Category: Development

Performance Development…

Samantha Mckenzie / / Concealed Illusions, Development, Inspiration

When creating a performance piece, there are always going to be complications and ongoing changes. Sometimes something unexpected happens which changes the general direction of the piece; or helps continue its’ development. Clearly, because our performance site is a museum/art gallery, constant renewal and re-evaluation is going to take place. Due to rehanging in the gallery rooms and replacement of particualar sculptures or paintings the whole atmosphere and style may alter from time to time. This is mirrored by my group’s developing ideas and how our initial inspiration has evolved into something much more solid.

I feel that we are extremely lucky to be performing in a space which blends so nicely with theatre and performance ‘Demographic analyses of cultural activity show that people who go to the theatre, concerts, and movies are also museum visitors’ (Bennett 2013, p.5). It has been an opportunity for us to take something traditional and static and bring it to life; giving it energy and a sense of contemporary culture. Combining theatre and hanging art work together means that we have been able to analyse how a painting is already performing in a sense and put those details under a magnifying glass. For example, our initial idea stemmed from a painting being idealised and has developed into something real and live which is a person masking their face with makeup; so essentially being something which they are not. This is also where our discussion on instagram grew from because it is something which exists in a modern culture; it’s current and it’s now. We found it interesting to link back to the way in which an 18th century painting has been idealised with a tool which people use today to idealise photographs of themselves.‘Yet museums traffic mostly in material designated as representing the past, while theatrical performance takes place resolutely in the present,'(Bennett 2013, p.5) .

As I have written in previous posts, we initally planned our piece based around the painting of The Brayford Pool and Lincoln Cathedral (1858).

llr_lcnug_1927_2686_large Our main concensus links back to the idealisation of the painting and its’   superior positioning in the gallery. We planned for this to be our focal point and explanation behind our ideas. After speaking to members of staff in the Usher Gallery we were assured that the painting would stay hanging as it was even with changes within the gallery. However, unfortunatley when we were last in the building we discovered that the painting had been taken down due to further rehanging in that particular gallery. This caused our development process to come to a slight hault. We questioned the relevance of our current performance ideas without it but came to the conclusion that although our piece may have been inspired initially by that particular painting, it does not mean that it cannot share relevence with paintings as a general. We’re working with the idea of masking and revealing and the fact that we’re performing in an art gallery, regardless of what art work is there, still remains effective. After our initial panic, we took note of the irony which is the original painting’s replacement. Now hanging in the gallery room is a painting of Venus de Milo, an acient greek statue of Aphrodite- the goddess of love and beauty. Not only is it a painting of a sculpture; which is something neither live or the ‘real thing’, but it is also fitting how she represents beauty and we are going to be applying make-

venus-de-milovenus_milo

up throughout our piece. In a way the painting has been changed at just the right time in our creating process because we have reached a point where we are sure of what we want to show and reveal, and actually now this new painting fits better than the original one. We still plan to project a photograph of the Brayford pool painting above where it used to hang to illustrate the progression of art through time and to link all of our new and old inspirations together.

 

Work cited
Bennett, Susan (2013) Theatre and Museums, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Cafe Research Survey

Francesca Maria Izzo / / Development, People, Research

To help our group with Cafe research, I made a survey which was a similar design to the surveys the Collection Gallery asks the visitors to feel out when they visit. We thought of using surveys to find out why people come to the cafe and to see the age and type of people who use the cafe. An example of the survey is attached here in this blog: cafe research survey

As well as using the surveys for research purposes we are also going to use them in our piece. For instance, we are going to make placards which will include data retrieved from the surveys and put them on the tables where people filled them out. This will make the cafe into an exhibition which is our main aim for the part of the piece which takes part in the cafe. Other placards will also be created from verbatim; conversations and observations we have overheard and seen in the cafe. Each placard will be dated, with a quote and the name of the person who overheard it. The placard layout will be very similar to this which is an example of a placard found next to a piece of artwork in the Collection gallery:

placard text

Our group experimented with the placard idea in one of the sessions held at the Collection gallery by showing the rest of the Collection group the idea for the placards. The feedback was positive with people saying it was a good idea and the placards were easily noticed. Some suggestions were for the pieces of paper to be brightly coloured so it would make the pieces of text even more obvious however, at this stage we’ve decided to keep the placards white with back writing on so they resemble the placards you find next to pieces of art in the Collection gallery. Other suggestions also  included putting the placards on other objects in the cafe and not just the tables. For example, on the plant pots and high chairs as well as using the windows and the tables and chairs outside the cafe. This suggestion helped fuel our initial idea of connecting the outside space with the cafe and the education room but we were unsure how exactly. Therefore using the placards on the windows and the tables outside we should successfully be able to connect all three.

Problem’s occurring with our performance.

Fotini Efstathiou / / Cultural Terrorists, Development

A vital part of our performance is the drinking of afternoon tea after our hectic construction of The Big Ben in the gallery, as previously stated this is showing us inhabiting the space and also entwining the galleries history within our performance and cultural smuggling of London. Unfortunately when asking for permission to eat or drink in the gallery this was denied, so now we are stuck as to what to do during this part of the performance as we feel it is important to keep it in as it adds such a contrast to the first part of our performance, thus adding another dimension. We don’t feel pretending or miming will have the same impact, we feel if we are going to do it we should do it properly.

I have thought of other ideas such as sitting down and reading a piece of literature from the twenties, simply just listening to the music and lounge or perhaps do a bit of embroidery..what are your opinions?  Any comments or ideas would be really helpful. We really feel that having this contrast within the performance will make it more interesting and dynamic to the audience.

 

Author: Fotini Efstathiou

Automaton Movement

Chloe Doherty / / Development, Experimentation, Inspiration, Possessed Time, Research

Having been given feedback after showing a snippet of our durational performance to the class, it occurred to us that we may not be able to continue referring to what we are doing as falling under the sub-title of ‘miming.’

mime
/mīm/

Noun
The theatrical technique of suggesting action, character, or emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement.

Verb
Use gesture and movement without words in the acting of (a play or role).

By no stretch of the imagination are we attempting to create characters, or emotion through our incorporation of choreographed mechanical gestures. Our use of costumes will suggest a time of day, opposed to that of a fictional characters wardrobe. The gestures which we have constructed consist of ordinary movements which everyone inevitably comes across throughout the duration of their day. We will include one simple action for each period and repeat it over the course of 15 minutes at a time. The gestures being the hand moving to and from the face with a clenched fist (brushing teeth), both hands with open palms moving up and down in front of the face simultaneously (face washing) and lastly a cupped hand, whilst the other moves to the mouth and back down again (eating breakfast).

Our intention is to show the effects which a structured concept comes across when exposed to the notion of time. Repeating the same action for a period of time obviously much longer than intended can turn something very ordinary into something abstract, some might even say into a piece of art, much similar to those on show in both The Usher Gallery and The Collection. Although this may seem like quite a laborious task, it’s incredibly intriguing to see how warping such a simple thing like the amount of minutes it takes to brush your teeth can have on your outlook on the gesture used, the movements incorporated or even how strenuous it may be to experiment with something so unnatural.

When choreographing the movements which we decided to use, we tried to keep in mind the soundtrack to our piece, and our chosen galleries theme; the ticking of a clock. In order for a clock to create a sound, the cogs inside of it must be working together both effectively and efficiently together. In The Usher Gallery there is a skeleton clock on show, where all of the cogs are extremely visible. We hope to achieve the same kind of structure that a clock holds by the use of our mechanical gestures.

Automatons are a self-operating machine. They adopt a series of movements, or sometimes even just the one key gesture (similar to that shown above). The mechanisms inside of each automaton are similar to that of a clock, and are even used to produce to ‘cuckoo’ in a cuckoo clock. Automatons take a gesture which we are familiar with and have the tools to distort how we view it, their fixed facial expression and lack of inhibition express no life like characteristics, yet are still created with a somewhat human appearance and the ability to mimic a human gesture.

So, rather than us disregarding the use of props in order to create a convincing mime, we are currently experimenting with the use of mechanical expression. That being said, we fully intend on exploring what it will look like to use the same task, with the ‘robotic’ movements, whilst attempting to incorporate relevant props.

Author: Chloe Doherty

Music affecting the piece.

Gabriel / / Development, Experimentation, People

As our group is in the Cafe, many variations can change the mood of our performance.
Whether it be the weather, how many people or the music.

Music effects the tone of the piece, and the Cafe through my many days of me sitting there plays many different types of music.

I believe the classical music played will go with out piece nicely, as an exhibition of art and classical flow well together.

Jazz will make the piece more lively and jarring, with an upbeat tempo our pieces will seem happy, Will the audience in the cafe look around more if the music isn’t relaxing?

The last music I hear was Adele’s album, the music is often about sad relationships, will that make people put a story to out art pieces?

For example some of our exhibits, are people reading alone, another is sipping a coffee alone, will being alone with Adele playing make people think there is a realtionship story to out piece.

11 Someone Like You

If you can imagine those exhibits with that song, a story starts to become for the characters, a story about lost love.

Though we don’t get to choose the music on the day, I believe this will be interesting on how it effects out piece.