Being in a house today has really opened my eyes to the wonders of theatre and art. Performing in a house has so much potential, with its intimacy and history of the property. There’s so many unique rooms with individual characteristics that would add to the performance. Being in a house limits our audience as we can only have twenty people in the house at one time, this makes the performance itself so intimate that it changes the dynamic of the performance.
Comparing to the norm of the theatre where you have an acting space and seating area there’s quite a distance between spectator and actor. However, being in a house changes this as there’s no specific place where audience are seated which changes the distance between the performers and the spectators this gives a different atmosphere to the performance itself.
After the session we had today looking around the house we can already see the potential of a brilliant performance. The house has CCTV in every room apart from the obvious bathroom areas, I like the idea of using CCTV as part as the performance as it give us more variety and could possibly expand our audience. We can use pre-recorded videos and stream them in the house or elsewhere.
Part of the session today was to find a room that we like and could potentially make a performance in; I chose the living room as you could do so much with it and had a personal connection with me. In the living room everything seems to happen, family gatherings, birthdays, Christmas, parties and so much more. A personal memory triggered me when I entered this room. I was only a child and thought I would surprise my mum after she went out to the pub with her boyfriend. So I waited up and when I heard them coming through the door I hid in the living room. I was going to jump out and surprise her. This was when I saw her boyfriend at the time physically abusing her being in that room it always reminded me of that night.
Some might think this inappropriate, but the reason why I put this on the blog was because not all nice things happen in such a happy area, and behind all those smiles and laughter something bad might just be hiding, covered by the ‘act’ we are forced to put on when inviting people into our home.
I had many ideas of performances that could occur in this room, one was man and wife sat in the living room sat watching a loop of their memories of Christmas, birthday’s, family gathering, parties etc. Whilst they are sat there with just blank expressions let the audience come in sit with them or stand watching them or the T.V.