Category: Inspiration

Has Museum Theatre Emulsified the Two?

Shane Humberstone / / Inspiration, Possessed Time, Research

During most museum visits you meander through the exhibits occasionally reading a thing or two and possibly even have a chat about what you have seen however this is changing. Catherine Hughes believes that ‘museums are theatres, rich with stories of human spirit and activity and the natural forces of life… both museums and theatre present us with ourselves in different contexts, holding the mirror up and showing us what we have done and what we might do (Hughes 1998, P. 10).

Performances in museums by actors are becoming increasingly popular, with our piece Possessed Time being an example of this. The parallels have always existed between museums and theatre, the whole idea that an audience goes to see something that they will hopefully find engaging, but now the two have become to merge and the distinctions between the two may be obvious although at a small number.

Susan Bennett observes, ‘… theatres and museums have increasingly become symbolic and actual neighbours, sharing the task of providing entertaining and educational experiences that draw people to a district, a city, a region, and even a nation’(2013 p. 3). They both serve a similar purpose and both work together to create a culture that is symbolic of the area in which they are situated. Moreover, ‘exhibitions are fundamentally theatrical, for they are how museums perform the knowledge they create’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, p. 3). The parallels are clear, they both serve the same purpose they just have always done it in different ways, and now that live action is happening in museums theatre has bled a new dynamic into them. When performing Possessed Time people stared and looked at us and try to understand what we were saying and what our purpose was as if we were a painting or a sculpture.

As well as differences between the two buildings, such as the audience in a theatre being on one side as they sit and watch the actors on the other, there are also differences between theatre on the stage and a performance in a museum. In a theatre ‘the subject matter of the play bears no relationship to the premises in which the play is performed’, whereas in a museum, ‘the subject matter is related to the museum as a whole or the exhibit’ (Bridal 2004, p. 9). If we performed our piece in a theatre, it would have had half the impact compared to Gallery 3 because all our influences and process were based on the things we discovered in that space. Furthermore, ‘museums traffic mostly in material designated as representing the past, while theatrical performance takes place resolutely in the present, ephemeral, resistant to collection’ (Bennett 2013, p. 5).

I believe that although they will forever be separate entities now that theatre has started to become part of the museum experience, the two will become ever more indistinguishable.

 

Written by Shane Humberstone.

Works Cited
Bennett, Susan (2013) Theatre and Museums, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bridal, Tessa (2004) Exploring Museum Theatre Oxford: AltaMira.
Hughes, Catherine (1998) Museum Theatre: Communicating with Visitors Through Drama, Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara (1998) Destination Culture, London and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

 

Relatable Sources

Chloe Doherty / / Inspiration, Possessed Time, Research, Video Research

“All rooted in an interest to make work that brings together theatre and the visual arts in a single unified vision” (Station House Opera, 2013).

Station House Opera are a site specific orientated theatre company based in the United Kingdom. When looking over their archived work, the thing which I found the most intriguing was their extensive use of multi-media, as it was something which we experimented within our piece. The pieces of work which I found particularly fascinating when comparing them to ours were that of their Ultramundane, Snakes and Ladders and Backwards.

ultramundane-01-c Ultramudane (1983).

Ultramundane’s intention was to present the public with an “inversion of the world” (Station House Opera, 1983) which they know so well. They intended for their performers to be “physically together yet dramatically separate, for they belonged to different parts of the landscape” (1983). This is something which we experimented with within our site specific performance. Although we were all close in proximity, we were apart in terms of aesthetical ease. The costumes we used represented a specific part of the day, so each ‘character’ would make sense at one point during the day, whilst the remaining five would continue to look out of place until they had found their specific ‘setting’. This parallels Station House Opera’s idea of characters belonging to different parts of the landscape.

snakes-and-ladders-01-bob-c Snakes and Ladders (1998).

Their use of multimedia appears to be most present in their 1998 production Snakes and Ladders. Snakes and Ladders “traced the external signs of an invisible dialogue between mind and matter” (Station House Opera, 1998). The performers on stage were accompanied by doubles of themselves presented in a video projection format. This is similar to the fact that we used ourselves to create our human clock projection, as we are essentially removing the ‘characters’ from world, into another. By mixing the virtual world with the actual you see two different interpretations of a person. In the recreated image you see a person who can not experience emotion or danger, but in the actual world you see the aftermath, the effects on the performers.

snakes-and-ladders-01-bob-c Backwards (2010).

One of their more recent works Backwards (2010) explores the notion of time, with a particularly strong focus on the notion of the distorted. “Do we believe in progress? Do we have evidence that humans improve? Evolution may operate in time, but our sensibilities do not. We must no longer see the world as one damn thing after another” (Station House Opera, 2010). We explored a similar issue within our performance, hoping that watching us would cause the audience to ask themselves similar questions to those seen above. Backwards starts at the end of a day and reverses back to the start whereas in our piece, we start at the beginning of a day but speed it up, condensing it into 6 hours opposed to 24.

Another piece of work which I found to be inspiring is Christian Marclay’s The Clock. “A 24-hour montage of thousands of film and television clips with glimpses of clocks, watches, and snatches of people saying what time it is” (Bradshaw, 2011). The interesting thing about this installation is that whenever the time is shown on screen, it is in fact accurate.

“When I first arrived, I found myself giving a little amused laugh at each appearance of the time. Then the novelty wore off and I became silent” (Bradshaw, 2011). A similar process happened with our installation piece, at first it may have seemed vaguely amusing as the audience had not yet grasped the concept of what we were creating. But, after a short time in the space, much like what Bradshaw has stated, you become mesmerised by the notion and do indeed fall to silence. Throughout Marclay’s The Clock, the image of a clock was not always blindingly present all of the time, sometimes it appeared as a background shot or even an afterthought. This is comparable to the use of the human clock and decomposing pineapple in our performance. Although it is the visuals that draw you in initially, they become a part of the background as the action develops. Another interesting point which Bradshaw makes is that the longer he spent in the space the more fictional the clock became, “I stopped noticing that they were telling me exactly what the time actually was” (2011). Having spoken to audience members about our piece post-production, our use of the concept of time appeared to have a very similar effect. Once you accept that you are embarking on a journey with the actors, much as they do, you lose your grasp on both time and reality.

Author: Chloe Doherty

Work Cited:
– Station House Opera (2012) Station House Opera (online) Available at: http://www.stationhouseopera.com/ (Accessed on 12 May 2013).
– Bradshaw, P (2011) Christian Marclay’s The Clock: a masterpiece of our times (online) Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/apr/07/christian-marclay-the-clock (Accessed 12 May 2013).

The Pleasure of Treasure

Lacey Cole / / Cultural Terrorists, Development, Inspiration

With our sculpture continuing to be built, I thought I’d take some time to consider other parts of the performance. I was interested to read an article recently on the Pleasure of Treasure, a site specific piece based in London which gave people the opportunity to follow clues on a city-wide scavenger hunt. Since the piece was based in London, it was thought-provoking to read and in fact has some similar elements to the performance piece we are now creating. The Artangel group, initiated by Kathy Battista, recreated maps from 1868 merged with contemporary maps for those taking part. Our initial idea bore some relevance to this, as we discussed the idea that previously where the Usher Gallery stood it was just woodland, and the bringing together of what used to stand and what now does stand in the space was considered. We also had a chance to look at some older maps of Lincoln in the Lincolnshire Archives, which may have added an interesting element, as we discussed covering Big Ben with maps of London or Lincoln. This idea has evolved and we are now looking at incorporating both the history of the site and modern elements.

Another part we found struck a chord with us was the final effect the Artangel group wanted to produce with the walk. As we want the audience to consider their personal attachments to a city, the group wanted people to question ‘what they thought they already knew about… inner-city London’ (Battista et al. 2005, p.431). This idea of wanting people to query where they live and what they know about their roots and the city they feel comfortable in is prevalent in both site specific pieces. Along with this we also wanted to consider the ‘overlapping histories that make up urban space’ (Battista et al. 2005, p.439), in accordance with both London and Lincoln, with the idea that we’d be able to overlap both cities to create our own version. I feel this is somewhat close to what we are working towards, two intersections of historical places overlapped in order to become our own personal culture.

Although not much is documented about this particular site specific performance, other pieces by the Artangel group can be found on their website at www.artangel.org.uk.

References: Battista, Kathy et al (2005) ‘Exploring ‘an area of unnatural beauty’: a treasure hunt around King’s Cross, London’, Cultural Geographies, 12: 429-462.

Author: Lacey Cole

 

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

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