Author: Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe

So we did our performance…

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / Evaluation, People

So our exhibit was to be created and presented to the public for them to come and explore the café from our point of view. It was a fun process to help build the exhibit, even though I felt some members of the group did more than others throughout the setting up and deciding where things were going to be placed but it was still great fun. Being trusted to go down to the warehouse to paint the platform on my own felt amazing and for a second I believed I could be an artist as I thought someone would be watching me making sure that I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. It felt nice to be trusted. The setting up process involved going back down to the warehouse underground to collect the platform and various other items that we were allowed to borrow. It was really helpful of The Collection to allow us to use plinths and glass boxes to present our exhibit as it gave it a more professional feel and made it connect and relate more to what was inside the galleries in The Collection. Throughout the setting up process I was really excited with how it was turning out and how it began to look, this was good because a lot of what we wanted to do was dependant on how it worked out on the day. I was really nervous going to The Collection on the Saturday because I knew that it was either going to work or it was all just going to fail but it seems to start off well…

After we spent a few hours setting everything up I was more confident in our piece and was beginning to get really excited. Setting up the education room was fun as we did end up moving it from our original window into the one nearby as we felt like it framed us more and gave us more chances of people seeing us, which it did. In the education room we weren’t sure on how people would react to us if they noticed us. Just as we thought we were finished setting up it started to pour it down with rain, this wasn’t good because most of our piece was outside. However, it seemed to only affect our chalk board which we rewrote before we got into our positions ready to begin and agreed that if it started raining then we would battle through it.

It was amazing to be set up in the education room, not because this was a dry spot but because it allowed me to evaluate peoples reactions to what they were experiencing. It was nice to see how people were reacting to me and Holly being up there because some people would wave to us and as we were having a tea party it felt natural to wave back and smile at them. Some people looked at us confused and didn’t really understand what we were doing but yet we just carried on as we needed to. People weren’t sure what to make of the whole idea as it was bringing something that shouldn’t be there to the space, some people looked confused as their normally space had been took over and they couldn’t understand why.

After our performance ended, I had a lot of mixed feelings. I felt like it hadn’t come to a natural finish and that we should have carried on longer as I didn’t feel like it had properly run its full length of time, it just felt like when you’re watching a movie and it suddenly freezes and it hasn’t come to its correct end. I feel like some members of the group put everything into the performance whereas I personally feel like one member of the group didn’t and the problem is I don’t really understand why. I accept that it might have got boring repeating the same thing over and over for a few hours but we all knew what to expect when we agreed to do this project as a group. I just felt let down that this member didn’t seem to  feel like it was an important project after we had come so far as a group and eventually developed an idea that we all accepted and liked for this one member to then put the effort in just made me disappointed. It was a downside to being up in the education room because I could also observe the flaws within our project and I tried not to let this interfere with my own performance even though sometimes I was getting frustrated.

Evaluating our project as a whole I think that we could have pushed it even further than we did, we could have created several different things for the public to observe and make it into more of a professional gallery, I think it is a shame that we came up with this idea so late on in the project as I didn’t feel that we had enough time to fully develop our idea. If I was to develop it I would make things look even more professional, as though it really had come from inside and was just an extension of The Collection. I would create more standalone items that the audience can come and explore and maybe include an interactive thing like you get inside the galleries so that it appeals not only to adults but also children as well.

Overall it has been a great experience to have been able to do as it gave me another insight into performance however I also feel like it hasn’t been very valuable to me personally.

Further Development

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / Development, People

The initial ideas didn’t all work but it was nice to experiment with them. The chalk down the stairs was tested but didn’t look as professional as we had hoped and you couldn’t really read what was said, to have taken this further it would have required using a different type of lettering.  The picture idea also didn’t make it into our final exhibition, not because it wasn’t a good idea but because it didn’t really fit with everything else in the final piece.
Our final exhibition included:

  • Having only two people sat talking to themselves outside instead of three, three people was just too much and two people proved as much of a point as three.
  • We had the third person on a platform portraying our opinion of a café worker, she would greet at random times, directing this speech to no one in particular.
  • We still included the idea of the education room but at the last minute we moved its position because we felt like it would be better framed and could be seen by a wider audience, some of who wouldn’t know why we were up there.
  • A chalk board, explaining who each person was and what it was that they were doing – this was a way to introduce our piece and make it a little clearer, it also links back to the café because it was similar to that of a specials board that was inside the café at The Collection.
  • We want to hopefully frame one of the windows so that if you’re looking from the outside then it encourages you to look inside the café and have a proper look.
  • As well as these ideas we have a few that we can only really try out on the day, they are not really to key to our piece but do help set the scene. This is having a tea set and a cake stand each in their own little plinths so they become part of the exhibit with a placard similar to that which you see in The Collection galleries.

Our piece could all go wrong on the day but I think this adds to the excitement a little. We have secured the use of some of The Collections items such as the plinths, a platform which I need to go and paint and also some things that help us to block the public from going any further forward. I think we have done everything we can to prepare for the day, let’s just hope it doesn’t rain otherwise some people might get a little bit wet as when we decided to take it outside we agreed that if it was to rain on the day that it would still go ahead as planned.

Time to develop ideas

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / Development, Experimentation, People, Public Responses

After discussion we decided that we wanted to use another space in The Collection, the education room that looks out onto the Café. This was because we thought it would be good as it was an example of how the two buildings could be together yet they are apart. It was also another thing to do with our research and how children mimic what they see in society and in cafes. Children notice things that adults don’t. We decided it would be a good idea for some members of the group to have a tea party up in the education room, acting like children and using a child’s tea set. We experimented trying out lots of things whilst the rest of the group sat in the café and suggested to us afterwards what worked and didn’t work. Throughout this process we felt it was more natural for us to start as children but by the end become business women who were professional. Whilst we were doing this in the education room, the rest of the group aimed to create an exhibition down in the café and present all of the things that people might not notice but we had noticed over the past few weeks. After experimenting with this exhibition idea it was clear that it needed to be pushed even further as it just wasn’t working but again we had to take into account that it was still as business…
This was beginning to not seem a great place after all.

We showed our performance ideas so far to the rest of the groups and received great feedback for the tea party in the education room and got told things such as

“once you watch your intrigued that you need to keep watching to see what happens next”
“it’s a really good idea”
“it works well, maybe make more of it”

This was really positive for us as we wasn’t sure if it was going to make an impact or not. Most importantly we wasn’t sure if we could be seen clearly enough but it seemed to work ok, this wasn’t the same for the café however as the idea we hadn’t didn’t really work well and so needed to be rethought. As well as this exhibition we had the other three group members in the café talking to themselves using a verbatim script that had been creating through listening to peoples conversations. This seemed to get lost so we discussed our whole idea and decided to see what the effect would be if we took this outside. We weren’t sure if this would work as we were taking it out of its original setting, out of the café atmosphere and outside. So taking this outside and trying it out it felt like something was missing, it lacked energy and needed something to back it up. Still wanting to keep the education room idea we discussed whether there was a way that we could link outside and the education room. In the end it was suggested that maybe we could attempt to create our own exhibition outside and portraying our version of the important things in the café.
Our ideas included:

• Having the three people sat at their own individual table talking to themselves, one would portray ‘the reader’ another ‘the working man’ and the third would portray ‘the family man’ as these are the three characteristics that we picked up on most throughout our research.
• Taking pictures and creating a framed piece up on the wall of the café, and showing how it changes throughout the day.
• Having the sentences we had heard wrote in chalk down the stairs to create something different
• Using the placard idea from inside and seeing how that worked.

Feeling Lost…

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / Development, Experimentation, People

At this current moment in time I feel as though we have a lot of great ideas but are not really making any progress. I understand that the whole process of creating a site specific performance is in my opinion not an easy thing to do or get your head around. ‘Site Specific work has to deal with, embrace and
cohabit with existing factors…’ ((Persighetti. 2000. p,12)) and it is at this moment of our process where we have these ideas but putting them into practice seems difficult and just isn’t seeming possible. I am not sure if it is our location with it also being a business so we can’t interrupt there working day or if we are just not pushing our ideas far enough. I am currently feeling lost about our development and where to go next because so far we haven’t made any definite decisions about our direction and maybe this is our next thing to do.

To make a firm choice as to which direction we are going to go and then experiment and push ideas further. Figuring out where our piece should head will be easier once we have looked at the feedback from the surveys we created as ‘a large part of the work has to do with researching a place’ ((Pavis, P (1998). Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and
Analysis. London: University of Toronto pp337—8)). We have been doing a lot of research over the time we have been at The Collection, listening to people conversations and figuring out why they are here, looking at how people interact with each other and where people tended to sit. For example if they were on their own then they would often sit in the alcoves.

Rehearsal Schedule for Cafe :)

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / People

25.2 –    Experiment socially to see what causes reactions and grabs people attention.
Collect sources ready to experiment the stringing up outside ready for Monday 4th March.
Continue research on Café culture, narrowing it down to the café at the collection.

4.3 –       Experiment with the ideas that we have for outside, if it is not possible to do this at the height that we wish to then do it at a lower levelso we can still experiment and plan.
Have a survey formed to hand out to member of the café to see the reasons behind why people visit the café.

11.3 –     WORK IN PROGRESS WEEK! Need to have something that we want to try to see if it works ready to show the other groups so that they can give us feedback.
Also continue research to create a verbatim script as part of the performance in the café.

18.3 –     Make sure all materials are gathered, script is close to being completed.
Have some idea of movement that is going to be done. Need to have a clear structure for the piece

Easter-  Arrange a date to meet up during the 2nd week of the holiday.
Continue development and experimentation with materials.

8.4 –       Attempt to have some sort of initial run through, see what problems arise. Then work out solutions of these problems.

15.4-      Further discussion of the run through that we previously had. Make the piece strong and clear. Make it have a definite purpose of direction.

Things we need to consider:

Costumes
Music
Flowers
Materials
Risk assessment
What is happening in the upstairs window?
Making the café into an exhibition?
Is our script going to be completely verbatim?