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.

Final ideas

Holly Rudd / / People

Our final performance is an exhibition of the least exhibited part of the gallery; the cafe.

Through our observations and listening to conversations we realize that there is a lot to look at and listen to whilst in a cafe especially in an art gallery. We decided on exhibiting these features.

We will have a cake stand

Cake Stand

A tea set

Tea Set

and a specials board

Specials Board

All of these familiar cafe features will be displayed in a professional manner much like the gallery would. We will use cases from the gallery itself to house some of our exhibits and we are placing barriers to keep people away from the exhibits, we did this to make our gallery profession much like the actual gallery itself. Another way which we will do this is to put up placards that explained what each exhibit was.

‘Museum display has attracted the interest of performance studies scholars because it forces engagement with the important issues about representing cultures and identities and the social production of meaning in time and space’ (Allain, 2006, pg 175) I think this quote helps to define our attraction to the way in which museums display their works. It ‘forces engagement’ because our piece is and instillation like an exhibit you would expect to find in a gallery people feel the need to look at things like they would a art gallery. I hope that this is the case and our audience feel compelled to explore the space and interpret our exhibits for themselves.

We as performers are presenting what we have seen and heard in the cafe but on a more emphasised scale; causing people to notice things they might not normally.

We will have two tables set up by the windows to frame them and to reflect real life within the cafe. The two members of our group at this table were reciting things to themselves that we had heard people say in conversation during our observations. I feel that this will grab people’s attention as the wander by and allow them to make their own observations.

We are going to have a greeter; this member of our group will stand on a platform and address audience members as they come past. They will offer up phrases that could be heard by a member of the staff within the cafe, such as; How can I help?, Would you like ice with that?, which table are you sitting at? And thank you, we look forward to seeing you again soon.

We will then have two members of the group in a glass window of the adjoining building to the cafe; this is another way of framing our observations as they were in effectively a glass box. These two were mimicking much like children would a pair of adults. They are going to act and be dressed as adults but they showed the idea of childlike mimicry by using a Childs table set and tea set.

We are going to use verbatim strongly in our piece as we feel it has a strong connection with what galleries do. They exhibit people’s ideas and work. Therefore we are going to display through verbatim the general public’s thoughts and feelings.

‘ “Verbatim theatre” The term…. refers to a form of theatre which places interviews with people at the heart of its process and product’ (Headicke, 2009, pg 115) within our performance we have used aspects of verbatim, we gathered our information by listening to conversations and observing peoples behaviours as we felt it was the best way to get peoples true feelings rather than ask people to participate in interviews as this could mess with the information that we found.

Our performance is taking place at The Collection Gallery on Danes Terrace in Lincoln. We are going to be presenting our gallery between 12 and 2 on Saturday the 4th of May. Feel free to come along and experience our exhibition.

Event page

 

 

Allain, Paul and Jen Harvie (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance, New York: Routledge

Headicke, Susan C. et al (2009) Political Performances (Theory and Practices), Netherlands: Editions Rodopi B.V.

Completion of The Big Ben!

Fotini Efstathiou / / Cultural Terrorists

The Big Ben has finally been completed. After many trails and error of how to fix the newspaper to the structure we decided on double sided sticky tape and duct tape around the edges for a neater finish. We  firstly used staples but we decided it looked extremely messy and ruined the professional look we are aiming for to create the big impact we want. The use of the black duct tape around the edges frames the newspaper emphasising it’s importance and the cosmopolitan lifestyle of London. We decided on the use of The Daily Telegraph as it is published in London and has been running since 1855 only a few years before The Big Ben was built in 1858. We now need to practise constructing the tower in a timely manner, smoothly and professionally.

image_1367325460763867IMG_1438

Author: Fotini Efstathiou

The end is near…

Eloise Grace Henshaw / / Nova Inventa

Today we met to go over what we want to do for our final piece and we are now excited by the way in which everything seems to have fallen together.

We have now decided to use different materials in our performance after the feedback about the noise of the pen on the cardboard boxes. We decided that in order to write on the boxes, it looked more effective with the use of paint.

Whilst we were working with paint, we thought that painting roman numerals worked well in the space. As time and seasons were two of the things we originally began to explore at the beginning of the module, we thought it was relevant.

We managed to bring better boxes than we had used before and successfully fill the space. It was nice to see all of our plans coming together and the finishing product looked better than we could have hoped.

 

 

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Word Count: 146

More practical experimentation

Daniela Scimeca / / Development, Experimentation, Nova Inventa, Research

Now that we had decided what we will be using to build the wall, we brought in a variety of cardboard boxes, all different shapes and sizes. We wanted to explore, firstly whether the wall should be built and that we should take it down or whether we should create the boxes whilst in the space and then build the wall. This process was to go with the concept of revealing and concealing the space and the deconstruction and reconstruction aspect.

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We used these two ideas as our starting point.  Before we started we wanted to add something to the boxes that would have meaning. We chose to write on the boxes, and discussed the significance of a person’s death and that if they died would anyone care? Or would they just be labelled as refuse. These ideas had reflected the video that played in the alcove area that was about a boat that would carry dead bodies to an island where the bodies would be dumped with no funeral service or names in relation to the body. This idea had progressed from the fact we also liked the idea that the boxes could represent coffins, so we played around with the idea of writing things on the boxes like:

#babyno.1

#boy

#oldman

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We used black markers to write on the boxes and began to think of the staging of the performance we made up all the cardboard boxes and had them on the floor. We found this to be quite a long process as the boxes would need to be taped into shape. Our next step was how we were going to write on the boxes, was it going to be whilst they were on the floor or whilst we were stacking them? To overcome this we looked into doing both. Firstly we wrote on them whilst they were on the floor and then stacked them.  From this more ideas became apparent for instance like writing questions on the boxes such as:

‘Why is this happening?’

Moving onto our other idea, we found the boxes we had weren’t strong enough so it wasn’t as effective. For our next session we would get better boxes!

We then spent some time thinking about what else we could incorporate into the performance to reflect our ideas into the space. We decided to script a monologue that one of us could recite as this process of building the wall was going on.

What we created from this was to be the basis for our performance. So far what we had was a routine of stacking the boxes and writing on them and a voice over. Tequila played around with how she would project her voice for the poem.  We found the most effective way was when it was monotonous as we wanted to increase the idea of repetitiveness. This worked well in conjunction with the erecting of the wall. It reinforced this idea that our emotion wouldn’t come from our acting but from the words spoken and what we were representing.  It wasn’t supposed to be happy so the more mundane meant the act would resemble a routine. The words used represented this idea that sometimes we take for granted the little things in life, that we should treasure the simplest acts of kindness. However the poem would also reflect this idea of the monotony of life. We were filled with imagery of our pasts and the future and this is what we wanted to incorporate into the monologue.  Collectively we thought of stages in our life that meant something which we thought could reflect in the poem. From this the idea of the circle of life became apparent and what we wanted to show was from constantly using the space we were in this would also reflect and re affirm the notion of the repetitiveness that is life.

From this development in research we hoped the following week (March 18th) to showcase our ideas to our peers and get some feedback.

Word Count: 669