Month: February 2013

Putting on a Front in your Front Room

Samuel Davis / / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

Tiffany Thompson 

The living room normally where the family sits and socializes. This room was once was used for special occasions, this room was the best decorated. It also was used as a resting space for dead, the late family members would be laid in their coffin in the best room of the house, the living room.
However, times have changed “The modern era has seen the focus of the room shift from the coffin to the box” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln. p.36.)), now the television is the center of the living room with all the furniture pointing to it with families staring into a void of reality TV.

Samuel Davis

With Heathcote’s quote in mind about the television as a focal point, we decided (Me, Tiffany and Lauren) to use the TV as a focal point in a performance. To start this process, we watched a series of films to gather research. Whilst doing this, we wanted to feel comfortable so we played around with the feel of the room by moving the furniture and creating a cosy feel. At the same time, we interacted with people moving in and out of the room (which frequently happened). The first film was The Moon and the Sledgehammer ((dir.Philip Trevelyan)) which followed a 1972 family who lived without running water, gas or mains electricity. The ideas that sprang from this was how the use of technology has killed any social interaction that once occurred in living rooms. Phrases now familiar in living rooms up and down the country feature ‘turn the TV up’ and ‘be quiet I can’t hear the tele’. Many ideas began circulating after the film and our first thought was too create a performance where audience members would encounter technology being used in the living room, slowly this would be taken away, until there was no electricity, TV, or anything technological.

However, we further developed our research by watching Hitchcock’s famous Rear Window film and realised that we could include as many normal activities that we do ourselves in our living rooms.

rearwindowIMDB

The 1954 film poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. ((Paramount (1954) “Rear Window,” Colour Poster 1954 Paramount. [image online] Available at: http://uk.imdb.com/media/rm1147639808/tt0047396?ref_=tt_ov_i [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].))

Lauren will talk more about these activities later in this post, but it will happen live during the performance and create that notion of being in a living room. Looking back historically we learn that the living room was often ‘saved for best’ as it was used for deceased family members “The front room was preserved – like the cellophane-shrouded three-piece suite – for best” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln. p.35)) Following this, we wanted to create a juxtaposition of reserving the living room for best by playing on the natural design of the scruffy West Parade house. We will do this by changing the aesthetic of the living room by using certain objects to create an effect.

Living Room

Photograph showing how we have moved the furniture to create a ‘homely’ feel. We also played with the idea of performing outside. Photograph and editing by Sam Davis.

I think the use of the television will be integral to our performance. One idea was to have a loop of different TV shows playing. I thought it would be interesting to keep these TV shows on a similar theme so that they all talk about the notion of home. For example, we are in the living room at East Lodge watching an episode of Eastenders where the characters are at home watching TV whilst talking about an aspect of home. Then the TV will flick channels to Rear Window ((dir. Alfred Hitchcock)) or The Moon and The Sledge Hammer ((dir.Philip Trevelyan)) showing their family home.

Lauren Walker

In our performance we want to incorporate the feelings that you would, (in your every day life) feel when sat in your living room. We also wanted to merge the different ‘rituals’ that happen when you are sat in your living room, this could be simply turning the television over. The living room in the house has a very ‘shabby’ look to it with its ripped wallpaper and old fashioned décor which in certain aspects makes it not very ‘homely’ so we have decided as a group to play on the setting of a mistreated living room.

We have decided we would like the room to be very untidy and neglected. With the use of props and objects like empty pizza boxes and bottles of alcohol, we will be doing the usual things you would do if you were to sit on a weekend and relax in your living room such as drinking alcohol, ordering a pizza, watching films etc. The alcohol we choose to drink is important in our performance because although we are not playing characters, we do not want it to seem in any way classy or civilised. We will also be interacting with the audience and talking to them about everyday things, also offering them a drink or a slice of pizza. There is a cupboard in the living room and one of our ideas was to fill it with unwanted objects. This means if someone was to open it, things would fall out and this would show how neglected the room is. The cupboard also symbolizes how we put on a front too the people who are coming into the living room. A lot of our discussion has been about the feeling when someone is in your living room and you tend to play up to it and ‘put a front on’ we explored how that made you feel when people were sat with you in your living room and how you feel that you cant fully relax “he word ‘gemutlich’ (comfortable) described in ‘human space’ as “conduct in which man abandons the exertion of his will and of active behaviour and allows himself to relax in peace and quiet” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.142-143.))

 

The brutally honest bathroom

Jozey Wade / / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

The house
Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade


Heathcote makes an interesting point in his book that the bathroom is “as brutally honest a reflection of our domestic concerns as the bathroom mirror (is) of our bodies” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning Of Home, London: Frances Lincoln)). He rightly suggests that the bathroom is the only room in which there is no pretense; when you walk in you see a bath, you see a sink and (although in a separate room in our house) you see a toilet. There are no questions about what these things are used for; as raw and maybe even slightly unpleasant as these usages may be (particularly with the toilet), they are right in our faces as we enter. He says the bathroom is “fundamentally modest and unpretentious” (2012, p. 83); it is there and it is what it is because we need it. We need to wash and we need to relieve ourselves. Perhaps even more interestingly he says the bathroom is a place with “nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it” (2012, p. 83). I found this particularly interesting when applying his ideas to the performance ideas I have been considering. This idea that we go in the bathroom and we lock the door and we take our clothes off. We are away from judgmental eyes, away from embarrassment. Alone. And naked. Not just without clothes but, as a woman, without make up, without hair gel or any of these things. In the bath we wash all the pretenses off and we are just our bare, honest self. What happens if we let an audience in to this raw, private environment? Don’t interact with them. Just let them watch. It breaks those boundaries we are so used to associating with a bathroom.

Here is where I go on to discuss my 3 ideas…

1. My first idea also relates to Heathcote’s chapter, where he talks about how “The Roman’s famously used the bathhouse as a space… of socialising” (2012, p. 81). The bathroom as part of the house and as a private place is quite a modern concept. In the not too far distant past, let alone the Roman times, baths were taken in the bedroom or downstairs beside the fire, in front of other people. Despite the fact that this wasn’t long a go, to our generation and even a couple of generations before us, the idea of this is utterly alien to us. The idea of bathing being a social activity… well, even to me, it is a concept that is extremely difficult to imagine. I like to be alone when I bathe, as I’m sure the rest of you do. In fact, if one of us was in a bath with someone else in this day and age, as an adult, it would almost definitely be to do with sex. So, my idea was to revert back to this concept of bathing being social. I intended to invite the audience in, almost as though it was the lounge, while I washed myself, even get fellow cast members to join me and chat with them and the audience. I thought it would be interesting to see what their reaction was, if they found it uncomfortable. As you can see in the picture below, I have begun to experiment with this (wearing swimwear at the moment).

Performance ProcessPhoto taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

2. My second idea was inspired by Lital Dotan’s Glasshouse. The idea that she uses her entire house as a performative “exhibition space” ((Ortiz, Jen (2013) ‘Life as a Glass House’, Narratively, 25 January, accessed 30 January 2013, http://narrative.ly/2013/01/life-as-a-glass-house/<a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831330082708/Romeo+and+Juliet+(Headlong+tour+%96+Guildford,+Yvonne+Arnaud+Theatre).html")) seems quite unimaginable in itself, as a home as a whole is quite a private place. But, the idea of using the bathroom specifically as an exhibition struck me, partly because of this idea of a bathroom being private and, as Heathcote said, "brutally honest" ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning Of Home, London: Frances Lincoln)). So I began to think of ways to turn the bathroom into an exhibition.

Performance ProcessPhoto taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

The empty bath (as can be seen above), when I look at is, is almost asking to be filled. It is there to be filled. But what if it wasn’t filled with water but with memories? Memories of bathroom experiences… which of course are usually private, but for our performance, are put on exhibition. So, things like photographs of bath time memories (both “normal” and sinister), notes which contain snippets of bathroom memories, toys people play with in the bath (like rubber ducks, but maybe even adult toys) and more (I am trying to think of things all the time, and certainly open to suggestions). So the bath would be an exhibition of memories of a place that is usually so personal and private – full of them. I then thought about the idea of projecting something on the wall, perhaps snippets of video memories of the bath (which I am already in the process of filming – again both “normal” and sinister). Although, it might be interesting to project these videos onto the bath full of “junk” and see how it looks. I have decided, for now, that I will probably use this idea for two out of the four nights and the other two nights I will perform something live…

Here is an example of a “normal” and more sinister bathroom photograph I have been taking to build up a selection to fill the tub with:

Performance Process
Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

Performance Process
Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

3. My third idea is still a work in progress. It wasn’t particularly originally inspired by anything other than the time I have spent in the bathroom, but it has now been enforced by what Heathcote said in his chapter, which I discussed at the start of this blog. It is the idea I touched upon of letting the audience into the bathroom (actually shutting them in – trapping them I suppose), not interacting with them or even acknowledging them, just letting them watch whatever it is that I do. I have been playing with different ideas of what I might do. I initially liked exploring the idea of madness, and the fact that bathrooms are places were many people commit suicide. The image of someone having cut their wrists in the bath, and also bathroom cabinets – often where the pills are kept, and the lock on the door, of course, meaning no one can get to the person should anything happen.

Performance ProcessPhoto taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

As in the picture above, I tried out saying snippets of Ophelia’s song from Hamlet (where she has gone mad, just before she drowns herself) under the water and also just lying there in the bath, with the intention of gathering bits of text from other sources (films, plays, personal experiences) and creating a mash up of text which I would say/ enact whilst in the bath. That was one idea. Other ideas have included me lying in the bath fully clothed, maybe not even having it full of water, but something else, or even nothing… so completely subverting what a bath is used for and creating that confusion/ unease for the audience. Another idea I like is to use the projector and project video onto the water… I would still be there and the performance would include more than just that but it was just a thought I liked for part of the performance. If I projected a video of me in the bath onto the bath water, would it create a ghost like image? I liked the idea of that. Any suggestions are welcome and I will continue to read around for inspiration, but also use the Tim Etchells technique of being in the space and seeing what happens/ comes out.

Keep Calm and Follow The White Rabbit

Elizabeth Soper / / Home, Performance process, West Parade

“Non-acting can be understood as functioning in the tradition of the modernist avant-garde in that it is not a mimetic practice that seeks to represent a fictional character, but a reframing of reality that seeks to blur the boundaries of art and life.” ((Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices Oxon and USA: Routledge, pp.59-60))

For the past few weeks we have had a lot of different ideas about what is associated with the kitchen and how we can create a performance with it. I have discussed changing the function of the kitchen and playing with how long things take to make. But how can you link these ideas together to make an interesting performance, capturing the audience’s attention and creating something they have never seen before? The answer I found to this, it seems, is in the shape of a giant white rabbit costume.

 

 “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” ((Carroll, Lewis (1940) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, USA: The Colonial Press Inc. p.4))

 

The White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll, is the character inviting Alice in, which is what I will be doing with my audience. The idea of time links to The White Rabbit as he is always checking his pocket watch and conscious of being late. The kitchen in our West Parade house has several hooks on the walls in which I thought I could hang a variety of different wrist watches and pocket watches to accentuate the theme of time.

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Photo taken: 08/02/2013 – ‘Time’

As for purpose, an idea that I very much want to experiment with would be to set up a dining table outside in the back garden which could perhaps link to the ‘mad tea party’ scene in the book. I like the notion of filling the kitchen cupboards with items that aren’t associated with a kitchen. The idea that things are where they don’t belong I find very interesting, which links to the fact that there is a person dressed as a rabbit in a kitchen – it shouldn’t be there. This sense of dislocation is extremely relevant to this performance and the notion of things being where they shouldn’t and disturbing the norm of that space. Adding to this, the concept of ‘non-performing’ would be apparent as I wouldn’t be acting as if I am The White Rabbit from the book, I wouldn’t be acting like a rabbit at all, I am just Libby who happens to be wearing a bunny costume which again emphasises the notion of dislocation. In Making A Performance it questions how the company, Reckless Sleepers, portray ‘non-performing’ in their devised performance of The Last Supper; “Are the actors themselves? (They are named as such in the script.) Are they invented personas? Are they momentarily representations of the people whose words they speak?” ((Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices Oxon and USA: Routledge, p.115))

Something I will be experimenting with now will be exploring different conversational topics and how to react if an audience member asks; ‘why are you dressed as a rabbit?’. “Theatre practitioners need to acknowledge that participation can be profoundly disturbing; that it may involve making ourselves vulnerable as we open ourselves to unexpected experiences and outcomes.” ((Freshwater, Helen (2009) theatre & audience, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p.76))

Do I acknowledge that I am dressed in a giant rabbit costume or not? Do I notice that there is no possible way to pour a cup of tea with my big fluffy paws without spilling it, or do I treat the situation as if I’m not wearing the costume at all? Time shall tell.

child + adult = teenager?

Kayleigh Anne Brewster / / Home, Performance process, Rooms

“Days of tensions, brite nites of dreams” (Etchells, 1999) is a simple sentence that brings to light the sometimes tense atmosphere of life and the relaxed ‘brite’ nature of dreams. Reading this sentence lead me to think about the mixture of the two, the contradiction of relaxation and tension, which ultimately lead me to think about the contradiction between dreams and nightmares. In the session on Tuesday we began to discuss the contradiction between dreams and nightmares and working with the concept of a non/abusive parent figure. With this we were discussing the idea of having a kind ‘parent’ and having a nightmare emerge from the wardrobe, then we could flip this idea on its head by having an abusive parent and then having a dream or imaginary friend coming from within the wardrobe. This would also play with the idea that there are children who are perfectly safe in their reality yet look at a wardrobe with fear, as apposed to those children who use the method aren’t safe with the people who they are supposed to trust the most and use a wardrobe as a method of escape.

This conversation then moved on to the connotations of a bedroom, and the differences between the connotations of an adult’s bedroom and a child’s. How would an audience member feel if they were read extracts of a beloved children story, inter-mixed with the adult content of a book like 50 Shades of Grey?

As many of you will know the content within the book 50 Shades of Grey, written by E.L James, is quite obviously for adults. A parent would not allow one of their children to read this type of novel due to its content being ‘adult’. When reading 50 Shades of Grey, people don’t find content that easily relates to children, however when people read a child’s story they constantly search for a deeper meaning behind the text that can link to an adult’s lifestyle. Many people have analysed the tale of Alice in Wonderland in an attempt to do exactly that; to see if there is any deeper meaning to the text then it just being a child’s story.

As many people will already know the story was written by Charles Lutwig Dogson under the pseudonym Lewis Caroll. It is widely thought that Charles Dogson created the story Alice in Wonderland for the Liddel children who had a daughter named Alice, who was the youngest of three girls. “The theme with Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes could reflect the ups and downs of adolescence with young people sometimes feeling adult and sometimes quite the opposite” (Maata, 1997) which indicates that teenage thinking is really the confusion of having childish thoughts mixing together with new adult ones. “Some people have gone very far in their claims that Lewis Carroll wrote the stories while influenced by opium. They say the fifth chapter with the smoking Blue Caterpillar is about drugs.” (Maata, 1997) which is another indication of the adult world mixing with a child’s. It’s strange that a chapters of the book, which seem so colourful and suitable for the imagination of a child is considered to have been induced from the use of a drug. A drug being another thing that we would not expect to be present in a child’s world, in fact being behind the creation of a children’s story seems to be a rather confusing concept.

Perhaps in the moments in between being put to bed and getting out of it we could use a projector, coming from the wardrobe, showing clips of different children and adult films and programmes in order to highlight the differences between the two. It would seem to me that there is a generally accepted concept for a child’s bedroom and an adults bedroom, perhaps this mixing of the two would suggest a teenagers bedroom. Showcasing the in between time when a person is leaving behind their childhood, and becoming an adult, showing the confusion of thought that is often associated with that process.

Work Cited:

Etchells, T (1999) Endland Stories London: Pulp Faction

Maatta,Jerry, (1997) http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/explain/alice841.html Sweden; March. (last accessed 8/4/2013)

 

The Common Voyeur

Tom Briggs / / Home, Performance process
images
Unknown Paramount Artist (1954) Rear View Window, poster.

In the past few weeks we’ve spoken extensively about the concept of voyeurism in our house, a word I was not perhaps entirely comfortable with. The official definitions of voyeurism I have found are lacking, most of them say something to the effect of ‘sexual stimulation derived from the act of intruding and observing’. This idea of sexual voyeurism is something of an anomaly for our class as we are considering our own everyday voyeurism, looking in the front windows we pass on the street. Not to mention what Jonathon Metzl calls “Voyeurism Television” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )) or reality tv to us. Big Brother and a raft of similar programs are based in watching people live, intruding on their privacy, the ‘Mass consumption of information about others” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )). One stimulus that we keep returning to is Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) a film about a wheelchair bound man that takes to spying on his neighbours, slowly he begins to fill in the stories of their lives; He does not however receive sexual gratification for this act, can this mean that the seminal film about the voyeur is not in fact voyeurism at all?

Perhaps this discussion about the idea of voyeurism in its new context as everyday activity rather than “deviant psychopathology” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )) is so interesting to me because we are performing in a house which is inescapably the domain of the private, the performative act in itself however is public. Our performance can’t help but open the private to the public, so that the audience may derive joy (admittedly not of a sexual nature) from the act of watching.

This leads to an interesting idea, the audience as voyeur, how do we exploit that feeling of intruding? As to that I have a few ideas. The front room of our house looks out across the front door, it is most likely that it is the first glimpse of the house’s interior our audience get. This space currently the least domestic of rooms used to “to project an image to the world” (((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p. 35 )) onto the street so that passersby would be impressed, a kind of trophy room of domestic life. It is past time that our front room was once again used for this purpose to be the centre of domestic life, a life that can only be observed through the window. What if this act is everyday like eating dinner but lit by a strobe light, or the act through the window could be more explicit or taboo evoking a more traditional form of voyeurism.

The most obvious voyeuristic opportunity in our particular house is provided by CCTV footage, there are nine cameras in the house covering most of the rooms, some from multiple angles, can we show the audience themselves on CCTV allowing them to see the other side, the violated rather than the violator. The footage of our audiences could be projected out into the public, that which the audience believed to be private, making audience into participant. Perhaps the audience are shown other audience members journey through the house allowing them to become implicit in the voyeuristic act. There could be another place where the CCTV footage is screened, separate from the house set out much like a cinema. With just one performer to illicit conversation and reaction from the audience, invite them to sit down chat casually then comment and speculate on the actions and intentions of others.

There is no doubt for me that our final performance will have clear voyeuristic overtones, the act of asking strangers into our house, watching them on cameras, recording their reaction to their setting and to us. It is a kind of mutual and multi-layered voyeurism typified if you like by the concept that perhaps we can record an audience member watching another audience member, as they walk in on a performer having a bath. Each observer unaware that they too are being watched, that the spectator in the act of watching has become a participant in the voyeuristic act. In the 21st century voyeurism is, to a point, a part of our everyday lives. The acceptable activity of people watching, the plethora of reality tv on offer every night of the week all contributes to a society that is deeply concerned with the private lives of others. It is time to test these boundaries, how can our homes be safe from this violation if that same violation has become what we all crave.

As to the question of whether it is voyeurism when it does not directly constitute a sexual act, Seth Blazer instead proposes that “Scopophilia” (( Blazer, S. M. (2006). Rear window ethics: Domestic privacy versus public responsibility in the evolution of voyeurism. Midwest Quarterly, 47(4), 379-392, p. 379 )) could replace the idea of the voyeur in a non-sexual context. He continues “Voyeurism is too narrow a term with too ugly a connotation to describe the full range of our own natural curiosities” (( Blazer, S. M. (2006). Rear window ethics: Domestic privacy versus public responsibility in the evolution of voyeurism. Midwest Quarterly, 47(4), 379-392, p. 379 )). Yet the word voyeur has its power, conjuring uncomfortable images of being observed against our will, that the privacy of our homes is being violated. So for now, at least for the purposes of our performance with its concern for the intimate and private sanctum of home, we’ll keep the word voyeur and all its negative connotations, they might just come in useful.