I don't believe you
Do you think she will?
She always does
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I could feel their eyes on my feet willing my nakedness to travel past my knees and infect the rest of me.
I could almost/
HER: See
Smell
Sense
SHE: Their breath catching
Shallow
Eyes wide, on the brink of belief.
HIM: Not him though
Breath streaming out of his nose like a stallion
Only still. Calm. His faith steadfast, she could sense it.
His eyes like polished chocolate never left hers.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My denim mini and cropped, faded Tee, folded neatly in a pile on the coarse wood boards.
Black cotton pants sitting on top like a twisted knotty whipped topping. Her flip flops carelessly discarded, huddled beside.
HIM: Behind him their scuffed and raggy school shoes mumbled, toes to her.
Fidgeting, fumbling, secretly towards him
Towards her.
He could feel them pulling tight around him in a gaggle.
Their anticipation prickling the back of his neck, tongues trapped in suspense.
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers.
SHE: I turned my back and curled my toes to grip the unfinished wood, on the end, raw and splintered. Spray dowsing my lips with its stingy salty kiss. I imagined it was his excitement I could taste.
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My skin puckered into millions of tiny pimples as the wind slipped around me. Wrapping me in its evening song grasp.
HER: Will she?
Whisper
Hold your breath
SHE: I closed my eyes, lifted my heels, rocking my naked pink, puckered body towards the nothingness of the milky green rhapsody.
Teasing them, it, him, myself
And let them root again.
(Pause)
1,2
HIM: 3,4,5
HER: 6
SHE: 7,8,9
HIM: 10,11
HER: 12
SHE: 13,14
HIM: 15,16,17
HER: 18, 19,20
SHE: 21! Shit.
(Pause)
I never could say no, not when it mattered.
(Pause)
So I jumped.
HIM: Cold
Biting
Wet
Silence
Disappear
His chocolate, polished eyes, never left hers
Bubbles
Wet
Cold
Wet
Disappear
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I surfaced
HIM: His polished, chocolate eyes never left hers…hers.
Gulping
Gasping
Sharp air
Bursting through the green, green surface
Her naked pink toes propelling her up, up
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers….hers.
HER: Closer
Whisper
Don't breath
Will she?
Are you?
Don't breath.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered
His polished chocolate eyes on me, steadfast stallion in his faith.
HIM: Pulled up tight around him in a gaggle
jaws slack, mouths wide and gaping
SHE: I surfaced like a bobbing Holy Mary mother of God
A naked pink beacon
The flesh incarnate
Dripping wet defender of his faith
Him, you, you.
HIM: Gaping, slack, lolling tongues they looked on.
Not him though, his polished chocolate eyes on her, on her.
Drinking her up, setting fire to her intestines
Flames, licking and tickling her lust. He could taste the same salt that clung to her body, his siren song of the sea. Still he stood, his eyes on hers, on her. Touching her with his gaze but his fingers stayed siren
Clean.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I climbed up refusing their outstretched fingers, that green, green liquid fleeing my flesh as I hauled up and onto the coarse, wet wood.
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
SHE: 1,2,3
HER: Will she?
SHE: 4,5,6
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
16:30 Makers Diary: Woman text draft two
HIM: Cascading through the skylight, the moon danced across her cheek, reflecting in her green eyes as she spun. Seductive and lilting to the melody. Meandering and weaving like lazy beasts through the brush, the glowing candles cast their reflections on the flock wall paper. Her laugh melting into the air like liquid chocolate, rich and smooth. God I want her. (beat) Her scent radiating, washing over me as I let myself fall into her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be. Bare toes pushing off the carpet as she spun, whirling, infecting me with her pleasure. God I want her
HER: They danced. Tight to one another, rhythmic flesh on flesh, becoming whole with the ambience of the moment. He leant in, brushing her neck with his lips, pushing her hair back from her face. He tipped his head and closed his eyes in readiness of his lips on hers.
SHE: There's something I need to tell you.
HIM: Shhh
HER: He kissed her, long, deep and full-bodied.
(They kiss for a long while. Once they stop she whispers in his ear and the kissing turns to a struggle. She is trying to cling to him and he is trying to push her away. He pushes her hard onto the floor…there is a very long pause as they both catch their breaths and she gets up.)
Standing there before him, eyes wide, so vulnerable and broken.
Tears making their blue grey mascara trickle across her high flushed cheeks; gracing the edge of her lips and then absorbing into her collar.
Her, she, gasping, rasping in a whisper she extends her hand towards him and pleads.
HIM: "Don't go" she begged as I threw my eyes to the floor avoiding her watery gaze. I couldn't answer, couldn't look. Her, she; the swelling dark welt spreading around her left eye.
SHE: Look at me
(She extends her hand to touch his but can't reach.)
You fuck! (Beat) You fucker.
Look at me when I am talking to you.
If you walk out that door its over. Do you hear me? If you leave were through. Are you fucking hearing me?
You can't even bear the sight of me can you? Can you?
Say something, anything, don't just stand there. Fuck.
Please.
HER: Her hand still extended, she stood rooted to the floor, shaking, her body shuddering, frail and needing; racked with silent weeping. Her eyes boring into the top of his head, willing him to her.
HIM: I couldn't move, keeping my eyes on my shifting naked, bloody feet. Shards of green glass and thin maroon liquid adorning the floor in a crystal carpet of rubble. But still I can't face her. Her, she, that malignant swelling flesh around her wide, wet eye.
SHE: Say something, don't just ignore me, I can't bear it.
Look at me
Christ what the fuck do you want me to say.
Say something. Speak, yell, anything please.
I'm sorry.
HER: she stepped forward, only a little, tentative, rocking into movement. The crystal green glass sheen crunching under her weight, pressing into her soles releasing scarlet bubbles onto her milky skin. She touched his hand, a brush with her fingers but she didn't take hold.
SHE: It doesn't matter.
Please don't do this.
HIM: I drew away, her cold delicate long fingers churning my stomach.
I swung my body clumsily to the side, retching, heaving and I vomited. Once, twice; my puke spreading out amongst the glass blood and shallow maroon lake.
SHE: Please baby, I…
HER: She dropped to her knees and wailed, wretched, lost and broken, yowling her pain to the vaulted ceiling; her floral print dress stretched tight across her bump, her unborn flesh. She laid her hands flat, palms to the floor as she wept.
HIM: I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, took a shallow breath, bile burning in my nostrils. I stood upright and put my back to her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be and that, (beat) that black puffy wet eye. I began to make for the door, slowly, lumbering, so heavy and sore.
SHE: Go on then, piss off, that's it fuck off.
Useless fucking cunt (beat) get out.
HER: As he moved to the door, she leapt up, lunged at his back, holding him to her, to her body, to her bump.
HIM: I was stuck
SHE: I didn't mean it, don't leave. Please (beat) please, shit, don't go. Fuck, you know I, I mean, fuck, fuck. You can't I need you, we need you.
HER: she held him to her, clinging, her limbs wrapped about his sore, bleeding body, her head resting, no nestling in his damp sweaty hair.
SHE: Don't go! Don't leave me.
Oh god, don't leave us.
HER: She flailed and clung as he wrenched at her limbs.
She flailed and clung, her, she, his lover, mother to be.
Her, she, his lover, mother to be.
SHE: (Screams)
Makers Diary: text 21-new draft
SHE: 1,2,3
HIM: 4,5,6
HER: 7,8,9
SHE: 10,11,12
HIM: 13,14,15
SHE: 16, 17
HER: 18
HIM: 19,20
SHE: 21. Shit!
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Is she?
Which will it be?
SHE: So I slipped off my pumps…..
One at a time
Let them drop, wriggling my bare toes on the coarse wet wood, cool under the pink soles of my feet.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I dropped the handset back into its cradle and tentatively let my tongue slip along my bottom lip, making it gleam with moisture; the gentle fizz of anticipation and excitement bubbling up from my stomach as an aftertaste of his breath on the line.
I hadn't been serious
When I screwed up my face, wrinkling my nose, as the backdoor yawned open, threatening to give me away.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I eased my fingers down over the gnarled and frayed hem, sliding the fabric up my thighs til it bunched up into a fist full of creases at the top of my thigh. Not even when I swung my leg over the cross bar and standing up, pushed down on the pedal.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I took a man-sized swig of Kiwi 20/20, let it scorch down my throat, fuelling my bravado, voiced in giggles.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I triumphantly announced 21, apathetically tossed them dare with a shrug.
I hadn't been serious
When I swung off the track between the trees, gravel crunching under the swerve of my sun bleached, salt bitten tyres.
I hadn't been serious
When I let the handle slip from my grasp, its hollow frame clattering onto the grey stone, waving to them as it landed.
(Pause)
Her: I don't believe you
Do you think she will?
She always does
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I could feel their eyes on my feet willing my nakedness to travel past my knees and infect the rest of me.
I could almost/
HER: See
Smell
Sense
SHE: Their breath catching
Shallow
Eyes wide, on the brink of belief.
HIM: Not him though
Breath streaming out of his nose like a stallion
Only still. Calm. His faith steadfast, she could sense it.
His eyes like polished chocolate never left hers.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My denim mini and cropped, faded Tee, folded neatly in a pile on the coarse wood boards.
Black cotton pants sitting on top like a twisted knotty whipped topping. Her flip flops carelessly discarded, huddled beside.
HIM: Behind him their scuffed and raggy school shoes mumbled, toes to her.
Fidgeting, fumbling, secretly towards him
Towards her.
He could feel them pulling tight around him in a gaggle.
Their anticipation prickling the back of his neck, tongues trapped in suspense.
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers.
SHE: I turned my back and curled my toes to grip the unfinished wood, on the end, raw and splintered. Spray dowsing my lips with its stingy salty kiss. I imagined it was his excitement I could taste.
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My skin puckered into millions of tiny pimples as the wind slipped around me. Wrapping me in its evening song grasp.
HER: Will she?
Whisper
Hold your breath
SHE: I closed my eyes, lifted my heels, rocking my naked pink, puckered body towards the nothingness of the milky green rhapsody.
Teasing them, it, him, myself
And let them root again.
(Pause)
1,2
HIM: 3,4,5
HER: 6
SHE: 7,8,9
HIM: 10,11
HER: 12
SHE: 13,14
HIM: 15,16,17
HER: 18, 19,20
SHE: 21! Shit.
(Pause)
I never could say no, not when it mattered.
(Pause)
So I jumped.
HIM: Cold
Biting
Wet
Silence
Disappear
His chocolate, polished eyes, never left hers
Bubbles
Wet
Cold
Wet
Disappear
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I surfaced
HIM: His polished, chocolate eyes never left hers…hers.
Gulping
Gasping
Sharp air
Bursting through the green, green surface
Her naked pink toes propelling her up, up
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers….hers.
HER: Closer
Whisper
Don't breath
Will she?
Are you?
Don't breath.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered
His polished chocolate eyes on me, steadfast stallion in his faith.
HIM: Pulled up tight around him in a gaggle
jaws slack, mouths wide and gaping
SHE: I surfaced like a bobbing Holy Mary mother of God
A naked pink beacon
The flesh incarnate
Dripping wet defender of his faith
Him, you, you.
HIM: Gaping, slack, lolling tongues they looked on.
Not him though, his polished chocolate eyes on her, on her.
Drinking her up, setting fire to her intestines
Flames, licking and tickling her lust. He could taste the same salt that clung to her body, his siren song of the sea. Still he stood, his eyes on hers, on her. Touching her with his gaze but his fingers stayed siren
Clean.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I climbed up refusing their outstretched fingers, that green, green liquid fleeing my flesh as I hauled up and onto the coarse, wet wood.
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
SHE: 1,2,3
HER: Will she?
SHE: 4,5,6
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
16:30 Makers Diary: Woman text draft two
HIM: Cascading through the skylight, the moon danced across her cheek, reflecting in her green eyes as she spun. Seductive and lilting to the melody. Meandering and weaving like lazy beasts through the brush, the glowing candles cast their reflections on the flock wall paper. Her laugh melting into the air like liquid chocolate, rich and smooth. God I want her. (beat) Her scent radiating, washing over me as I let myself fall into her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be. Bare toes pushing off the carpet as she spun, whirling, infecting me with her pleasure. God I want her
HER: They danced. Tight to one another, rhythmic flesh on flesh, becoming whole with the ambience of the moment. He leant in, brushing her neck with his lips, pushing her hair back from her face. He tipped his head and closed his eyes in readiness of his lips on hers.
SHE: There's something I need to tell you.
HIM: Shhh
HER: He kissed her, long, deep and full-bodied.
(They kiss for a long while. Once they stop she whispers in his ear and the kissing turns to a struggle. She is trying to cling to him and he is trying to push her away. He pushes her hard onto the floor…there is a very long pause as they both catch their breaths and she gets up.)
Standing there before him, eyes wide, so vulnerable and broken.
Tears making their blue grey mascara trickle across her high flushed cheeks; gracing the edge of her lips and then absorbing into her collar.
Her, she, gasping, rasping in a whisper she extends her hand towards him and pleads.
HIM: "Don't go" she begged as I threw my eyes to the floor avoiding her watery gaze. I couldn't answer, couldn't look. Her, she; the swelling dark welt spreading around her left eye.
SHE: Look at me
(She extends her hand to touch his but can't reach.)
You fuck! (Beat) You fucker.
Look at me when I am talking to you.
If you walk out that door its over. Do you hear me? If you leave were through. Are you fucking hearing me?
You can't even bear the sight of me can you? Can you?
Say something, anything, don't just stand there. Fuck.
Please.
HER: Her hand still extended, she stood rooted to the floor, shaking, her body shuddering, frail and needing; racked with silent weeping. Her eyes boring into the top of his head, willing him to her.
HIM: I couldn't move, keeping my eyes on my shifting naked, bloody feet. Shards of green glass and thin maroon liquid adorning the floor in a crystal carpet of rubble. But still I can't face her. Her, she, that malignant swelling flesh around her wide, wet eye.
SHE: Say something, don't just ignore me, I can't bear it.
Look at me
Christ what the fuck do you want me to say.
Say something. Speak, yell, anything please.
I'm sorry.
HER: she stepped forward, only a little, tentative, rocking into movement. The crystal green glass sheen crunching under her weight, pressing into her soles releasing scarlet bubbles onto her milky skin. She touched his hand, a brush with her fingers but she didn't take hold.
SHE: It doesn't matter.
Please don't do this.
HIM: I drew away, her cold delicate long fingers churning my stomach.
I swung my body clumsily to the side, retching, heaving and I vomited. Once, twice; my puke spreading out amongst the glass blood and shallow maroon lake.
SHE: Please baby, I…
HER: She dropped to her knees and wailed, wretched, lost and broken, yowling her pain to the vaulted ceiling; her floral print dress stretched tight across her bump, her unborn flesh. She laid her hands flat, palms to the floor as she wept.
HIM: I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, took a shallow breath, bile burning in my nostrils. I stood upright and put my back to her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be and that, (beat) that black puffy wet eye. I began to make for the door, slowly, lumbering, so heavy and sore.
SHE: Go on then, piss off, that's it fuck off.
Useless fucking cunt (beat) get out.
HER: As he moved to the door, she leapt up, lunged at his back, holding him to her, to her body, to her bump.
HIM: I was stuck
SHE: I didn't mean it, don't leave. Please (beat) please, shit, don't go. Fuck, you know I, I mean, fuck, fuck. You can't I need you, we need you.
HER: she held him to her, clinging, her limbs wrapped about his sore, bleeding body, her head resting, no nestling in his damp sweaty hair.
SHE: Don't go! Don't leave me.
Oh god, don't leave us.
HER: She flailed and clung as he wrenched at her limbs.
She flailed and clung, her, she, his lover, mother to be.
Her, she, his lover, mother to be.
SHE: (Screams)
HIM: 4,5,6
HER: 7,8,9
SHE: 10,11,12
HIM: 13,14,15
SHE: 16, 17
HER: 18
HIM: 19,20
SHE: 21. Shit!
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Is she?
Which will it be?
SHE: So I slipped off my pumps…..
One at a time
Let them drop, wriggling my bare toes on the coarse wet wood, cool under the pink soles of my feet.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I dropped the handset back into its cradle and tentatively let my tongue slip along my bottom lip, making it gleam with moisture; the gentle fizz of anticipation and excitement bubbling up from my stomach as an aftertaste of his breath on the line.
I hadn't been serious
When I screwed up my face, wrinkling my nose, as the backdoor yawned open, threatening to give me away.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I eased my fingers down over the gnarled and frayed hem, sliding the fabric up my thighs til it bunched up into a fist full of creases at the top of my thigh. Not even when I swung my leg over the cross bar and standing up, pushed down on the pedal.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I took a man-sized swig of Kiwi 20/20, let it scorch down my throat, fuelling my bravado, voiced in giggles.
I hadn't been serious
Not when I triumphantly announced 21, apathetically tossed them dare with a shrug.
I hadn't been serious
When I swung off the track between the trees, gravel crunching under the swerve of my sun bleached, salt bitten tyres.
I hadn't been serious
When I let the handle slip from my grasp, its hollow frame clattering onto the grey stone, waving to them as it landed.
(Pause)
Her: I don't believe you
Do you think she will?
She always does
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I could feel their eyes on my feet willing my nakedness to travel past my knees and infect the rest of me.
I could almost/
HER: See
Smell
Sense
SHE: Their breath catching
Shallow
Eyes wide, on the brink of belief.
HIM: Not him though
Breath streaming out of his nose like a stallion
Only still. Calm. His faith steadfast, she could sense it.
His eyes like polished chocolate never left hers.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My denim mini and cropped, faded Tee, folded neatly in a pile on the coarse wood boards.
Black cotton pants sitting on top like a twisted knotty whipped topping. Her flip flops carelessly discarded, huddled beside.
HIM: Behind him their scuffed and raggy school shoes mumbled, toes to her.
Fidgeting, fumbling, secretly towards him
Towards her.
He could feel them pulling tight around him in a gaggle.
Their anticipation prickling the back of his neck, tongues trapped in suspense.
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers.
SHE: I turned my back and curled my toes to grip the unfinished wood, on the end, raw and splintered. Spray dowsing my lips with its stingy salty kiss. I imagined it was his excitement I could taste.
I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
My skin puckered into millions of tiny pimples as the wind slipped around me. Wrapping me in its evening song grasp.
HER: Will she?
Whisper
Hold your breath
SHE: I closed my eyes, lifted my heels, rocking my naked pink, puckered body towards the nothingness of the milky green rhapsody.
Teasing them, it, him, myself
And let them root again.
(Pause)
1,2
HIM: 3,4,5
HER: 6
SHE: 7,8,9
HIM: 10,11
HER: 12
SHE: 13,14
HIM: 15,16,17
HER: 18, 19,20
SHE: 21! Shit.
(Pause)
I never could say no, not when it mattered.
(Pause)
So I jumped.
HIM: Cold
Biting
Wet
Silence
Disappear
His chocolate, polished eyes, never left hers
Bubbles
Wet
Cold
Wet
Disappear
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
Silence
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
HER: Will you?
Are you?
Which will it be?
SHE: I surfaced
HIM: His polished, chocolate eyes never left hers…hers.
Gulping
Gasping
Sharp air
Bursting through the green, green surface
Her naked pink toes propelling her up, up
His polished chocolate eyes never left hers….hers.
HER: Closer
Whisper
Don't breath
Will she?
Are you?
Don't breath.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered
His polished chocolate eyes on me, steadfast stallion in his faith.
HIM: Pulled up tight around him in a gaggle
jaws slack, mouths wide and gaping
SHE: I surfaced like a bobbing Holy Mary mother of God
A naked pink beacon
The flesh incarnate
Dripping wet defender of his faith
Him, you, you.
HIM: Gaping, slack, lolling tongues they looked on.
Not him though, his polished chocolate eyes on her, on her.
Drinking her up, setting fire to her intestines
Flames, licking and tickling her lust. He could taste the same salt that clung to her body, his siren song of the sea. Still he stood, his eyes on hers, on her. Touching her with his gaze but his fingers stayed siren
Clean.
SHE: I never could say no, well not when it mattered.
I climbed up refusing their outstretched fingers, that green, green liquid fleeing my flesh as I hauled up and onto the coarse, wet wood.
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
SHE: 1,2,3
HER: Will she?
SHE: 4,5,6
HIM: His polished chocolate eyes on her, hers.
16:30 Makers Diary: Woman text draft two
HIM: Cascading through the skylight, the moon danced across her cheek, reflecting in her green eyes as she spun. Seductive and lilting to the melody. Meandering and weaving like lazy beasts through the brush, the glowing candles cast their reflections on the flock wall paper. Her laugh melting into the air like liquid chocolate, rich and smooth. God I want her. (beat) Her scent radiating, washing over me as I let myself fall into her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be. Bare toes pushing off the carpet as she spun, whirling, infecting me with her pleasure. God I want her
HER: They danced. Tight to one another, rhythmic flesh on flesh, becoming whole with the ambience of the moment. He leant in, brushing her neck with his lips, pushing her hair back from her face. He tipped his head and closed his eyes in readiness of his lips on hers.
SHE: There's something I need to tell you.
HIM: Shhh
HER: He kissed her, long, deep and full-bodied.
(They kiss for a long while. Once they stop she whispers in his ear and the kissing turns to a struggle. She is trying to cling to him and he is trying to push her away. He pushes her hard onto the floor…there is a very long pause as they both catch their breaths and she gets up.)
Standing there before him, eyes wide, so vulnerable and broken.
Tears making their blue grey mascara trickle across her high flushed cheeks; gracing the edge of her lips and then absorbing into her collar.
Her, she, gasping, rasping in a whisper she extends her hand towards him and pleads.
HIM: "Don't go" she begged as I threw my eyes to the floor avoiding her watery gaze. I couldn't answer, couldn't look. Her, she; the swelling dark welt spreading around her left eye.
SHE: Look at me
(She extends her hand to touch his but can't reach.)
You fuck! (Beat) You fucker.
Look at me when I am talking to you.
If you walk out that door its over. Do you hear me? If you leave were through. Are you fucking hearing me?
You can't even bear the sight of me can you? Can you?
Say something, anything, don't just stand there. Fuck.
Please.
HER: Her hand still extended, she stood rooted to the floor, shaking, her body shuddering, frail and needing; racked with silent weeping. Her eyes boring into the top of his head, willing him to her.
HIM: I couldn't move, keeping my eyes on my shifting naked, bloody feet. Shards of green glass and thin maroon liquid adorning the floor in a crystal carpet of rubble. But still I can't face her. Her, she, that malignant swelling flesh around her wide, wet eye.
SHE: Say something, don't just ignore me, I can't bear it.
Look at me
Christ what the fuck do you want me to say.
Say something. Speak, yell, anything please.
I'm sorry.
HER: she stepped forward, only a little, tentative, rocking into movement. The crystal green glass sheen crunching under her weight, pressing into her soles releasing scarlet bubbles onto her milky skin. She touched his hand, a brush with her fingers but she didn't take hold.
SHE: It doesn't matter.
Please don't do this.
HIM: I drew away, her cold delicate long fingers churning my stomach.
I swung my body clumsily to the side, retching, heaving and I vomited. Once, twice; my puke spreading out amongst the glass blood and shallow maroon lake.
SHE: Please baby, I…
HER: She dropped to her knees and wailed, wretched, lost and broken, yowling her pain to the vaulted ceiling; her floral print dress stretched tight across her bump, her unborn flesh. She laid her hands flat, palms to the floor as she wept.
HIM: I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, took a shallow breath, bile burning in my nostrils. I stood upright and put my back to her. Her, she, my lover, mother to be and that, (beat) that black puffy wet eye. I began to make for the door, slowly, lumbering, so heavy and sore.
SHE: Go on then, piss off, that's it fuck off.
Useless fucking cunt (beat) get out.
HER: As he moved to the door, she leapt up, lunged at his back, holding him to her, to her body, to her bump.
HIM: I was stuck
SHE: I didn't mean it, don't leave. Please (beat) please, shit, don't go. Fuck, you know I, I mean, fuck, fuck. You can't I need you, we need you.
HER: she held him to her, clinging, her limbs wrapped about his sore, bleeding body, her head resting, no nestling in his damp sweaty hair.
SHE: Don't go! Don't leave me.
Oh god, don't leave us.
HER: She flailed and clung as he wrenched at her limbs.
She flailed and clung, her, she, his lover, mother to be.
Her, she, his lover, mother to be.
SHE: (Screams)
Friday 20 April 2007
See-Hear-Feel Conference Paper
The 'Collaborative' Spectator – Conceptualising the Contemporary Theatre Audience
INTRO
My name is Joanna Bucknall; I am a 2nd year, fulltime PhD student in the Faculty of Arts at Winchester University. My thesis is currently entitled: Participatory Theatre: (Re) Conceptualising the Contemporary Theatre Audience. My thesis is an investigation that seeks to explore and understand the nature of specific audiences' experiences of particular contemporary, participatory theatre events. My main research concern is understanding the role and nature of the audience through investigating particular participatory instances by examining both the production and reception of certain theatrical events. Today I want to share with you some of the key research concerns that underpin my thesis.
I want to suggest that the contemporary theatre audience can be understood to occupy the role of 'collaborator' and that it is this role that is fundamental to the very nature of theatre itself. In short, I wish to assert that the collaborative spectator is a crucial principle that underpins our understanding of what designates theatre as such and I hope to demonstrate that accepting the audience in the role of collaborator, has far reaching implications for both production and reception theory within the discipline of theatre.
SECTION ONE: WHAT IS THE COLLABORATIVE SPECTATOR?
In most Western contemporary theatre, the audience is an element that makes up and completes the theatrical event. It is in this sense that the audience's role can be understood to be that of 'collaborator'; as Bert O States suggests: 'I would prefer a less clumsy term than collaborative […] but it suggests the main idea: [to recognise a] break down [in] the distance between actor and audience and to [acknowledge] the spectator [in] more than a passive role in the theatre exchange.' (States 1985: 170) There are of course varying degrees of collaboration and in some cases even participation, and as States also acknowledges, 'the invitation to collaborate varies, of course, from the implicit, [what I term base-level], and from the token to the literal,' which I have designated the creatorly participant. (States 1985: 170) I want to focus on what I term 'base level' collaboration and suggest that the role of the audience is always collaborative. Collaborative in that it is fundamentally embedded into the ontology of each and every kind of theatrical event, from Pantomime, through Drama and even musicals, that can be described as theatre. In fact, the audience is an essential ingredient for theatre to be called such and it is a factor that differentiates theatre from other performance mediums such as Film and Television. As Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner claim, 'Although Brechtian theatre may indeed pack a certain punch, it is not due to the so-called 'alienation effect', because there is not foundational cognitive distinction between "active" and "passive" spectators. (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 20)
An assumption that much of our contemporary reception theory has been built on is that the theatre audience is passive: Brecht worked to transform the spectator into witness using his own 'Epic' techniques, setting up an alternative to the conventions of dramatic theatre to penetrate the fourth wall and liberate the audience. His techniques have been revisited, reworked and re-conceptualised in a plethora of manifestations, throughout the last century through modernism, absurdist and even postmodernism. However, the assumption that the dramatic theatre audience were passive in the first place underpins the majority of our contemporary understandings of the audience's role, even if the theory is looking to change that role: 'The linkage between theatricality and blending also complicates the usual distinctions dividing realistic from overtly theatrical productions and "passive" from "active" spectators.' (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 20) It is only in recent years that through the work of theorists such as Bert O States, Iain Mackintosh and Gay McAuley that we have come to begin to acknowledge, as Mackintosh suggests, that 'the audience's role is an active not passive one' (Mackintosh 1993: 2), in drama as well as the multiplicities and varying manifestations of 'epic' or other non-dramatic theatre forms.
In film and television, the production is complete before the audience become its receivers. The work is finished without the presence of the audience, they are not required to make up or finish the work; although reality shows like Big Brother, How do You Solve a Problem like Maria, X Factor and Dancing on Ice are an obvious exception. The typical film and TV audience's presence does not affect the work itself and their presence at the cinema or in front of the TV set is not required to complete the work itself. The work remains the same and unchanged regardless of the action or inaction of the viewers; 'the cinema goer's communication with that ghostly image on screen is one way: all he or she can do is listen and watch.' (Mackintosh 1993: 2) In theatre, whether it be dramatic, epic, avant-garde, pantomime, puppetry, non-literary or Postdramatic, it requires the audiences presence to complete the event, without an audience in attendance, there is no theatrical event. This is one of the key elements that differentiate theatre from TV and film; it is a question of 'liveness' and 'presence'. Peggy Phelan asserts, 'the interaction between the art object and the spectator, is essentially performative' (Phelan 1993: 147), the 'art object' in this case being theatre, only becomes itself through the dialogue and disappearance that it stages with the spectator: 'Performances being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance.' (Phelan 1993: 146)
The audience itself is not a complete unit or a whole or even in existence until it is in attendance at the particular theatrical event. The audience is not a fixed concept or fixed body of people that can be pre-conceptualised, instead the audience is made up of individuals and small sub groups who attend any given theatrical event. The audience only comes into being when those individuals and sub groups come together at a theatrical event and are manifest as audience through their interaction with the work and each other under specific theatrical conditions. Time, space and proximity directly construct the audience, bringing it into existence, as Herbert Blau suggests: ' the audience-as I have come to see it from over thirty years in the theatre-is not so much a mere congregation of people as a body of thought and desire. It does not exist before the play [or theatre event] but is initiated or precipitated by it, it is not an entity to begin with but a consciousness constructed.'(Blau 1990: 25)
If we are to acknowledge the audience as constructed in and through the event, then we are acknowledging their role as a collaborator. Even the term audience is not as unambiguous as we might fist suspect. 'The problems surrounding the concept stem mainly from the fact that a single and simple word is being applied to an increasingly diverse and complex reality, open to alternative and competing theoretical formulations.' (McQuail 1997: 1)Therefore, if the theatrical event can be understood as constituting an interaction between performers and audience, together, live, in a particular space and at a particular time under certain creative circumstances, then as McAuley succinctly points out, 'the spectator has to be seen as a crucial and active agent in the creative process.' (McAuley 2000: 238)
SECTION TWO: THE PROBLEMATICS OF EXISTING RECEPTION MODELS
Accepting the audience in this role means that the ways in which we conceptualise and theorise the audience needs to be re-addressed. Much theatrical reception is influenced by and taken from research undertaken within the disciplines of film and literature; 'because we have literalised the reading metaphor-we say that we 'read' television, 'read' fashion, 'read' a situation, or 'read' a mind-we have blurred the line that separates two basically different processes. We do not 'read' [..] theatrical performances: we perceive them. (Mancing: 189, in Hart & McConachie 2006) I want to suggest that acknowledging the audience's role as collaborator problematises much of our contemporary models and theories. In occupying the role of the collaborator, I want to suggest that the audience can no longer be conceptualised as 'reader' or 'receiver'. The audience as 'reader' or 'receiver' implies that they posses a certain level of objectivity, that they are able to stand outside of the event looking in, however, for me this level of objectivity is problematic when the audience, as I have shown, is implicated so fundamentally in the very ontology of the event. Performers enter the performance space and open 'the theatres doors to the world outside, demanding the audience speak, stand and encounter them directly.' (Escolme 2005: 4) If the audience is a live, active collaborator then they are implicated in the events make up and cannot simply stand aside or outside of that which they are irrevocably involved in.
The difficulty with semiotics, deconstruction and other contemporary models of spectatorship is that they, as McAuley notes, 'seem to be largely speculative. (what it was hoped would happen rather than what did in fact happen.)' (McAuley 2000: 238)The conceptualisation and understanding of the audience and their role in contemporary reception theory seems 'to be based not on the experience of actual performances but on either a kind of virtual performance imagined on the basis of reading play texts or on the assumption that theatre functions like some other performance practice.' (McAuley 2000: 239) Very little work has been done which actually takes into account Blau's notion that the audience is constructed in and through each specific theatrical manifestation. In short the actual audience is absent or neglected in our current reception theories. Thus, it would appear that the concept of the collaborating audience requires approaches that take into account the phenomenological aspects of that role. In order to understand the collaborating audience their actual experiences need to be gathered and studied: 'the theatrical space is a phenomenological space, governed by the body and its spatial concerns, a non-Cartesian field of habitation which undermines the stance of objectivity and in which the categories of subject and object give way to a relationship of mutual implication.' (Garner 1994: 3-4)
SECTION THREE: THE PROBLEM OF EXPERIENCE
The concept of the collaborative audience puts emphasis on the phenomenology of the theatrical event; experience and presence become deeply significant. Phenomenological aspects of the event are brought to the fore and the audiences experience becomes a central concern. Due to the ephemeral nature of the theatrical event and thus the experiences of the audience, it makes it difficult to conceptualise and theorise. A Phenomenological approach, as Stanton B Garner states, '-with its twin perspective on the world as it is perceived and inhabited, and the emphasis on embodied subjectivity that has characterised the work of its practitioners (notably Merleau-Ponty and those influenced by his work in philosophy and medical phenomenology)- is uniquely able to illuminate the stage's experiential duality.' (Garner 1994: 3)However, although phenomenological aspects of the theatrical event are the key to understanding the role of the collaborative audience, phenomenology is not in itself a model or methodology of inquiry.
In order to understand the phenomenology of the theatrical event, strategies and devices have to be developed and applied for recording and documenting the actual experiences in order to then theorise and conceptualise them as wider theory. Perception and reception therefore comprises an act of rhythmic construction of work "theatre doesn't happen to someone, they make theatre" happen to them.' (Pavis: 14, in Berghaus 2001) Methods need to be developed and applied that capture the ways in which the audience, see, hear and feel. These strategies and devices need to be developed so that they can be applied in collecting actual material experiences rather than relying on virtual or imagined experiences. If indeed the experience is so central to understanding the nature and role of the collaborative audience, then we need not only find modes of recording and documenting experiences but we also need to understand the ways in which those experiences are constructed and how meaning is made from those encounters. Roth & Frisby suggest that 'The term perception refers to the means by which information acquired from the environment via the sense organs is transformed into experiences of objects, events, sounds and tastes.' (Roth & Frisby 1986: 81) In developing documentational strategies, I want to suggest that there are two core concerns that must be considered: What is the documentational evidence in relation to the vanished event? And How can that evidence be rigorously conceptualised in order to gain understanding without being a reductive activity?
In my own research, I have developed methodologies and strategies that I hope show a rigorous approach to those concerns. I have adopted and developed the roles of reflective participant and reflected practitioner in order to collect and record the experiential aspects of particular theatrical events in their production and subsequent live manifestation. In my research activity to date, I have been adopting the role of reflective participant in order to approach the work of specific and particular contemporary makers, such as Blast Theory, Forced Entertainment, Barbarras and Carlos Cortes. By participating in the events themselves as not only a collaborative member of the audience but also in the critical role of reflective participant, I have generated anecdotal and documentational traces of the events that I have attended. Biggs distinguishes between the different types of artistic practice: '(1) art as therapy (for the individual), (2) art as cultural practice (the production of works of art), and (3) art as research.' (Biggs 2003) In order to approach the work of others, which falls within either category one or two, my approach a researcher must be from a critical perspective: the reflective participant. I want to suggest that the role of the reflective participant is reflexive because in generating personal and localised anecdotal evidence as well as documentational evidence, I am re-enacting the event itself, re-participating in its make up through my research activity. In this context the documentation for research may stand for proof for the live event, but it also becomes something else from it and thus never fully documents it; the nature of live Art is in the liveness of both its delivery and fruition, but also of the continuously shifting contextualisation of its produced supplements. (Cologni 2003)
I am currently in the production stages of the PARiP section of my PhD research activity and throughout this process I am adopting the role of the reflective practitioner. 'Through reflection, he [the practitioner] can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialized practice [in this case performance] and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness, which he may allow himself to experience.' (Schön 1983: 61) By asserting the use of reflection-in-action, the practitioner can lend new insights into their practice as well as other research questions and concerns that may underpin the artistic activity. Therefore, the practitioner who chooses to take up reflection-in-action as an ethic for practical inquiry and as a research strategy is taking up the role of reflective-practitioner. As well as recording and documenting my own participation as maker, researcher and audience during the production and resulting live event, I will also be collecting the experiences of the other collaborators involved in the making process and the final collaborators, the audience. I will be gathering all traces of each performance element in order to re-enact the live event through its various documentations, with the view to gaining an insight into nature and function of the production and reception.
All the evidence that I have and will collect during the course of my PARiP activity will be localised and specific to the circumstances in which it was generated and collected. The localised, anecdotal and documentational evidence that I have and will collect throughout the PARiP activity, is only ever partial; just traces and ghosts, that through their re-enactment of the actual live event, create a changed and different manifestation of that which they were created by. All that is left to offer is simply dust; 'performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance…[as] it betrays and lessens the promise of it' own ontology.' (Phelan 1993: 149)
The methods of collecting evidence that I am applying will only ever produce a ghostly re-enactment, partial and changed, for the work of others as well as my own and is a factor which needs to be considered in the conceptualisation of the research findings. Although the documentation and anecdotal evidence will provide some insight into the experiences of those involved in the events, they do not stand up as a complete understanding or theory for the nature and role of the audience. The experiences themselves need to be subjected to modes of inquiry that will conceptualise the experiences in order to discover the implications for wider theoretical concerns: aesthetically, socially and culturally. Care and caution has to be exercised in approaching the material, so as not to be reductive or grandly universal with the subjective and localised material. I want to suggest that new and startling developments in the arena of cognitive science and particularly in cognitive materialism, afford the opportunity to conceptualise this type of research material with the care and caution that it demands. 'We define the scope of cognitive science as the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind. [Cognitive materialism is the discipline of applied cognitive science within the realm of cultural activities] Its practices and knowledge derive from those of the primary contributing disciplines, which are computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and philosophy. It seeks to understand how the mind works. (Green 1996: 5)
SECTION FOUR: COGNITIVE MATERIALISM
Cognitive materialism is essentially an empirical methodology that presumes certain biological and material truths about the human body/mind/brain. It is concerned with the way in which the mind/brain perceives on a phenomenological level. The core understanding that informs the discipline is that the mind/brain is embodied. 'The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are the three major findings of cognitive science. More than two millennia of a priori philosophical speculation about these aspects of reason are over. Because of these discoveries, philosophy [and in turn our understanding of theatre] can never be the same again.' (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 3) However, despite the base level claims to certain material truths, cognitive materialism does make room for the concept of the personal and recognises that the processes of making meaning are reliant, to a certain extent, upon our social, cultural, environmental and particular personal circumstances. 'Although the plasticity and creativity of human behaviour are striking, the cognitive processes that underlie this flexibility are bounded by our cognitive make up and by our experiences. Architectural constraints on our behaviour are a result of the way our minds are constructed as distinct from those constraints that arise from habit, learning or features of our individual experience.' (Green 1996: 6) It recognises the locality and subjectivity that is required to fall inline with certain aspects of postmodernist thought. It is empirical but not entirely universal.
The empirical aspect of cognitive materialism is in the assertion that most human mind/brains function at the same basic cognitive and perceptual levels, (with the exception of minds/brains that have sustained damage or malformation). Cognitive science has discovered that the ways in which human mind/brains perceive is the same across race and culture, the biology that drives our computational systems function in an identical manner for all human beings. However, the ways in which we formulate those perceptions into meaning, the way we express ourselves and ultimately respond to sensimor stimuli, is subject to particular personal and localised circumstances. 'We can conceive of human cognition as taking place along a continuum, with perception at one pole and symbolization at the other. Most of what happens in our everyday cognitive processes involves some combination of the two.' (Mancing: 191, in Hart & McConachie 2006)
This device is useful in conceptualising the performer/audience relationship because it lends insight and helps to understand how the experiences of the performers and audiences are formulated. It will generate through this, the opportunity to understand what the implications are for those experiences within the wider context of theatre theory. 'Cognitive studies, offers a more empirically responsible path to knowledge in cultural history [as well as theatre and performance studies] than psychoanalysis, including it Lacanian developments.' (McConachie 2006: 54)
CONCLUSION
Phenomenological approaches to theatre criticism make experience the central concern and through reflective strategies and devices of recording and collecting those experiences, cognitive materialism can be applied in order to gain new, empirically based insights into the ways in which the audience take up their role.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berghaus, Günter. New Approaches to Theatre Studies and Performance Analysis, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001.
Biggs, Michael. 'The role of "the work" in art and design research', PARIP:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/bib.htm, 2003. Accessed on 26/11/04.
Blau, Herbert. The Audience, London: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Elena Cologni. 'Documenting Performative Practice — tracing',
PARIP: http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/bib.htm, 2003. Accessed on 21/02/07.
Escolme, Bridget. Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self, London: Routledge, 2004.
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities, New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Garner, Stanton B. Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama, London: Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Green ,David W. Cognitive Science: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Mackintosh, Iain. Architecture, Actor and Audience, London: Routledge, 1993.
McAuley, Gay. Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
McConachie , Bruce A. and F. Elizabeth Hart, (Eds). Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies After the Cognitive Turn, London: Routledge, 2006.
McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis, London: SAGE, 1997.
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London: Routledge, 1993.
Roth, Ilona & John P. Frisby. Perception and Representation: Current Issues, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986.
Schön, Donald, A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action,
Maurice Temple Smith Ltd: London, 1983.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre, London: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
INTRO
My name is Joanna Bucknall; I am a 2nd year, fulltime PhD student in the Faculty of Arts at Winchester University. My thesis is currently entitled: Participatory Theatre: (Re) Conceptualising the Contemporary Theatre Audience. My thesis is an investigation that seeks to explore and understand the nature of specific audiences' experiences of particular contemporary, participatory theatre events. My main research concern is understanding the role and nature of the audience through investigating particular participatory instances by examining both the production and reception of certain theatrical events. Today I want to share with you some of the key research concerns that underpin my thesis.
I want to suggest that the contemporary theatre audience can be understood to occupy the role of 'collaborator' and that it is this role that is fundamental to the very nature of theatre itself. In short, I wish to assert that the collaborative spectator is a crucial principle that underpins our understanding of what designates theatre as such and I hope to demonstrate that accepting the audience in the role of collaborator, has far reaching implications for both production and reception theory within the discipline of theatre.
SECTION ONE: WHAT IS THE COLLABORATIVE SPECTATOR?
In most Western contemporary theatre, the audience is an element that makes up and completes the theatrical event. It is in this sense that the audience's role can be understood to be that of 'collaborator'; as Bert O States suggests: 'I would prefer a less clumsy term than collaborative […] but it suggests the main idea: [to recognise a] break down [in] the distance between actor and audience and to [acknowledge] the spectator [in] more than a passive role in the theatre exchange.' (States 1985: 170) There are of course varying degrees of collaboration and in some cases even participation, and as States also acknowledges, 'the invitation to collaborate varies, of course, from the implicit, [what I term base-level], and from the token to the literal,' which I have designated the creatorly participant. (States 1985: 170) I want to focus on what I term 'base level' collaboration and suggest that the role of the audience is always collaborative. Collaborative in that it is fundamentally embedded into the ontology of each and every kind of theatrical event, from Pantomime, through Drama and even musicals, that can be described as theatre. In fact, the audience is an essential ingredient for theatre to be called such and it is a factor that differentiates theatre from other performance mediums such as Film and Television. As Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner claim, 'Although Brechtian theatre may indeed pack a certain punch, it is not due to the so-called 'alienation effect', because there is not foundational cognitive distinction between "active" and "passive" spectators. (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 20)
An assumption that much of our contemporary reception theory has been built on is that the theatre audience is passive: Brecht worked to transform the spectator into witness using his own 'Epic' techniques, setting up an alternative to the conventions of dramatic theatre to penetrate the fourth wall and liberate the audience. His techniques have been revisited, reworked and re-conceptualised in a plethora of manifestations, throughout the last century through modernism, absurdist and even postmodernism. However, the assumption that the dramatic theatre audience were passive in the first place underpins the majority of our contemporary understandings of the audience's role, even if the theory is looking to change that role: 'The linkage between theatricality and blending also complicates the usual distinctions dividing realistic from overtly theatrical productions and "passive" from "active" spectators.' (Fauconnier & Turner 2002: 20) It is only in recent years that through the work of theorists such as Bert O States, Iain Mackintosh and Gay McAuley that we have come to begin to acknowledge, as Mackintosh suggests, that 'the audience's role is an active not passive one' (Mackintosh 1993: 2), in drama as well as the multiplicities and varying manifestations of 'epic' or other non-dramatic theatre forms.
In film and television, the production is complete before the audience become its receivers. The work is finished without the presence of the audience, they are not required to make up or finish the work; although reality shows like Big Brother, How do You Solve a Problem like Maria, X Factor and Dancing on Ice are an obvious exception. The typical film and TV audience's presence does not affect the work itself and their presence at the cinema or in front of the TV set is not required to complete the work itself. The work remains the same and unchanged regardless of the action or inaction of the viewers; 'the cinema goer's communication with that ghostly image on screen is one way: all he or she can do is listen and watch.' (Mackintosh 1993: 2) In theatre, whether it be dramatic, epic, avant-garde, pantomime, puppetry, non-literary or Postdramatic, it requires the audiences presence to complete the event, without an audience in attendance, there is no theatrical event. This is one of the key elements that differentiate theatre from TV and film; it is a question of 'liveness' and 'presence'. Peggy Phelan asserts, 'the interaction between the art object and the spectator, is essentially performative' (Phelan 1993: 147), the 'art object' in this case being theatre, only becomes itself through the dialogue and disappearance that it stages with the spectator: 'Performances being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance.' (Phelan 1993: 146)
The audience itself is not a complete unit or a whole or even in existence until it is in attendance at the particular theatrical event. The audience is not a fixed concept or fixed body of people that can be pre-conceptualised, instead the audience is made up of individuals and small sub groups who attend any given theatrical event. The audience only comes into being when those individuals and sub groups come together at a theatrical event and are manifest as audience through their interaction with the work and each other under specific theatrical conditions. Time, space and proximity directly construct the audience, bringing it into existence, as Herbert Blau suggests: ' the audience-as I have come to see it from over thirty years in the theatre-is not so much a mere congregation of people as a body of thought and desire. It does not exist before the play [or theatre event] but is initiated or precipitated by it, it is not an entity to begin with but a consciousness constructed.'(Blau 1990: 25)
If we are to acknowledge the audience as constructed in and through the event, then we are acknowledging their role as a collaborator. Even the term audience is not as unambiguous as we might fist suspect. 'The problems surrounding the concept stem mainly from the fact that a single and simple word is being applied to an increasingly diverse and complex reality, open to alternative and competing theoretical formulations.' (McQuail 1997: 1)Therefore, if the theatrical event can be understood as constituting an interaction between performers and audience, together, live, in a particular space and at a particular time under certain creative circumstances, then as McAuley succinctly points out, 'the spectator has to be seen as a crucial and active agent in the creative process.' (McAuley 2000: 238)
SECTION TWO: THE PROBLEMATICS OF EXISTING RECEPTION MODELS
Accepting the audience in this role means that the ways in which we conceptualise and theorise the audience needs to be re-addressed. Much theatrical reception is influenced by and taken from research undertaken within the disciplines of film and literature; 'because we have literalised the reading metaphor-we say that we 'read' television, 'read' fashion, 'read' a situation, or 'read' a mind-we have blurred the line that separates two basically different processes. We do not 'read' [..] theatrical performances: we perceive them. (Mancing: 189, in Hart & McConachie 2006) I want to suggest that acknowledging the audience's role as collaborator problematises much of our contemporary models and theories. In occupying the role of the collaborator, I want to suggest that the audience can no longer be conceptualised as 'reader' or 'receiver'. The audience as 'reader' or 'receiver' implies that they posses a certain level of objectivity, that they are able to stand outside of the event looking in, however, for me this level of objectivity is problematic when the audience, as I have shown, is implicated so fundamentally in the very ontology of the event. Performers enter the performance space and open 'the theatres doors to the world outside, demanding the audience speak, stand and encounter them directly.' (Escolme 2005: 4) If the audience is a live, active collaborator then they are implicated in the events make up and cannot simply stand aside or outside of that which they are irrevocably involved in.
The difficulty with semiotics, deconstruction and other contemporary models of spectatorship is that they, as McAuley notes, 'seem to be largely speculative. (what it was hoped would happen rather than what did in fact happen.)' (McAuley 2000: 238)The conceptualisation and understanding of the audience and their role in contemporary reception theory seems 'to be based not on the experience of actual performances but on either a kind of virtual performance imagined on the basis of reading play texts or on the assumption that theatre functions like some other performance practice.' (McAuley 2000: 239) Very little work has been done which actually takes into account Blau's notion that the audience is constructed in and through each specific theatrical manifestation. In short the actual audience is absent or neglected in our current reception theories. Thus, it would appear that the concept of the collaborating audience requires approaches that take into account the phenomenological aspects of that role. In order to understand the collaborating audience their actual experiences need to be gathered and studied: 'the theatrical space is a phenomenological space, governed by the body and its spatial concerns, a non-Cartesian field of habitation which undermines the stance of objectivity and in which the categories of subject and object give way to a relationship of mutual implication.' (Garner 1994: 3-4)
SECTION THREE: THE PROBLEM OF EXPERIENCE
The concept of the collaborative audience puts emphasis on the phenomenology of the theatrical event; experience and presence become deeply significant. Phenomenological aspects of the event are brought to the fore and the audiences experience becomes a central concern. Due to the ephemeral nature of the theatrical event and thus the experiences of the audience, it makes it difficult to conceptualise and theorise. A Phenomenological approach, as Stanton B Garner states, '-with its twin perspective on the world as it is perceived and inhabited, and the emphasis on embodied subjectivity that has characterised the work of its practitioners (notably Merleau-Ponty and those influenced by his work in philosophy and medical phenomenology)- is uniquely able to illuminate the stage's experiential duality.' (Garner 1994: 3)However, although phenomenological aspects of the theatrical event are the key to understanding the role of the collaborative audience, phenomenology is not in itself a model or methodology of inquiry.
In order to understand the phenomenology of the theatrical event, strategies and devices have to be developed and applied for recording and documenting the actual experiences in order to then theorise and conceptualise them as wider theory. Perception and reception therefore comprises an act of rhythmic construction of work "theatre doesn't happen to someone, they make theatre" happen to them.' (Pavis: 14, in Berghaus 2001) Methods need to be developed and applied that capture the ways in which the audience, see, hear and feel. These strategies and devices need to be developed so that they can be applied in collecting actual material experiences rather than relying on virtual or imagined experiences. If indeed the experience is so central to understanding the nature and role of the collaborative audience, then we need not only find modes of recording and documenting experiences but we also need to understand the ways in which those experiences are constructed and how meaning is made from those encounters. Roth & Frisby suggest that 'The term perception refers to the means by which information acquired from the environment via the sense organs is transformed into experiences of objects, events, sounds and tastes.' (Roth & Frisby 1986: 81) In developing documentational strategies, I want to suggest that there are two core concerns that must be considered: What is the documentational evidence in relation to the vanished event? And How can that evidence be rigorously conceptualised in order to gain understanding without being a reductive activity?
In my own research, I have developed methodologies and strategies that I hope show a rigorous approach to those concerns. I have adopted and developed the roles of reflective participant and reflected practitioner in order to collect and record the experiential aspects of particular theatrical events in their production and subsequent live manifestation. In my research activity to date, I have been adopting the role of reflective participant in order to approach the work of specific and particular contemporary makers, such as Blast Theory, Forced Entertainment, Barbarras and Carlos Cortes. By participating in the events themselves as not only a collaborative member of the audience but also in the critical role of reflective participant, I have generated anecdotal and documentational traces of the events that I have attended. Biggs distinguishes between the different types of artistic practice: '(1) art as therapy (for the individual), (2) art as cultural practice (the production of works of art), and (3) art as research.' (Biggs 2003) In order to approach the work of others, which falls within either category one or two, my approach a researcher must be from a critical perspective: the reflective participant. I want to suggest that the role of the reflective participant is reflexive because in generating personal and localised anecdotal evidence as well as documentational evidence, I am re-enacting the event itself, re-participating in its make up through my research activity. In this context the documentation for research may stand for proof for the live event, but it also becomes something else from it and thus never fully documents it; the nature of live Art is in the liveness of both its delivery and fruition, but also of the continuously shifting contextualisation of its produced supplements. (Cologni 2003)
I am currently in the production stages of the PARiP section of my PhD research activity and throughout this process I am adopting the role of the reflective practitioner. 'Through reflection, he [the practitioner] can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialized practice [in this case performance] and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness, which he may allow himself to experience.' (Schön 1983: 61) By asserting the use of reflection-in-action, the practitioner can lend new insights into their practice as well as other research questions and concerns that may underpin the artistic activity. Therefore, the practitioner who chooses to take up reflection-in-action as an ethic for practical inquiry and as a research strategy is taking up the role of reflective-practitioner. As well as recording and documenting my own participation as maker, researcher and audience during the production and resulting live event, I will also be collecting the experiences of the other collaborators involved in the making process and the final collaborators, the audience. I will be gathering all traces of each performance element in order to re-enact the live event through its various documentations, with the view to gaining an insight into nature and function of the production and reception.
All the evidence that I have and will collect during the course of my PARiP activity will be localised and specific to the circumstances in which it was generated and collected. The localised, anecdotal and documentational evidence that I have and will collect throughout the PARiP activity, is only ever partial; just traces and ghosts, that through their re-enactment of the actual live event, create a changed and different manifestation of that which they were created by. All that is left to offer is simply dust; 'performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance…[as] it betrays and lessens the promise of it' own ontology.' (Phelan 1993: 149)
The methods of collecting evidence that I am applying will only ever produce a ghostly re-enactment, partial and changed, for the work of others as well as my own and is a factor which needs to be considered in the conceptualisation of the research findings. Although the documentation and anecdotal evidence will provide some insight into the experiences of those involved in the events, they do not stand up as a complete understanding or theory for the nature and role of the audience. The experiences themselves need to be subjected to modes of inquiry that will conceptualise the experiences in order to discover the implications for wider theoretical concerns: aesthetically, socially and culturally. Care and caution has to be exercised in approaching the material, so as not to be reductive or grandly universal with the subjective and localised material. I want to suggest that new and startling developments in the arena of cognitive science and particularly in cognitive materialism, afford the opportunity to conceptualise this type of research material with the care and caution that it demands. 'We define the scope of cognitive science as the interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind. [Cognitive materialism is the discipline of applied cognitive science within the realm of cultural activities] Its practices and knowledge derive from those of the primary contributing disciplines, which are computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and philosophy. It seeks to understand how the mind works. (Green 1996: 5)
SECTION FOUR: COGNITIVE MATERIALISM
Cognitive materialism is essentially an empirical methodology that presumes certain biological and material truths about the human body/mind/brain. It is concerned with the way in which the mind/brain perceives on a phenomenological level. The core understanding that informs the discipline is that the mind/brain is embodied. 'The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. These are the three major findings of cognitive science. More than two millennia of a priori philosophical speculation about these aspects of reason are over. Because of these discoveries, philosophy [and in turn our understanding of theatre] can never be the same again.' (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 3) However, despite the base level claims to certain material truths, cognitive materialism does make room for the concept of the personal and recognises that the processes of making meaning are reliant, to a certain extent, upon our social, cultural, environmental and particular personal circumstances. 'Although the plasticity and creativity of human behaviour are striking, the cognitive processes that underlie this flexibility are bounded by our cognitive make up and by our experiences. Architectural constraints on our behaviour are a result of the way our minds are constructed as distinct from those constraints that arise from habit, learning or features of our individual experience.' (Green 1996: 6) It recognises the locality and subjectivity that is required to fall inline with certain aspects of postmodernist thought. It is empirical but not entirely universal.
The empirical aspect of cognitive materialism is in the assertion that most human mind/brains function at the same basic cognitive and perceptual levels, (with the exception of minds/brains that have sustained damage or malformation). Cognitive science has discovered that the ways in which human mind/brains perceive is the same across race and culture, the biology that drives our computational systems function in an identical manner for all human beings. However, the ways in which we formulate those perceptions into meaning, the way we express ourselves and ultimately respond to sensimor stimuli, is subject to particular personal and localised circumstances. 'We can conceive of human cognition as taking place along a continuum, with perception at one pole and symbolization at the other. Most of what happens in our everyday cognitive processes involves some combination of the two.' (Mancing: 191, in Hart & McConachie 2006)
This device is useful in conceptualising the performer/audience relationship because it lends insight and helps to understand how the experiences of the performers and audiences are formulated. It will generate through this, the opportunity to understand what the implications are for those experiences within the wider context of theatre theory. 'Cognitive studies, offers a more empirically responsible path to knowledge in cultural history [as well as theatre and performance studies] than psychoanalysis, including it Lacanian developments.' (McConachie 2006: 54)
CONCLUSION
Phenomenological approaches to theatre criticism make experience the central concern and through reflective strategies and devices of recording and collecting those experiences, cognitive materialism can be applied in order to gain new, empirically based insights into the ways in which the audience take up their role.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berghaus, Günter. New Approaches to Theatre Studies and Performance Analysis, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001.
Biggs, Michael. 'The role of "the work" in art and design research', PARIP:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/bib.htm, 2003. Accessed on 26/11/04.
Blau, Herbert. The Audience, London: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Elena Cologni. 'Documenting Performative Practice — tracing',
PARIP: http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/bib.htm, 2003. Accessed on 21/02/07.
Escolme, Bridget. Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self, London: Routledge, 2004.
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities, New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Garner, Stanton B. Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama, London: Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Green ,David W. Cognitive Science: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Mackintosh, Iain. Architecture, Actor and Audience, London: Routledge, 1993.
McAuley, Gay. Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
McConachie , Bruce A. and F. Elizabeth Hart, (Eds). Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies After the Cognitive Turn, London: Routledge, 2006.
McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis, London: SAGE, 1997.
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London: Routledge, 1993.
Roth, Ilona & John P. Frisby. Perception and Representation: Current Issues, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986.
Schön, Donald, A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action,
Maurice Temple Smith Ltd: London, 1983.
States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre, London: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Reflective Practitioner: See-Hear-Feel Conference
I gave my paper The 'Collaborative' Spectator – Conceptualising the Contemporary Theatre Audience, at reading See Hear Feel conference Today.
It was well received and I got some really interesting questions. I only really had one negative comment/question and that was regarding the issues about film being different to theatre. I need to find a stronger way of expressing that thought and get some stronger research to back that area of the thesis up.
There was another speaking from one of the film panels that also talked about cognitive science, so I will need to follow that up.
They are going to circulate an e-mail with all of the speaker’s details.
I will need to try and address those problems before I give the paper again at the PGR Arts Forum Lecture. I think I will seek Olu's advice.
I will also post the paper here to see if I get any useful comments...feedback...never know!
It was well received and I got some really interesting questions. I only really had one negative comment/question and that was regarding the issues about film being different to theatre. I need to find a stronger way of expressing that thought and get some stronger research to back that area of the thesis up.
There was another speaking from one of the film panels that also talked about cognitive science, so I will need to follow that up.
They are going to circulate an e-mail with all of the speaker’s details.
I will need to try and address those problems before I give the paper again at the PGR Arts Forum Lecture. I think I will seek Olu's advice.
I will also post the paper here to see if I get any useful comments...feedback...never know!
Tuesday 17 April 2007
Makers Diary: Risk assessment
This is the current risk assessment...not used to having to do these myself..
Risk Assessment
High Heel Shoes- Doing physically demanding performative activities, such as dancing and physical theatre.
Control Measures-The performers will rehearse and practice ways of performing in their high heeled shoes, so that they are completely familiar and skilled with them.
Chairs- The audience will be invited to play a game of musical chairs and the performers will have to lift and arrange chairs.
Control Measures- The audience will not be allowed to move the chairs, only the performers will do that. The performers will rehearse different ways of moving the chairs so that the legs are never in the air or very far off the ground. The audience will be given strict instructions not to push or shove during the game and this will be policed by the performers
Wheel Barrow- One of the performers will have to bring on a wheelbarrow full of small props.
Control Measures- We will ensure that the performer's path is completely clear of obstacles and that the weight in the wheelbarrow is evenly distributed. We will ensure that the wheel barrow once in position is well lit and not in the path of the performers or audience.
Costume Rail- Two of the performers will wheel on a costume rail.
Control Measures- The costume rail will be on castors so that it is easily manoeuvrable. It will be brought into the performance space by two performers, one at each end. It will be securely fixed together to ensure that it can bear the correct amount of weight.
Chalk- The audience will be given a piece of chalk each with which to write on the floor.
Control Measures- The chalk will be collected back from the audience once they have used it, to ensure that none is left in the performance space and therefore will not present a tripping or slipping hazard. The chalk will be cleaned up before the next part of the performance begins.
The audience will be advised not to eat the chalk.
Blocks- The performers will have to step up onto and down from 3 small wooden blocks, barefoot and in high heels.
Control Measures- The performers will rehearse and devise ways of getting up onto the blocks that will involve supporting each others weight and providing balance to each other.
Costumes- The costumes will be taken off and hung on the curtain rail.
Control Measures- The costumes will be removed from the performers and placed on coat hangers on the costume rail, so that they do not pose a tripping or fire hazard.
Undressing- The performers will have to remove their costumes during the performance.
Control Measures- The performers will rehearse removing their clothing so that they are familiar and skilled with their costumes. This will minimise the risk of tripping or falling.
Risk Assessment
High Heel Shoes- Doing physically demanding performative activities, such as dancing and physical theatre.
Control Measures-The performers will rehearse and practice ways of performing in their high heeled shoes, so that they are completely familiar and skilled with them.
Chairs- The audience will be invited to play a game of musical chairs and the performers will have to lift and arrange chairs.
Control Measures- The audience will not be allowed to move the chairs, only the performers will do that. The performers will rehearse different ways of moving the chairs so that the legs are never in the air or very far off the ground. The audience will be given strict instructions not to push or shove during the game and this will be policed by the performers
Wheel Barrow- One of the performers will have to bring on a wheelbarrow full of small props.
Control Measures- We will ensure that the performer's path is completely clear of obstacles and that the weight in the wheelbarrow is evenly distributed. We will ensure that the wheel barrow once in position is well lit and not in the path of the performers or audience.
Costume Rail- Two of the performers will wheel on a costume rail.
Control Measures- The costume rail will be on castors so that it is easily manoeuvrable. It will be brought into the performance space by two performers, one at each end. It will be securely fixed together to ensure that it can bear the correct amount of weight.
Chalk- The audience will be given a piece of chalk each with which to write on the floor.
Control Measures- The chalk will be collected back from the audience once they have used it, to ensure that none is left in the performance space and therefore will not present a tripping or slipping hazard. The chalk will be cleaned up before the next part of the performance begins.
The audience will be advised not to eat the chalk.
Blocks- The performers will have to step up onto and down from 3 small wooden blocks, barefoot and in high heels.
Control Measures- The performers will rehearse and devise ways of getting up onto the blocks that will involve supporting each others weight and providing balance to each other.
Costumes- The costumes will be taken off and hung on the curtain rail.
Control Measures- The costumes will be removed from the performers and placed on coat hangers on the costume rail, so that they do not pose a tripping or fire hazard.
Undressing- The performers will have to remove their costumes during the performance.
Control Measures- The performers will rehearse removing their clothing so that they are familiar and skilled with their costumes. This will minimise the risk of tripping or falling.
Makers Diary
The Ground Works application is posted! Now we just have to keep fingers crossed and hope.
I am going to be getting my head around the risk assessment for the show today...if I get it done I will post it on later.
I am going to be getting my head around the risk assessment for the show today...if I get it done I will post it on later.
Sunday 15 April 2007
Reflective Participant: SPILL trip Day two
Toady I saw Forced Entertainment's And On The Thousandth Night. I had such a good time I really enjoyed it. It was a 6hr durational performance and I am so proud of myself for only taking two very short 10 minute breaks the whole time.
I am not gonna go into all the details but it was great. I saw Synne, she was there to see the work too.
Ok there is just one thing that really struck me and that was how frustrated at points I felt...I wanted to play the game too, i wanted to make up stories, interrupt, I wanted to play and it was frustrating that I couldn't...this is something that I am hoping to address in my own piece of work. seeing this really helped me to think about the idea of participation and game playing. Hmmm...well my time is nearly up in here and I want to go to bed now....I love Piccadilly at night..so vibrant and exciting.
I am not gonna go into all the details but it was great. I saw Synne, she was there to see the work too.
Ok there is just one thing that really struck me and that was how frustrated at points I felt...I wanted to play the game too, i wanted to make up stories, interrupt, I wanted to play and it was frustrating that I couldn't...this is something that I am hoping to address in my own piece of work. seeing this really helped me to think about the idea of participation and game playing. Hmmm...well my time is nearly up in here and I want to go to bed now....I love Piccadilly at night..so vibrant and exciting.
Saturday 14 April 2007
Reflective Participant: London SPILL Trip Day One
I am in LONDON....its pretty late and I am sat in some random internet cafe in the middle of Piccadilly near where I am staying....my head is just spinning...two things today.I had a meeting with Kirsty and I saw Trans Act.
OMG it is so hot...I can't believe it...too hot....ok time is limited, so I will chat very quickly about the meeting and then the show...
Meeting:
They sat, cold diet cokes in hand, the grass warm and moist underneath them..two good friends smiling, laughing and enjoying the heat of the day. we talked about all kinds of things but mostly about the show, my thoughts, feelings what i hoped, what I’ve got and want I want...its hard to really put it into words, we have been friends for so long and we know each other so well that our conversations are hard to chart and we follow each others thread with deft skill. She will mail me some pics when I get back from London.
The Show:
It was in the tube station underground...cool and dark but strangely frightening.
I won't make an in depth analysis right now, instead I will just mention some of the things that really struck me.
She used red and green, very much in the same way that I have in the past and how I intend to in Siren Song. It was all about the audience, small and intimate. We saw the processes of performance...laid bare, laid open and questioned...normally I would have said that it was performance art but some of the processes of theatre making were specifically part of the make up of the work and were the objects of performance.
Oh, I am well tired now and need my bed
OMG it is so hot...I can't believe it...too hot....ok time is limited, so I will chat very quickly about the meeting and then the show...
Meeting:
They sat, cold diet cokes in hand, the grass warm and moist underneath them..two good friends smiling, laughing and enjoying the heat of the day. we talked about all kinds of things but mostly about the show, my thoughts, feelings what i hoped, what I’ve got and want I want...its hard to really put it into words, we have been friends for so long and we know each other so well that our conversations are hard to chart and we follow each others thread with deft skill. She will mail me some pics when I get back from London.
The Show:
It was in the tube station underground...cool and dark but strangely frightening.
I won't make an in depth analysis right now, instead I will just mention some of the things that really struck me.
She used red and green, very much in the same way that I have in the past and how I intend to in Siren Song. It was all about the audience, small and intimate. We saw the processes of performance...laid bare, laid open and questioned...normally I would have said that it was performance art but some of the processes of theatre making were specifically part of the make up of the work and were the objects of performance.
Oh, I am well tired now and need my bed
Tuesday 10 April 2007
Reflective practitioner: Vex and Siren Song
These artistic aims were discussed and set down in 1995, when VEX was first founded by my partner, Nigel Tuttle and myself. They are the principles that underpin all of the artistic activity that the group undertakes. I want to discuss and consider those policies in relation to my research concerns and Siren Song in 3 Parts.
Vertical Exchange is not interested in operating within the codes and conventions of drama per se but instead the group is concerned with bringing the ‘mundane’ and ‘everyday’ practices into a performative arena in order to explore themes, issues and topics that interest the group but that we hope will also have wider significance and interest. I am interested in looking at domesticity, the female body, fetishized female images, tasks, social rituals and the notion of the party-public and private space. Nigel is interested in mythology, organised religion and their rituals and narrative structures.
VEX operates and develops ‘postdramatic’ and ‘non-literary’ performances strategies. This is significant for my research because if the contract between the performers and audience is to be shifted, then as I have previously suggested, the Cartesian relationships and divides of the theatre and more specifically the modern drama cannot accommodate the exploding of the liminal space that this shift appears to require. By employing pomo, postdramatic and performance based techniques the contract, the relationship between work – performer – audience can be re-imagined.
In this way, Siren Song, as well as being the PaR activity of my PhD, is also the next step in VEX’s experiments with form and function. The artistic aims and research aims have to be one and the same, the objective for the practice to be understood as research means that the objective of both elements has to be singular. That is not to say that each and every decision taken along the way during the making of Siren song will be exercised and conceptualised, such as decisions on the colour of the paint for the boxes, however, all of those decisions will be made with the intention of fulfilling the master creative and research objectives.
My research is concerned with participatory performance and finding ways of understanding what it means to be participatory and how this affects the role of the audience. From my research to date, and the performative experiments that I have undertaken through VEX, I have started to outline what I understand to be the varying degrees of collaboration and participation. These are only provisional but serve as a useful starting point for both the practice and more traditional research activity.
The Basic Thesis
I believe that all Western theatrical audiences are collaborative and that this understanding of that position is essential in order to designate an event as theatre. I believe that theatre requires the audience to take up this role in order to fulfil its aesthetic, social and cultural function. It is the audience’s role as collaborator that marks out theatre from the other visual art disciplines such as film, television and art.
I believe that the commonly used terms to discuss and conceptualise the audience like reader and spectator are deeply problematic and do not account for the phenomenological experience specific to and that make up the theatrical event. These widely used terms do not full account for the phenomenon of presence and liveness that is manifest at any theatrical event.
I believe that certain Western contemporary theatrical practices which could be understood as participatory explode the liminal space and create a democratic space, where performers and audience exist in the same role; the performer/audience divide is eliminated and both exist in this democratic space as creators. This new space blurs the traditional separation of the roles of performer and audience to create a new space and demands the re-thinking of those roles and their wider theoretical and aesthetic implications.
Consuming Collaborator
In most mainstream theatre, I believe that the audience can be understood as a consuming collaborator. The audiences’ presence is required in order to make up the theatrical event. The audience does not read at the theatrical event, they experience it; they are phenomenological embedded into the very make up of the theatrical event. Placing the audience in the role of reader or spectator implies a certain level of objectivity that I want to suggest is problematic when one is implicated in the event at such a fundamental level. The audience is an essential ingredient for theatre to be manifest as such and thus it is difficult to then suggest that they can step aside and repress or deny their phenomenological involvement.
Although they are an element that makes up the theatrical event, they have no control or creative input into the artistic element of the event. They have no creative control and their presence, material and cerebral, does not fundamentally affect the artistic intentions or output. They collaborate in the event as consumers of the artistic activity of performers/practitioners/directors/artists. They are collaborators at the event but not in the creative processes that happen before the event. The role of consuming collaborator is not a passive one; the act of consuming requires activity and choice, the audience do not simply receive the event.
The audience is part of the event and makes choices during that event that affects their experience of that event. During the theatre event, even the most Cartesian, the audience has a plenitude of choices on offer; however, these choices do not directly affect the actual work itself. There is still a separation that exists, marking the difference between creator and audience. The consuming collaborator completes the meaning but they do not create it. The performers offer up the work and the audience choose how and what they experience and ultimately what that experience means to them. The audience takes part in the event and collaborate in bringing it into being but they have no control over the event that they are completing. The audience is given a false position of power; they are implicated in bringing the theatre event into being but cannot share in the responsibility for it fully as they have no real power over their relationship with the creative work itself.
Participatory Theatre
Participatory theatre is manifest when the audience/Performer divide is crossed or breeched in some way. It is when the liminal space is problematised and destabilised by a change in the audiences’ role of consuming collaborator. It can be understood as a theatrical event where the audience is asked to step across the liminal space and partake in the event in such a way that they are involved in the event in a way that their presence takes on a role which requires them to do more than make up the theatrical event. Participation is when the audience is required to become involved with either/or the construction/presentation of the work itself. Participation in this way does not automatically imply that the audience is granted creatorly powers or even performer status, there are different types of participation and each has its own implications on the audience’s role.
Creatorly Participants
In much contemporary work, some of which might be understood to fall within the category of Postdramatic, the audience is required to shift their role from consuming collaborator to that of a creatorly participant (although the audience is always a collaborator at the level by which they are necessary to complete the theatrical event). In much contemporary Western work since the early nineteen eighties, (Forced Entertainment, Lone Twin, Imitating the Dog etc), the audience is not required to actually participate on a material level, they often remain seated in the usual Cartesian stage/auditorium divide, however, they are required to participate cerebrally. They are required to take a more fundamental role in the construction of the work than that of the consuming collaborator. Rather than simply applying choice in their relationship to the work, they are required to participate in the construction of the work. Some of the creative responsibility is passed over to the audience, not only do they have to complete the meaning of the event but they also have the responsibility of making it. The work leaves holes, gaps and spaces that the audience are invited to fill; they have to construct and complete the work, which is not offered to them as a whole. The audience has to cross the liminal space cerebrally and creatively contribute to the work. They are responsible for mediating their own relationship to the fragments on offer and enact their own creative involvement with what is partially offered.
This type of work problematises the audience/performer divide and implicates the audience at the production level; it opens the door to the creative processes of the event that usually hidden and out of bounds to the audience. They are given more control of their relationship with the work and thus more control over the experience that they are part of. The role of creatorly participation, as with the role of consuming collaborator does not impact on the material event itself or the material experience of others; it is private and personal participation.
Although this type of work highlights its creative processes, devolving some of the creative responsibility to the audience, it does not fully relinquish the relationships that it lays bare. It challenges the traditional divides and relationships that they produce from within those devices themselves; this type of work never fully breaks free from that which it seeks to challenge. This in turn means that the audience never fully break away from their traditional role either. This work never fully democratises the audience but tantalisingly reveals the possibility for a radical shift in the audience’s role. It reveals the possibility of exploding liminal space and hints at the possibility for empowering the audience as equal creative forces putting them in the same role as the performer.
Active Material Collaborator
Physical participation does not necessarily infer that the audience had been given any creative responsibility. In theatrical events such as the Pantomime and Cabaret, I want to suggest that the audience’s role is fundamentally similar to that of the consuming collaborator. Although the active material collaborator affects the material experience of the audience and the ‘presentation’ of the creative work, I want to suggest that typically they have no creative control or input. I further want to suggest that this type of participation is built into the work and is used as a dramaturgical device and is as much a part of the mis-en-scene as the lighting and set. The audience participation is used to complete the manifestation of the work not to generate or create it. The audience have the choice whether or not to be involved in the action but they have no freedom to participate in the creative processes as by this stage it is already complete. This type of participation draws attention to the processes of looking and the audience/performer relationship but makes not steps towards altering or undermining it, if any thing this level of participation strengthens the separation.
Material Creatorly Participant
I want to suggest that in some particular new and experimental work, the audience is being asked to partake in the theatrical event at the fundamental level of creative production and that I believe that this work poses radical implications for the role of the audience in Western contemporary theatre. In this new work, the work itself is not manifest as such until the audiences’ participation has occurred. The audience are required to generate the work. The work is not partial in the way that much of Forced Entertainment work is but it is actually non-existent until the actually event when both audience and performer work together to create it. The audience’s participation directly generates the work and thus also directly affects the other audience members material experience of the work that they are creating. In such work, it is no longer a private participation but a public and ensemble affair.
This level of participation completely explodes the liminal space and creates a new space that is democratises; a creative coalescent tract replaces liminal space. The audience become responsible for all aspects of the theatrical event and share this responsibility with the performers. In such work, their role is no longer fixed but fluid and dynamic both audience and performers shifting between roles in a constant, negotiated flux. The audience becomes a material creatorly participatory force and it becomes difficult to separate out the traditional roles of the theatrical event. The audience no longer consumes but creates.
VEX’s work to date, falls within the category of putting its audience ion the role of the ‘creatorly participant’ and to some extent we have also made attempts to place the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. Our artistic policy clearly articulates a desire to achieve the latter of the two. My research also aims to locate and explicate the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. So it is clear that my artistic and scholarly objectives are one and the same.
Thus I am going to need to develop performance strategies that seek to locate the audience in the role of creatorly participant. I intend to do this by:
-Looking at my past projects and experiments with VEX, to seek out elements that have been successful on previous occasions at locating the audience in the role.
-Looking at the work of other practitioners within this arena of performance to identify and explicate effective strategies and devices that they apply to their participatory work.
-Use a lab style work shop rehearsal structure to devise and explore participatory strategies.
-Through scholarly activity, reading, attending conferences, presenting research to my peers and the wider academic community to gain feedback and perspective on the work, as well as attending talks, lectures and seminars.
Working in this way and as part of a research project, places just as much importance on the process as it does on the final product.
Part One: undressing-dressing down
I want to expose all of the mechanics of the process, so costume changes, scene changes and everything else will be done in the full view of the audience, nothing hidden. I want the space to start empty and the performers to set up the space as part of the mis en scene itself. I think that this will be a useful strategy of puncturing the illusion right from the start and will set up the space and relationship with the audience right from the word go. It will force the audience to consider their gaze, the construction of narrative, illusion and performance space and in turn will I hope, make them think about their role as the audience. I do not really know yet exactly how the undressing and dressing will take place, or the inscriptions but I do know what the aim for this section of the work is; that is to introduce and set up for the audience the themes, topics and issues that we want to discuss and explore with them. Unlike in Playback theatre, I do not want the audience’s participation to be haphazard and random, instead I want to engage them in a very distinct and particular discussion- the idea of woman and trauma, woman and body. I want this section to set up the contract, the presentational style and the theme of the piece. I am hoping it will give the performers a chance to really develop their performance personas in relation to the themes. It is an easing in of the audience to the idea of collaboration and participation.
Part Two-telling tales-telling it like it is.
This section is where the audience are first asked to participate in a creatorly fashion. Once we have set down the themes, we will open up the floor to allow them to come and devise with us, to play with us and to share their ideas and thoughts with us. I am not really too sure yet on exactly how this will take place, this is something that we need to explore in the devising process. I do not want to pressure the audience or force their hand; I want to offer them a well marshalled and comfortable environment in which to take up their creative role. It is all about choice, games and play. I am hoping that by setting up the themes, issues and an aesthetic in part one; we will set up the conditions under which the audience can participate. I think there is a strange freedom and comfort in rules. My hope is that the first section will put the audience in the right frame of mind to be creative and mindful of the subject matter and thus inspire them to want to participate.
Part Three-Playing-with you
This final section is another opportunity for the audience to participate, to make choices, to play with us. It is a gift to them for playing with us and a thank you for their ideas. We will be saying, ‘hey, thanks for that…here are some ideas that we have had too…do you wanna see them?’.
Everything that we will devise is done in order to attempt to put the audience in the role of the creatorly participant. I really need to have a think about the ways in which I might be able to record and document those experiences
Vertical Exchange is not interested in operating within the codes and conventions of drama per se but instead the group is concerned with bringing the ‘mundane’ and ‘everyday’ practices into a performative arena in order to explore themes, issues and topics that interest the group but that we hope will also have wider significance and interest. I am interested in looking at domesticity, the female body, fetishized female images, tasks, social rituals and the notion of the party-public and private space. Nigel is interested in mythology, organised religion and their rituals and narrative structures.
VEX operates and develops ‘postdramatic’ and ‘non-literary’ performances strategies. This is significant for my research because if the contract between the performers and audience is to be shifted, then as I have previously suggested, the Cartesian relationships and divides of the theatre and more specifically the modern drama cannot accommodate the exploding of the liminal space that this shift appears to require. By employing pomo, postdramatic and performance based techniques the contract, the relationship between work – performer – audience can be re-imagined.
In this way, Siren Song, as well as being the PaR activity of my PhD, is also the next step in VEX’s experiments with form and function. The artistic aims and research aims have to be one and the same, the objective for the practice to be understood as research means that the objective of both elements has to be singular. That is not to say that each and every decision taken along the way during the making of Siren song will be exercised and conceptualised, such as decisions on the colour of the paint for the boxes, however, all of those decisions will be made with the intention of fulfilling the master creative and research objectives.
My research is concerned with participatory performance and finding ways of understanding what it means to be participatory and how this affects the role of the audience. From my research to date, and the performative experiments that I have undertaken through VEX, I have started to outline what I understand to be the varying degrees of collaboration and participation. These are only provisional but serve as a useful starting point for both the practice and more traditional research activity.
The Basic Thesis
I believe that all Western theatrical audiences are collaborative and that this understanding of that position is essential in order to designate an event as theatre. I believe that theatre requires the audience to take up this role in order to fulfil its aesthetic, social and cultural function. It is the audience’s role as collaborator that marks out theatre from the other visual art disciplines such as film, television and art.
I believe that the commonly used terms to discuss and conceptualise the audience like reader and spectator are deeply problematic and do not account for the phenomenological experience specific to and that make up the theatrical event. These widely used terms do not full account for the phenomenon of presence and liveness that is manifest at any theatrical event.
I believe that certain Western contemporary theatrical practices which could be understood as participatory explode the liminal space and create a democratic space, where performers and audience exist in the same role; the performer/audience divide is eliminated and both exist in this democratic space as creators. This new space blurs the traditional separation of the roles of performer and audience to create a new space and demands the re-thinking of those roles and their wider theoretical and aesthetic implications.
Consuming Collaborator
In most mainstream theatre, I believe that the audience can be understood as a consuming collaborator. The audiences’ presence is required in order to make up the theatrical event. The audience does not read at the theatrical event, they experience it; they are phenomenological embedded into the very make up of the theatrical event. Placing the audience in the role of reader or spectator implies a certain level of objectivity that I want to suggest is problematic when one is implicated in the event at such a fundamental level. The audience is an essential ingredient for theatre to be manifest as such and thus it is difficult to then suggest that they can step aside and repress or deny their phenomenological involvement.
Although they are an element that makes up the theatrical event, they have no control or creative input into the artistic element of the event. They have no creative control and their presence, material and cerebral, does not fundamentally affect the artistic intentions or output. They collaborate in the event as consumers of the artistic activity of performers/practitioners/directors/artists. They are collaborators at the event but not in the creative processes that happen before the event. The role of consuming collaborator is not a passive one; the act of consuming requires activity and choice, the audience do not simply receive the event.
The audience is part of the event and makes choices during that event that affects their experience of that event. During the theatre event, even the most Cartesian, the audience has a plenitude of choices on offer; however, these choices do not directly affect the actual work itself. There is still a separation that exists, marking the difference between creator and audience. The consuming collaborator completes the meaning but they do not create it. The performers offer up the work and the audience choose how and what they experience and ultimately what that experience means to them. The audience takes part in the event and collaborate in bringing it into being but they have no control over the event that they are completing. The audience is given a false position of power; they are implicated in bringing the theatre event into being but cannot share in the responsibility for it fully as they have no real power over their relationship with the creative work itself.
Participatory Theatre
Participatory theatre is manifest when the audience/Performer divide is crossed or breeched in some way. It is when the liminal space is problematised and destabilised by a change in the audiences’ role of consuming collaborator. It can be understood as a theatrical event where the audience is asked to step across the liminal space and partake in the event in such a way that they are involved in the event in a way that their presence takes on a role which requires them to do more than make up the theatrical event. Participation is when the audience is required to become involved with either/or the construction/presentation of the work itself. Participation in this way does not automatically imply that the audience is granted creatorly powers or even performer status, there are different types of participation and each has its own implications on the audience’s role.
Creatorly Participants
In much contemporary work, some of which might be understood to fall within the category of Postdramatic, the audience is required to shift their role from consuming collaborator to that of a creatorly participant (although the audience is always a collaborator at the level by which they are necessary to complete the theatrical event). In much contemporary Western work since the early nineteen eighties, (Forced Entertainment, Lone Twin, Imitating the Dog etc), the audience is not required to actually participate on a material level, they often remain seated in the usual Cartesian stage/auditorium divide, however, they are required to participate cerebrally. They are required to take a more fundamental role in the construction of the work than that of the consuming collaborator. Rather than simply applying choice in their relationship to the work, they are required to participate in the construction of the work. Some of the creative responsibility is passed over to the audience, not only do they have to complete the meaning of the event but they also have the responsibility of making it. The work leaves holes, gaps and spaces that the audience are invited to fill; they have to construct and complete the work, which is not offered to them as a whole. The audience has to cross the liminal space cerebrally and creatively contribute to the work. They are responsible for mediating their own relationship to the fragments on offer and enact their own creative involvement with what is partially offered.
This type of work problematises the audience/performer divide and implicates the audience at the production level; it opens the door to the creative processes of the event that usually hidden and out of bounds to the audience. They are given more control of their relationship with the work and thus more control over the experience that they are part of. The role of creatorly participation, as with the role of consuming collaborator does not impact on the material event itself or the material experience of others; it is private and personal participation.
Although this type of work highlights its creative processes, devolving some of the creative responsibility to the audience, it does not fully relinquish the relationships that it lays bare. It challenges the traditional divides and relationships that they produce from within those devices themselves; this type of work never fully breaks free from that which it seeks to challenge. This in turn means that the audience never fully break away from their traditional role either. This work never fully democratises the audience but tantalisingly reveals the possibility for a radical shift in the audience’s role. It reveals the possibility of exploding liminal space and hints at the possibility for empowering the audience as equal creative forces putting them in the same role as the performer.
Active Material Collaborator
Physical participation does not necessarily infer that the audience had been given any creative responsibility. In theatrical events such as the Pantomime and Cabaret, I want to suggest that the audience’s role is fundamentally similar to that of the consuming collaborator. Although the active material collaborator affects the material experience of the audience and the ‘presentation’ of the creative work, I want to suggest that typically they have no creative control or input. I further want to suggest that this type of participation is built into the work and is used as a dramaturgical device and is as much a part of the mis-en-scene as the lighting and set. The audience participation is used to complete the manifestation of the work not to generate or create it. The audience have the choice whether or not to be involved in the action but they have no freedom to participate in the creative processes as by this stage it is already complete. This type of participation draws attention to the processes of looking and the audience/performer relationship but makes not steps towards altering or undermining it, if any thing this level of participation strengthens the separation.
Material Creatorly Participant
I want to suggest that in some particular new and experimental work, the audience is being asked to partake in the theatrical event at the fundamental level of creative production and that I believe that this work poses radical implications for the role of the audience in Western contemporary theatre. In this new work, the work itself is not manifest as such until the audiences’ participation has occurred. The audience are required to generate the work. The work is not partial in the way that much of Forced Entertainment work is but it is actually non-existent until the actually event when both audience and performer work together to create it. The audience’s participation directly generates the work and thus also directly affects the other audience members material experience of the work that they are creating. In such work, it is no longer a private participation but a public and ensemble affair.
This level of participation completely explodes the liminal space and creates a new space that is democratises; a creative coalescent tract replaces liminal space. The audience become responsible for all aspects of the theatrical event and share this responsibility with the performers. In such work, their role is no longer fixed but fluid and dynamic both audience and performers shifting between roles in a constant, negotiated flux. The audience becomes a material creatorly participatory force and it becomes difficult to separate out the traditional roles of the theatrical event. The audience no longer consumes but creates.
VEX’s work to date, falls within the category of putting its audience ion the role of the ‘creatorly participant’ and to some extent we have also made attempts to place the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. Our artistic policy clearly articulates a desire to achieve the latter of the two. My research also aims to locate and explicate the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. So it is clear that my artistic and scholarly objectives are one and the same.
Thus I am going to need to develop performance strategies that seek to locate the audience in the role of creatorly participant. I intend to do this by:
-Looking at my past projects and experiments with VEX, to seek out elements that have been successful on previous occasions at locating the audience in the role.
-Looking at the work of other practitioners within this arena of performance to identify and explicate effective strategies and devices that they apply to their participatory work.
-Use a lab style work shop rehearsal structure to devise and explore participatory strategies.
-Through scholarly activity, reading, attending conferences, presenting research to my peers and the wider academic community to gain feedback and perspective on the work, as well as attending talks, lectures and seminars.
Working in this way and as part of a research project, places just as much importance on the process as it does on the final product.
Part One: undressing-dressing down
I want to expose all of the mechanics of the process, so costume changes, scene changes and everything else will be done in the full view of the audience, nothing hidden. I want the space to start empty and the performers to set up the space as part of the mis en scene itself. I think that this will be a useful strategy of puncturing the illusion right from the start and will set up the space and relationship with the audience right from the word go. It will force the audience to consider their gaze, the construction of narrative, illusion and performance space and in turn will I hope, make them think about their role as the audience. I do not really know yet exactly how the undressing and dressing will take place, or the inscriptions but I do know what the aim for this section of the work is; that is to introduce and set up for the audience the themes, topics and issues that we want to discuss and explore with them. Unlike in Playback theatre, I do not want the audience’s participation to be haphazard and random, instead I want to engage them in a very distinct and particular discussion- the idea of woman and trauma, woman and body. I want this section to set up the contract, the presentational style and the theme of the piece. I am hoping it will give the performers a chance to really develop their performance personas in relation to the themes. It is an easing in of the audience to the idea of collaboration and participation.
Part Two-telling tales-telling it like it is.
This section is where the audience are first asked to participate in a creatorly fashion. Once we have set down the themes, we will open up the floor to allow them to come and devise with us, to play with us and to share their ideas and thoughts with us. I am not really too sure yet on exactly how this will take place, this is something that we need to explore in the devising process. I do not want to pressure the audience or force their hand; I want to offer them a well marshalled and comfortable environment in which to take up their creative role. It is all about choice, games and play. I am hoping that by setting up the themes, issues and an aesthetic in part one; we will set up the conditions under which the audience can participate. I think there is a strange freedom and comfort in rules. My hope is that the first section will put the audience in the right frame of mind to be creative and mindful of the subject matter and thus inspire them to want to participate.
Part Three-Playing-with you
This final section is another opportunity for the audience to participate, to make choices, to play with us. It is a gift to them for playing with us and a thank you for their ideas. We will be saying, ‘hey, thanks for that…here are some ideas that we have had too…do you wanna see them?’.
Everything that we will devise is done in order to attempt to put the audience in the role of the creatorly participant. I really need to have a think about the ways in which I might be able to record and document those experiences
Makers Diary: Siren Song Outline
This is work I have done on the outline of the piece itself...
SIREN SONG..In 3 Parts
SYNOPSIS
Siren Song, is a devised theatre project that seeks to explore the concepts of woman and trauma. It will examine the audience's experiences of what these concepts mean to and for them through a task-driven, participatory aesthetic. Blending some of the principles of Playback theatre and a postmodernist performance ethic to generate a unique and provocative theatre intervention. The performance will be entirely driven by tasks and games that will ensure a completely different performance and experience each time it is performed.
OUTLINE
Part One: Undressing-dressing down.
Soundscape 1 starts to play.
The 3 performers will enter with a costume rail and a wheelbarrow full of their props, (red high heel shoes, a small wooden model house, a pot of chalk & a portable stereo player).
They will layout the props.
They will introduce themselves.
They will all undress and hang their clothes on the costume rail, each performer will inscribe HER, SHE or HIM on their flesh with a kohl pencil.
Part Two: Telling Tales-like it is.
Soundscape 2 starts to play.
Performers will explain the task to the audience and hand out the chalk.
Performers will put the question to the audience.
Audience will be invited to respond and to inscribe their responses on the floor of the performance space.
The performers will respond to the audience's inscriptions by devising a scenario on the spot utilising the audience responses.
The audience will be invited to offer feedback and to make changes to the devised scenario-they will have the chance to choose the shoes, lighting, sound etc.
The scenario will be performed again by the performers adjusted according to the audience's feedback and choices.
Part Three: Playing- with you.
The performers will invite the audience to a game of musical chairs.
The performers will arrange the chairs according to the number of players and ask each audience member to take a number card, (there will be cards numbered from 1 through to 4).
The audience will pick the CD that they play the game to.
The winner of the game of musical chairs will be holding a number card. The numbers on the card correspond to 4 pre-prepared scenes or scenarios. The number on the card will identify which the scene the performers will present.
The performers will present the chosen scenario.
RUNNING TIME
This will be approx 1 hour and 30 minutes with a post-show discussion lasting approx 30 minutes. So the total running time will be: 2 Hours.
SIREN SONG..In 3 Parts
SYNOPSIS
Siren Song, is a devised theatre project that seeks to explore the concepts of woman and trauma. It will examine the audience's experiences of what these concepts mean to and for them through a task-driven, participatory aesthetic. Blending some of the principles of Playback theatre and a postmodernist performance ethic to generate a unique and provocative theatre intervention. The performance will be entirely driven by tasks and games that will ensure a completely different performance and experience each time it is performed.
OUTLINE
Part One: Undressing-dressing down.
Soundscape 1 starts to play.
The 3 performers will enter with a costume rail and a wheelbarrow full of their props, (red high heel shoes, a small wooden model house, a pot of chalk & a portable stereo player).
They will layout the props.
They will introduce themselves.
They will all undress and hang their clothes on the costume rail, each performer will inscribe HER, SHE or HIM on their flesh with a kohl pencil.
Part Two: Telling Tales-like it is.
Soundscape 2 starts to play.
Performers will explain the task to the audience and hand out the chalk.
Performers will put the question to the audience.
Audience will be invited to respond and to inscribe their responses on the floor of the performance space.
The performers will respond to the audience's inscriptions by devising a scenario on the spot utilising the audience responses.
The audience will be invited to offer feedback and to make changes to the devised scenario-they will have the chance to choose the shoes, lighting, sound etc.
The scenario will be performed again by the performers adjusted according to the audience's feedback and choices.
Part Three: Playing- with you.
The performers will invite the audience to a game of musical chairs.
The performers will arrange the chairs according to the number of players and ask each audience member to take a number card, (there will be cards numbered from 1 through to 4).
The audience will pick the CD that they play the game to.
The winner of the game of musical chairs will be holding a number card. The numbers on the card correspond to 4 pre-prepared scenes or scenarios. The number on the card will identify which the scene the performers will present.
The performers will present the chosen scenario.
RUNNING TIME
This will be approx 1 hour and 30 minutes with a post-show discussion lasting approx 30 minutes. So the total running time will be: 2 Hours.
Makers Diary: About VEX
This is the work i have done for groundworks about the company. I will also be able to use some of it for the programme...marketing etc.
Vertical Exchange Performance Group
Devising as a way of life
The Company
Vertical Exchange was founded by Joanna Bucknall BA MA and Nigel Tuttle in 2005. Joanna is the Performance Artistic Director of the performance group; she has a background in theatre performance and drama and is responsible for the performative aspects of the company. Nigel is the Media Artistic Director; he has a background in video production and is responsible for the video and media aspects of the company. Joanna and Nigel collaborate to produce a range of different projects, from installations to devised theatre works. Joanna and Nigel are the only permanent members of VEX and they work with a range of performers, artists and creative practitioners for each project that they undertake.
Some of the Usual Suspects
Joe Harris is a frequent collaborator and has been involved with sound production and design for several VEX projects. He has a background in video and music production and is currently studying an undergraduate degree at Anglian Ruskin University.
Lorraine Bucknall is a frequent collaborator and has been involved with costume design and production for all of the VEX projects to date. Lorraine has a background as a seamstress and make-up artist but she also has extensive experience and qualifications in various craft disciplines.
Artistic Policy
We make work that aims to explore the contemporary experience and all the intricate moments that our lives present. Our aim is to create art works that are challenging and engaging, that manifest as cultural interventions and ask poignant questions about our lives and existence. We are committed to exercising difficult questions through art in provocative ways, pushing the boundaries of performance both aesthetically and culturally.
VEX is committed to a collaborative practice in both the way we make the work and the ways in which the work is encountered by the audience. Our aim is to produce performance work that involves its audiences at a fundamental level. By employing experimental and compelling performance devices we hope to offer the audience a truly participatory experience. Our works seek to explode the liminal space and offer our audiences the role of creative participant.
Our working practice is collaborative and we like to involve practitioners from a plethora of other fields and disciplines. This, we believe, gives us the freedom to follow lots of performative forms and ensures that new and fresh ideas are always being brought to the creative table.
Past Projects
THEATRE
Attempts on Her Life
VEX collaborated with Whizz Kids Theatre Academy to mount a production of Attempts on Her Life by Martin Crimp, for the Welwyn Garden City Youth Drama Festival 2004. It was performed at the Barn Theatre on 19/5/04. We were placed third in the competition.
Benches
Was written and directed by Joanna Bucknall and mounted as a live event in collaboration with Whizz Kids Theatre Academy & Jonathan Harris. It was performed as part of the Urban Tales Festival in 2004. It ran over 3 nights at the Balcony Theatre, Cambridge from the 6/12/04-8/12/04.
The Woman Who Swallowed the Moon
Was a devised, task and text driven piece of experimental theatre developed and directed by Joanna Bucknall in conjunction with the Whizz Kids Theatre Academy for the for the Welwyn Garden City Youth Drama Festival 2005. It was performed at the Barn Theatre on 17/5/05. The judge refused to consider our submission, as she asserted that it was not theatre; even though we had abided by all of the rules and regulations that inform the festival. Hence, we were not placed. It was later performed at the Balcony Theatre on the 19/5/05.
With You in Mind
Was VEX'S first independent theatre project. It was a site specific performance installation based around tasks and games. It was devised by Caila Carr, Harriet Keevil, Mark Finbow and Vicky Trower. The concept and direction was designed by Joanna Bucknall and the sound production was designed and recorded by Nigel Tuttle. Texts were written by Joanna and Nigel. It was performed at the Barbican, Plymouth as part of their THEATRE2DO Festival on 15/07/05 in the toilets of the theatre.
FILM
To Some Bodies Whoever
Was written by Joanna, shot, directed and edited by Nigel in 2005. It is an experimental short film that takes inspiration from film noir and the dogmatic mode of film-making.
Bargain
Is currently in the pre-production stages and is scheduled to be shot late June 07.
Vertical Exchange Performance Group
Devising as a way of life
The Company
Vertical Exchange was founded by Joanna Bucknall BA MA and Nigel Tuttle in 2005. Joanna is the Performance Artistic Director of the performance group; she has a background in theatre performance and drama and is responsible for the performative aspects of the company. Nigel is the Media Artistic Director; he has a background in video production and is responsible for the video and media aspects of the company. Joanna and Nigel collaborate to produce a range of different projects, from installations to devised theatre works. Joanna and Nigel are the only permanent members of VEX and they work with a range of performers, artists and creative practitioners for each project that they undertake.
Some of the Usual Suspects
Joe Harris is a frequent collaborator and has been involved with sound production and design for several VEX projects. He has a background in video and music production and is currently studying an undergraduate degree at Anglian Ruskin University.
Lorraine Bucknall is a frequent collaborator and has been involved with costume design and production for all of the VEX projects to date. Lorraine has a background as a seamstress and make-up artist but she also has extensive experience and qualifications in various craft disciplines.
Artistic Policy
We make work that aims to explore the contemporary experience and all the intricate moments that our lives present. Our aim is to create art works that are challenging and engaging, that manifest as cultural interventions and ask poignant questions about our lives and existence. We are committed to exercising difficult questions through art in provocative ways, pushing the boundaries of performance both aesthetically and culturally.
VEX is committed to a collaborative practice in both the way we make the work and the ways in which the work is encountered by the audience. Our aim is to produce performance work that involves its audiences at a fundamental level. By employing experimental and compelling performance devices we hope to offer the audience a truly participatory experience. Our works seek to explode the liminal space and offer our audiences the role of creative participant.
Our working practice is collaborative and we like to involve practitioners from a plethora of other fields and disciplines. This, we believe, gives us the freedom to follow lots of performative forms and ensures that new and fresh ideas are always being brought to the creative table.
Past Projects
THEATRE
Attempts on Her Life
VEX collaborated with Whizz Kids Theatre Academy to mount a production of Attempts on Her Life by Martin Crimp, for the Welwyn Garden City Youth Drama Festival 2004. It was performed at the Barn Theatre on 19/5/04. We were placed third in the competition.
Benches
Was written and directed by Joanna Bucknall and mounted as a live event in collaboration with Whizz Kids Theatre Academy & Jonathan Harris. It was performed as part of the Urban Tales Festival in 2004. It ran over 3 nights at the Balcony Theatre, Cambridge from the 6/12/04-8/12/04.
The Woman Who Swallowed the Moon
Was a devised, task and text driven piece of experimental theatre developed and directed by Joanna Bucknall in conjunction with the Whizz Kids Theatre Academy for the for the Welwyn Garden City Youth Drama Festival 2005. It was performed at the Barn Theatre on 17/5/05. The judge refused to consider our submission, as she asserted that it was not theatre; even though we had abided by all of the rules and regulations that inform the festival. Hence, we were not placed. It was later performed at the Balcony Theatre on the 19/5/05.
With You in Mind
Was VEX'S first independent theatre project. It was a site specific performance installation based around tasks and games. It was devised by Caila Carr, Harriet Keevil, Mark Finbow and Vicky Trower. The concept and direction was designed by Joanna Bucknall and the sound production was designed and recorded by Nigel Tuttle. Texts were written by Joanna and Nigel. It was performed at the Barbican, Plymouth as part of their THEATRE2DO Festival on 15/07/05 in the toilets of the theatre.
FILM
To Some Bodies Whoever
Was written by Joanna, shot, directed and edited by Nigel in 2005. It is an experimental short film that takes inspiration from film noir and the dogmatic mode of film-making.
Bargain
Is currently in the pre-production stages and is scheduled to be shot late June 07.
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