Author: Stephanie Jackson

Final Evaluation: Possessed Time

Stephanie Jackson / / Possessed Time

“So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson 

As with all performance based pieces, there are many things which could have been improved and should have been developed further in our final product. Our piece was far from perfect, however, I think that we explored our ideas effectively and presented our audience with visually interesting ideas, whilst transforming our chosen space in a unique and informative way.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Unfortunately the opening of our piece went wrong, with the irony of our own clock not working which meant we started out of time to our planned structure. That being said, we recovered quickly and efficiently and got back in time with each other.

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In my opinion, the projection of our human clock was the biggest strength of our work. It stood out within the darkness of the gallery, and drew much of the audiences attention.  Although this projection had a great impact, I don’t think the projection of the pineapple worked at all. Firstly, the image wasn’t clearly identifiable and this was down to the filming of the pineapple. We should have filmed it for a longer period to show the decomposition process in its entirety. Secondly, I think the positioning of the projection was wrong and we should have had the image projected underneath the human clock. If we had synchronised it with the timing of the clock, then it would have slowly decomposed over the course of the day, demonstrating the effects of time in a much more direct manner.

Another strength of our piece was the clock puzzle. It juxtaposed the two ideas of ‘work’ and ‘play’, because although it represented the ‘work’ part of our daily routine, we were ultimately doing a jigsaw puzzle, which is more ‘play’. This created an interesting dimension to our piece as it questioned the boundaries between these two actions. If we took that puzzle out of our chosen site, and put it in another space, would it have a different effect?

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Audience Reaction

This was the first time we had put all our performance elements together, and had a real audience to respond to. It was interesting how different groups of people reacted depending on where we were positioned within the room and what we were doing. During the process of creating the puzzle we had people intrigued by what the final image was, and one man kept coming back to watch our progress along with his two daughters.  It would be interesting to see how the dynamic of the space would have changed further if the puzzle had been bigger and filled the entire floor. I’m glad that we got a wide range of age groups witnessing our work because they all had a different approach. The children who entered our space got excited and looked eager to join in when we were creating the puzzle. However the moment we started miming, several children refused to enter and became fearful of the space, because our movements had become unnatural and mechanical. On the other hand, the older generation were more inquisitive and also nonchalant, with some members just waltzing right in and completely ignoring us! At one point, we were all sat in a line by the entrance watching the human clock, and you could see the audience were more wary of entering the space because of how we had positioned ourselves. We had manipulated the audience to feel like they were imposing and that the space solely belonged to us. This reminds me of the work of Susan Bennett whose work discusses the relationship between the audience and distance between performers:

‘Distance is intrinsic to art….the deliberate manipulation of distance is to a great extent, the underlying factor which determines theatrical style.’

(Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, Susan Bennett, Routeledge London, 1990)

Indeed, this is relevant to our piece as our distance between our audience varied throughout the day, changing our space and even atmosphere of the room. Our chosen space was claustrophobic anyway so to have close proximity to our audience intensified this feeling of confinement, and our style switched between the natural and unnatural. Perhaps we should have rehearsed much more with an audience leading up to our final performance, in order to discover more ways in which to involve or distance our audience further.

Concluding Remarks

This performance process has developed over a long time, collaborating many ideas and exploring different techniques. I felt we portrayed our ideas on time quite effectively, both visually and practically. However, I think we over complicated our ideas, and it would have been more effective to have done something minimal and simple which progressed over the duration of the day, rather than having a set structure of many different things. As a performer, it was a challenge to be focused for 6 hours continually but this work has taught me many skills which I would like to develop in my next project.

 

Works Cited

Bennett Susan, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, (Routeledge London, 1990)

Creating Our Clock Puzzle

Stephanie Jackson / / Development, Possessed Time

As part of our piece we are putting together our own clock created out of 9 carpet tiles. This is representing our ‘at work’ section of our performance, linking with the sites history of clockmaking and James Ward Usher’s heritage in the trade of horology.

In order to make it look effective and stand out against the Gallery’s dark interior, we chose cream coloured carpet tiles. Each carpet tile has been cut into many pieces, so the object as a whole imitates a giant jigsaw puzzle. I then had to create stencils of every number, to measure the distance of the clock, making sure every number was roughly the same size, for the final product to look as good as possible.

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We decided to use carpet tiles instead of cardboard or other materials, due to the aesthetics of our performance space. Gallery 3 is intentionally different to the other spaces around, with its carpeted floor and ceiling, so we needed to keep this effect.

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I stencilled all the numbers in black permanent pen and finalised the puzzle with hands pointing at 2 o’clock. This time has been purposefully chosen as it will be the time that we should finish putting the puzzle together.  The final puzzle once complete will be an interesting addition to the Gallery.

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It will represent the clocks in Gallery 3 as well as fitting in with the role of The Collection and Usher Gallery in displaying contemporary art as well as historic artefacts. This is our own work of modern art!

 

 

Human Clock

Stephanie Jackson / / Possessed Time

Focusing our work on clocks and time, we are in the process of creating our own digital clock to project throughout our piece onto the doors of Gallery 3. We photographed ourselves in the positions of each number from 0-9, and using an animation software, these photographs will become a clock, ticking down from 24 hours.

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The reason for us wearing white is in order for our clock to stand out against the midnight blue of the Gallery’s interior. The digital clock will contrast the traditional Grandfather clocks which are present in the Gallery, and will structure our piece which represents a 24 hour day. Our piece is also physical with lots of mime and movement, so making a clock using our bodies will be an interesting visual addition.

 

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We were inspired to create this from watching similar work by other artists, finding it both interesting and highly effective to watch.

The Challenges of Durational Performances

Stephanie Jackson / / Possessed Time

Durational performances can be an effective means through which to communicate conflicting or challenging ideas to an audience, over a prolonged period. This may be through subtle changes during the piece or obvious and deliberate interventions.

Emma Govan, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington state how:

‘such performances often highlight a difference between the physical capability and limitations of the body.‘

(Govan, Nicholson, Normington, 2007, p.160)

This ‘physical capability’ will ultimately effect the outcome of any performance, as actors need to maintain a certain degree of fitness to enable them to have the stamina and focus to carry out a durational piece of theatre.

As performers ourselves, we will have to be aware of the exhaustion that may occur during our 6 hour performance.

‘As the actor tires, the audience sees the real characteristics of the actor themselves- their exhausted, unobliging body attempting to undergo a task.’

(Govan, Nicholson, Normington, 2007, p.161)

This exhaustion will be most prominent in our intense mimes which will each last continually for 15 minutes, as we ‘undergo a task’ of representing our daily morning routine.

So why challenge ourselves with a 6 hour piece?

Quite simply, our piece is about time and the constraints that time plays upon us, not just as performers but in our daily lives. It therefore makes sense for our work to develop over a period of 6 hours- a quarter of a day. As discussed in the points above, time will effect us through our own tiredness and exhaustion.

Many practitioners and companies use durational pieces to impose their ideas on the audience. One example, is Forced Entertainment whose 1993 work ’12am: Awake & Looking Down’, lasted over a prolonged period in which 5 silent performers encompassed different identities throughout the duration. The audience were free to come and go as they pleased, witnessing different interactions and relationships between each of the performers.  This is similar to what we hope our piece will achieve; as we will have no fixed audience, and our interactions will differ throughout the 6 hours.

Another artist Marcia Farquahar, presented a durational performance in 2010 called ‘The Omnibus’. Here her performance lasted for 30 hours, with each hour representing one year through which she presented everything that had happened since the late 1970s.

The Guardian writer Lyn Gardiner writes in her theatre blog, that ‘through time, the life becomes the work, or that the two are inseparably intertwined.’  This can be applied to our site specific work, and the discussion of at which point does something become a performance. Afterall, isn’t all life a performance? Throughout our own piece and the 6 hours, audience and performer will also become ‘intertwined’ to a certain extent, as they impose on our space and become part of our piece.

Works Cited

Govan, Emma, Nocholson Helen, Normington, Katie, Making a Perfromance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practises. Routledge, 2007

Gardiner, Lyn, When theatre is the time of your life, guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog

Our Mime Endurance Trial…..of brushing teeth!!

Stephanie Jackson / / Development, Experimentation, Possessed Time

 

In todays workshop, our group put into practise our ideas on the structure and timing of our piece. The opening section of our performance will consist of us going about our daily routine, of waking up, brushing our teeth, washing our face and eating breakfast. We have chosen a simple movement that represents each of these acts, however we are doing each action for 15 minutes. This will dehumanise a simple every day action, and the audience will not be expecting us to maintain such simple movements over a durational period. As we are going to be using our bodies to portray an action, and due to the duration of our piece, it is important to research into physical theatre and mime traditions. Simon Murray and John Keefe write:

‘the physical actions of the body still remain those of the everyday body. These may be stylised or contorted or otherwise heightened but the body remains the same somatic, corporeal ‘thing’ that it can only be.  The actions are mimetic of the everyday but outside the everyday or habitual.’

(Murray Simon, Keefe John, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction,Taylor and Francis 2007)

 

The reason we have chosen to mime is because we feel that it fits more with the aesthetics of the space. We can’t justify having real props such as toothbrushes and doing it for real, because it would too out of place. During the sections when we mime eating, the reason for us not having real plates and cutlery is that the Gallery is filled with household crockery. They are meant for practical use but they are kept behind glass for display only.  Our mime is demonstrating the essence of the action we are portraying without the materialistic element, because the material objects are prevented from our use by the glass cabinets in the Gallery.

So would our mime work and would it be effective? The only way to find out was to practically do it.

With each of us focusing and remaining in silence, with only the sound of a ticking clock to accompany us, we began to mime brushing our teeth. We each did different speeds, but maintained timing with the clock. This required so much concentration and perseverance on our part as performers, as within a few minutes our arms began to ache and the repetitive nature became quite mentally challenging to keep going.

After 15 minutes of non stop repetitive mime, an alarm dictated us to change into our next movement of face washing. This was equally as challenging and required mental strength and endurance to keep us motivated and focused. We received comments afterwards from our fellow students who had watched us. They remarked on how effective it was and the energy that the repetitive nature evoked in the room.  We learnt as performers how a subtle movement can become enlarged and surreal just by repeating it, and the endurance and skill that is required to keep up a mime like that.  I think we need to develop this further and perhaps experiment with different actions in the space, as the space itself can change the way an action is perceived. Will our mime be more effective if we all stood in a line, or at different levels within our space? Do we face into the cabinets or to our audience? These are questions which will become answerable as we develop our work further.

 

Works Cited

Murray Simon, Keefe John, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, (Taylor and Francis 2007)