Reflective Practitioner: Space

I think that the architecture of the space is essential in setting up both the physical and psychological contracts between the work and its audience. The architecture sets up conventions of behaviour and perception and also sets up particular expectations in the audience. It is therefore, vital for me to have an informal horseshoe style staging and seating arrangement. If I am to have any hope of exploding the liminal space and setting up a space that has the potential to be participatory and that creates a dynamic relationship between audience and performer, then the usual end on, apron or thrust scenario has to be re-thought and re-configured. I believe that it is the material space that is key to achieving the audiences role as ‘material creatorly participants’, if I remove the actual physical barriers and boundaries that traditionally separate the audience and performer then I will be generating a space, physically and conceptually in which the audience and performer co-exist. In this way, I am considering the relationship that art, especially live art and performance art, has with its audiences. I need to make the performance space entire and encompassing, very much like a gallery or installation space. The right conditions have to exist; the right space has to be created in order for a creatorly participatory exchange to happen. The audience need to feel that there is no separation between the ‘performance’ space and auditorium; I will need to remove the divide so that to participate they do not have to cross over or enter into the ‘performance space’ because they will be in that space, as soon as they enter into the event.

Although I will be able to create a horse-shoe of seating within the space, I am concerned that having the end on seating bank up as well compromises the space physically and conceptually. I do not want to send mixed signals to the audience and I feel that having the seating bank up confuses the space and is very much in danger of undermining the conceptual aims of the project. My other fear of course is that the audience will automatically head straight for the darkened, safety of the seating bank.

I, however, now have no choice it would seem than to try and work around this but I have given some thought to ways in which I can try to utilise and make work the space and conditions that I do have:

I will ensure that the ushers fill up the horse-shoe seating first and encourage people not to sit on the seating bank. Sitting the audience in a horse-shoe, means that they will be facing each other and be on all sides of the performers. I will ensure that they are well lit, so that they can see each other clearly and to feel as though they are part of the performance space. I am still not convinced that this seating arrangement will produce the ‘space’ that I am hoping for but I am just going to have to make it work with the limitations that I have been given as I really have no other choice. My hope is that I will be able to achieve my seating arrangements and space within one of the external venues.

Patrice Pavis discusses various modes of the audience’s reception processes in the 1997 publication, New approaches to Theatre Studies and Performance Analysis. She suggests that our ways of looking are ‘affected by more than just light bouncing off our retinas’, she implicitly implies then, that architecture does indeed play a big part in the audience’s perception.

Pavis asserts that, ‘one can imagine the spectator at the epicentre of a scientific earthquake, endowed with three kinds of visions: psychological, sociological and anthropological. These three perspectives are distinct but complimentary, framing many concentric circles which widen individual and psychological perspectives endlessly, taking them towards a sociological vision and to an anthropology where the scenic work reconnects with the surrounding human reality of the spectator’. Although findings in cognitive sciene may take issue with Pavis’s assertions on how these things actually come together to inform our reception and perception, they do acknowledge that these elements she designates do play a role. I think that Pavis is useful in approaching the idea of the spectator and gaze as a starting point.

The audience’s position not only sets up conventions and contracts but it also positions their gaze. This is something that I will need to think carefully about. My hope is that as the audience get up to participate, they will be shifting their gaze. Their gaze will not be entirely on the performers but on each other and themselves.

In the same text, Gad Kaynar also recognises the impact that architecture has upon the role and gaze of the spectator.

‘Sociological and socio-theatrical studies relate to the idea of response programming both Sui generic, having to do with social norms, conventions and codes [I would suggest that this includes the architecture of the space both materially and conceptually]-as asserted by reception-orentated critics from Elizabeth Burns to William Sauter and Susan Bennett- and by proxy, though the social paradigms that this discipline derives from the theatrical situation.’
I think that this is alo interesting in terms of the structure of my piece, Siren Song; in using games, tasks and structure that are taken from familiar social situations, (mostly from the children’s birthday party), we pull the everyday into a performative situation and in doing so make it strange. By using party games that the audience will be familiar with we are alluding to specific codes and conventions but in the same moment problematising them. It is my hope that the games will offer something comfortable and thus an easy way to participate within a recognizable framework of social codes but at the same time will re-frame those activities drawing attention to them as a strategy for community, communication and participation