Category: People

Strings and more things.

Gabriel / / People

Part of out performance is using string to tie the cafe building and the museum building together, it is to represent the stitches in the Bound by love Painting.  It reminded me of the German site specific performance when they covered the political building with white sheets.

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Though we were unable to tie them by the roof as we plan to do for the actual performance, we used ourselves to see the look and feel of how the strings will look.

 

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As you can see by even doing this, someone stood at the back and watched this all unfold, considering this is such a small part of our performance piece and a number of people noticed, it makes me wonder how many will take notice when it all comes together?

 

 

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?

Development/ Experiments

Jennie Chapman / / Development, Experimentation, People

Today we looked at trying some of our performance ideas out on site. From last week’s session we had some elements we needed to figure out for us to recreate the painting ‘Bound by Love’.

We decided to focus on the string as it was the key element of us wanting to join the cafe with the rest of the museum and so neglected our initial idea of recreating the painting as a whole. We were able to experiment with the string to see what it would look like. We also decided to use a coloured ribbon in the midst of the string as this would be seen, clearly linking the two sides of the building together. This became even more relevant when we decided to experiment with part of our performance taking place in the Education suite.

We came up with was to use the windows in the Education Suite and to see whether anyone in the café would notice. Holly and Shellie volunteered to carry out the experiment. First of all they simply improvised which included dancing and talking out of the window. We then began suggesting other movements that they could do such as have an argument, pretend to be in a café, climb the windows. Quite a number of the public looked up at the windows and pointed it out to the people they were with as well as people in the café noticing, people walking past the building started to wave at the windows. Through this experiment came the idea of mimicking and emphasizing the cafe by Holly and Shellie taking the characters of those we had seen in the cafe but contrasting it with child’s play. This was very effective as it would emphasize activity in the cafe and also the people we had observed.

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We also continued to carry out some experiments in the café which involved us sitting alone at a table and start talking to as if we were with someone else. We did this in order to see if people would respond or notice us. At first when Holly and Shellie tried, nobody really took notice however when Gabriel had spoke as if having an argument with someone, a few people looked up and reacted. We have been recording parts of people’s conversation in order to use it somehow in our performance. We are thinking of combining these two elements together; sitting alone whilst repeating quotes and conversations we have overheard as we have found it intriguing to hear the types of conversation people have in the cafe as well as the type of people we have seen.

This developed further when each of us performing in the cafe took on a ‘character’ of a person we had observed in the cafe, each one of us becoming an exhibit in the cafe. Such ‘characters’ as The Reader, The Working Man and The Family. We are going to sit individually around the cafe and re-enact the conversations and actions of these people. Along with this we will create placards similar to those seen by real exhibits throughout The Collection in order to further our idea of making the cafe an exhibition. The placards will have quotes on them and also the names of our exhibits like the ones in the images below.

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Why do people choose to visit cafés?

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / People, Research

I thought it would be wise if we were to do our piece in the café then I would need to gain further understanding as to why people decide to visit cafes. After I started to pay more attention at The Collection, I began to notice how people seem to be in their own little bubble and didn’t pay much attention to their surroundings or the people around them. It made me begin to question things such as;

Do people choose to visit cafes for the coffee, the atmosphere, or for the company they keep?

 It seems that all these things merged together create an experience that makes people want to come back time and time again. People tend to visit cafes for different reasons, for some people it could be for a catch up with friends, others just to get away from their everyday life. For a lot of people it was another place to sit and do work. They go to do their work their because from personal experience the work load doesn’t seem so much when it is taken out of its normal surroundings, often a café is described as being a third place in a person’s life other than work and home.
Neeti Gupta has a theory that when we are alone in a public place, we have a fear of ‘having no purpose’ ((References:
Gupta, N 2004,’Grande Wi-Fi:Understanding what Wi-Fi users are doing in coffee-shops’. New Delhi, India, School of Planning and Architecture)). If we are in a public place and it looks like we have no business there, it may not seem socially appropriate. In contrast to this it is also suggested that ‘today’s coffee houses are less political settings than refuges from the stress of everyday life, where people can meet and talk, read, listen to music or poetry or simply watch the world go by’ ((Humboldt Bay Coffee Company, 2006 [Accessed: 24/02/2013] http://web.archive.org/web/20070915014128/http://www.humboldtcoffee.com/History.htm)). As these both give different perspectives it was decided that we needed to do research as to why people came and visited the café in The Collection to figure out who came to the café and for what purpose as I believe that our performance should be based around what we figure out through researching so we can gain a better understanding of the space.

Why do you choose to visit a cafe?

Bound by love.

Gabriel / / Inspiration, People, Research

Our group went up to The Usher Gallery and saw this painting which is called “Bound By Love” by Alexei Grigoriev

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We felt the painting seemed so out of place amongst the portraits of people and Lincoln, that is was brought to our attention right away.  We then went back to the idea of using the Cafe, which that lived in feeling. Then it is as if the lovers are trying to meet in the Cafe.

It made us think of Pearson’s theater and archeology where it states “Cultural identities, It is in these limited spaces and with these heterogeneous elements that both archeology and performance work and negotiate identities of people and things.” (Pearson, Shanks,  2001, p54)

We want to focus on the Cafe (as well as the courtyard outside) to help bring the performance together and show the identities of these people, and their love for each other. One part of the performance will include one person in the cafe “talking” to someone in the building opposite. The building representing the people in the painting rather than the actors doing so.

The archeology is an important factor in our performance, representing not only the people in the painting but the distance between them.

Though this has yet to come into practice and we are unsure if it will be effective.

Bibliography:

Pearson, M., Shanks, M., (2001). Theatre/ Archeology. London: Routledge

Gabriel Davies