E x p e r i m e n t a l D.r.a.m.a

Eloise Grace Henshaw / / Uncategorized

Over the past few weeks, we have done lost of experimenting and decided as a group to incorporate some of these ideas in to our piece.

EXPERIMENTAL DRAMA:

Some of the ideas that can be seen here a discussed further in our previous blogs.

EXPOSURE: Our intention was to look in to the way in which we can focus on exposing a space, a secret or some kind of revelation through our piece.

How we incorperated this in to our work: The way in which the piece works, allows us to expose ‘something’ (which you will see if you come to our performance!). As a group, we feel that we have managed to build suspense in our piece and end it in a climatical way

OBSCURITY: As a group, we explored different ways in which to incorporate obscurity in to our performance.

How we incorporated this in to our work: The performance itself is obscure. Out intentions from our performance are not explicitly obvious.

LIFE AS ART: From the offset, our key interest was looking in to what it means to have life be art.

How we incorporated this in to our work: In our performance, we feel like we explore the idea of the fine line between art and drama.

Although at times we felt like each lesson we had different ideas and we were getting nowhere, we finally feel as a group, all of our experimentation throughout the term has finally paid off.

One of the reasons behind our chosen style of performance can be summed up in this quote:

‘ Site-specificity, then, can be understood in terms of this process, while a site-specific work; might articulate and define itself through properties, qualities or meanings produced in specific relationships between an object or event and a position it occupies.’ (Site-Specific Art, Nick Kaye)

 

As a group, we have focussed on our performance taking place in a museum, specifically the contemporary art gallery. Through this we were able to develop our ideas and knew that our performance needed an artistic twist in order to make it differ from other performances.

 

Creating Our Clock Puzzle

Stephanie Jackson / / Development, Possessed Time

As part of our piece we are putting together our own clock created out of 9 carpet tiles. This is representing our ‘at work’ section of our performance, linking with the sites history of clockmaking and James Ward Usher’s heritage in the trade of horology.

In order to make it look effective and stand out against the Gallery’s dark interior, we chose cream coloured carpet tiles. Each carpet tile has been cut into many pieces, so the object as a whole imitates a giant jigsaw puzzle. I then had to create stencils of every number, to measure the distance of the clock, making sure every number was roughly the same size, for the final product to look as good as possible.

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We decided to use carpet tiles instead of cardboard or other materials, due to the aesthetics of our performance space. Gallery 3 is intentionally different to the other spaces around, with its carpeted floor and ceiling, so we needed to keep this effect.

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I stencilled all the numbers in black permanent pen and finalised the puzzle with hands pointing at 2 o’clock. This time has been purposefully chosen as it will be the time that we should finish putting the puzzle together.  The final puzzle once complete will be an interesting addition to the Gallery.

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It will represent the clocks in Gallery 3 as well as fitting in with the role of The Collection and Usher Gallery in displaying contemporary art as well as historic artefacts. This is our own work of modern art!

 

 

Costume

Lacey Cole / / Uncategorized

We have considered many elements of costume and it seems we have finally decided on 1920’s inspired cocktail dresses with fringing or sequins, with hold-up stockings, pearls and balaclavas. The balaclavas should hopefully portray the ‘terrorist’ aspect of our performance, whilst the dresses will give a nod to the building of the Usher Gallery, as it was officially opened on the 25th of May 1927. Before coming to this decision, we had also discussed full length ball gowns, also with balaclavas as a really shocking statement, but we found the 1920’s dresses fit in better with the history of the site, as well as being easier to move around in. There was also the consideration of simple, modern clothing, in keeping with the balaclavas and the idea of moving around the building anonymously. However, we have come to realise that we don’t want to be anonymous, in fact it is necessary that we should be looked at, and what we are creating should be acknowledged.

We have again taken inspiration from Lone Twin in this aspect, as in one of their pieces Totem (1998), they ‘negotiated the streets of Colchester while dressed as cowboys’ (Govan, Nicholson and Normington 2007, p.125). Whilst this costume does not signal a link to the history of the site, unlike ours hopefully will, it does give the audience a chance to identify the company as ‘others’, a reason to watch and in the case of Lone Twin, to interact. However, Govan does comment on the necessity for costume in the duo’s works as it ‘gestures towards the concerns of exploration and environment’, and the environment of the Usher Gallery is a key element we are portraying here with the 1920’s style costume (Govan 2007, p.125).

The social hierarchy is also something we want to touch on with our costumes. The massive gap between what we are doing and what we are wearing should be clear to the audience, especially once we stop and remove our balaclavas, and begin to act in a way which can be seen to be more feminine and correct within the context of the costume, and of the time. We hope that our costume can clearly signal everything we want it to, and is realised as a major part of the whole piece.

References: Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, Oxon: Routledge.

Author: Lacey Cole

 

 

 

Final Changes

Jennie Chapman / / Development, Experimentation, People

After much discussion and plenty of thinking, our group has decided to move out of the cafe and into the courtyard space. We have done this whilst thinking of our audience and the feedback we received. We felt that we could leave the cafe so we were not limiting ourselves to audience restrictions and partly because we did not want to inconvenience anyone! But also the space is larger and it enables us to use the framed alcove seating which is something we have liked from the beginning.

From the feedback we realised that we had lost the idea of making the cafe a exhibition; our original idea. After much more experimentation and some more feedback, the key was to keep it simple. Along with this relocation, we decided that the painting ‘Bound by Love’ was no longer relevant to our piece as it did not fit in with the concept of making the cafe an exhibition.

“Exhibition involves imposition of order on objects, brought into a particular space and a specific set of relations with one another” (Rugg and Sedgwick, 2007, p 29).

We had many ideas of the different ‘exhibits’ we could have outside including the conversations/quotes written down the stairs and a collage of photos of the cafe on the wall, however after thought and experiments these did not work. This left us with our two static exhibits of a cake stand and a tea set.

We maintained our part in the performance but altered Fran’s part. The first idea was to have Fran on a platform re-enacting a person in the cafe siting at a table drinking tea and eating something however with our mimic in the Education windows was still in place we decided that it was not needed. It then came that Fran would take on the character of a worker in the cafe, as this was another type of person we had observed whilst doing our earlier experiments, and be  the third part to our exhibits of people including myself and Gabriel.

A new idea that came to light was the need for explanation of our exhibition. How are we to do this? We are going to take the idea of the ‘Specials’ board in the cafe and give a brief explanation for each part of our performance. This will hopefully help others to understand the concept behind our performance and encourage our audience to see new perspectives.

Works Cited:

Rugg, Judith and Michele Sedgwick(2007) Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, Bristol: Intellect Books.

Theatre & Museums

Jade Nicholls / / Audience, Cultural Terrorists, Space

After studying Susan Bennetts work into the use of theatre in museums it made us more positive about working in the museum and gallery. At first the site was daunting as museums and galleries are usually seen as places for people to relax and take in the art and artefacts without being disturbed, which is why we did not think putting on a drama performance in the Usher Gallery would appeal to the public. This was a main reason we did not decide to do a very long durational piece, we did not want the members of public to become frustrated we were in the way of what they wanted to see. However after reading Bennetts ‘Theatre and Museums’ it began to make a lot more sense as to why we were given this particular site. Performances are contemporarily performed in theatres, if you compare theatres and museums they have many similarities, ‘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’. A lot of research has gone into whether or not performances should be brought into museums on a regular basis, John Faulk also wrote a book called, ‘The Museum Experience’, which goes into very specific details about what happens in the museums and the type of people who visit them. He found out during his research that, ‘Demographic analyses of cultural activity show that people who go to the theatre, concerts and movies are also museum visitors’, this also proves that using the museum as a site for our performance would not disrupt the members of public but actually intrigue them and may make their museum visit more enjoyable. Overall both Bennett and Faulk’s work gave us a more positive outlook on our ideas, instead of holding back so that we did not interrupt the gallery we believed the public would enjoy the performance more if we done something fast, loud and disruptive as it draws their attention and from the studies the people who visit museums also like to visit theatres meaning they must like drama performances.