April 2013 – Page 4 – ________-Safe House-_________

Oh My God are you Naked?

Lauren Simpson / April 6, 2013May 8, 2013 / Performance process, Research, Rooms

Is it socially acceptable to be naked in a performance? Where does the line sit separating performance and real life? Does this line change when the performer is naked? These are all questions we have to deal with when creating this performance in the bedroom.

(http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=529 :accessed 06/04/13)

It would be “useful to distinguish among approved, liminal, and subversive spaces with regard to the acceptability of nude performance.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) With regards to the cupboard, it is not a subversive space because no one has specifically denied the right to be naked in a cupboard. In an everyday society I doubt it would be considered an approved space for nudity.

It could be considered a liminal space. It has a purpose (storage) but it is never really considered to be a room of its own. “Liminal spaces are experimental zones where social roles and relationships are tested and redefined.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) The socially established roles of performer and audience member are tested in our performance. The eye contact that is made while the narrative is playing through the headphones puts the audience member in a vulnerable position. They are used to being passive; simply sitting and watching others perform. A cupboard in a bedroom is usually there to store clothes, which implies the opposite of nakedness. Our aim is to shock the audience and so by taking a place not usually associated with nudity and filling it with a naked female should achieve this goal.

“Nudity is often associated with freedom from the constraints and demands of culture.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) We also challenge this notion, by alluding to the prospect of bondage using ties and gags. Nudity in plays is often approached at a very domesticated level, so it seems normal to an audience and a lot less shocking. In an article by the BBC on nudity and performance one actor comments; “We were expecting a lot more guffaws and giggles and awkwardness, but because it’s so domesticated and so real the audience feels quite relaxed by that point.” ((Phoebe Waller-Bridge in: Masters, Tim (2013) ‘Actors Reveal Challenges of Stage Nudity’, BBC News, 6. March.)) Our performance aims for two different reactions. At no point, do we aim to make any audience member feel comfortable. However, it will be a very different experience for males and females. The females will sympathise with the vulnerable girl in the cupboard and there is no dominant power source. With the male audience members, we want to make them feel as uncomfortable as possible and want to reverse the power so the naked female is in control. This is an unexpected turn and so will prevent the viewer from relaxing into the situation.

Getting the correct balance of nudity and performance is important. The nudity must serve a purpose, whether it is to shock the audience or simply to make a scene more ‘real’. For example, you couldn’t perform a scene in a bath being fully clothed: it would look unrealistic. Using Carolee Schneemann as an example, her work was extremely avant garde and not always received well. In academic books, she doesn’t tend to be mentioned other than a few of her early works. She was considered a performance artist and nudity became like a trademark for her work.

“Often, her focus on the body, on sex, was seen as a problem both by feminists and by the (male) audience.” ((Sundberg, M (2011) ‘A One-Work-Artist? Carolee Schneemann and the Reception of her Work’, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 80, 3, pp. 168-179.))

This is a lot to do with the male and female gaze. It would be considered normal for the male audience to accept her work as it is more common to have a male gaze on the female form. However, her work was rejected and criticised by men as well as women. She wanted to break down the stereotype of women being the ‘image’. Trying to portray this message in a time where men were still very much the dominant figures in society would have provoked critique.

“The line is very fine between making this point clear to the audience, and once again being turned into an object by the still powerful male gaze.” ((Sundberg, M (2011) ‘A One-Work-Artist? Carolee Schneemann and the Reception of her Work’, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 80, 3, pp. 168-179.))

This is something that we considered with our performance. We want to shift away from the male gaze and make this naked female form in the cupboard gain total control over the male viewer. When creating and recording the narrative we needed to make sure our voices were strong enough to gain instant control over the audience member. Our eyes once the blindfold is removed will also help this process.

The Aesthetics of the Piece.

Lauren Hughes / April 2, 2013May 13, 2013 / CCTV, Documentation, Performance process, Research

Discussing Fiona Templeton in my previous Blog post and how the performance Recognition influenced the idea of us being in the house through Multimedia on alternate performance evenings, we decided to do this through creating an installation piece with us videoed in and around the house. This meant we only needed one of us for each performance evening (solving the Health and Safety issues) to set up and man the equipment, which worked to our advantage as we still got to see the audiences reactions to our work.

The Invisible Man is a story based around a character and how he refers to himself as The Invisible Man as people refuse to acknowledge his presence due to the fact he is black. We chose to expand on this idea of feeling invisible and apply it to the house, however given the obvious fact we were a group of females we took the theme and alternated it to a feminism. Through this we decided to do filming after dark with torches lighting up each room in the house and see what affects this would create. We chose have a soundscape over this for example someone making a cup of tea in the kitchen, a news reel in the living room, brushing of teeth when a torch is shone from those rooms making them rooms come alive with the sounds. As well as this another layer of sound with our voices reading extracts from The Invisible Man narrating the piece.

When filming the rooms within the house at night, each room spoke its own aesthetic narrative. The footage had a layer of fuzz creating a grainy affect over it due to the resolution in the dark. With this totally new visual in the dark we decided the narrative idea could be taken so much further that the soundscape and torches idea wasn’t as necessary and focused on the aesthetics of the piece. In this we will give the audience a pair of headphones with our voices relaying a narrative to them while they absorb the imagery on the TV screen, some will be existing texts that complement the visuals and others will be our own pieces of writing. We decided to take 3 shots each and watch them repeatedly and simply write what we saw and felt.

“You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that your part of all the sound and anguish” ((Ellison, Ralph (1965) The Invisible Man, Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd.)) This is taken from The Invisible Man, with so in depth descriptions of personal emotion we decided to still incorporate this as it sparked the idea as a whole and with most the imagery showing a shadow,

Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

silhouette

Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

or distorted face

Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

it linked in with that idea of having no identity, relating back to the title and also just giving that idea of feeling invisible and alone.

Safe house – definition; “a house in a secret location, used by spies or criminals in hiding” ((http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/safe%2Bhouse?q=safe+house Accessed; 25/03/13)), or “a house where someone can hide or shelter” ((http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/safe-house?q=safe+house, Accessed; 25/03.13)). The fact that when people are taken to a safe house they have their identity taken all links in with our contribution to the final performance. Also with the definition including shelter we did filming in other people’s homes to see what their definition of a home was, whether it’s the place or people etc. which we were going to use within our piece before we came across The Invisible Man.

After recording the rooms at night we decided to have the CCTV room as the ‘room of screens’, with adding narratives to the videos, playing on a low volume when the audience enter filling the atmosphere with the ghostly whispers from the narratives. This project we decided to develop meant splitting the 1 minute clips of each room between us with 3 each sitting and watching these over and over…. And over again, we did this so the imagery could speak to us, even after watching one for 30 times unbelievably you would see something new or create a whole new narrative in your mind from these images. Giving that the three of us were female after reading the Invisible Man we chose to take the aspect of being invisible due to his ethnicity and use it through feminism and identity. Choosing to do so linked in really well with the Safe House which is all about identity.

Deciding to call the piece Safe House portrayed the essence of our piece as well as triggering ideas to enhance the feel of a Safe House, a safe homely feel, but also the authoritative aspects for example the agents, rules and regulations. “To start with, the dwelling space must give the impression of seclusion. If it is the task of the house to provide a refuge from the outside world, this must also find expression in the nature of the dwelling space” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press, p. 143)). A typical home for most of us is this way inclined and this is what the Safe House has… to a certain extent. The magic of our room being the last visited is for the audience to have explored the house knowing, but most likely forgetting for the majority of the piece that they are being watched, taking that idea of being secluded and keeping the private the private within a home is flipped on it’s head when they discover the CCTV screen.

When first hearing the term ‘Safe House’ I instantly envisaged films with characters being whisked away to a house in the country. However when researching into them it’s not all about the authorities keeping civilians safe, Safe Houses can be used to protect women who have been abused, foster children or hide illegal immigrants etc. When discovering the safe houses for women it linked in with our performance ideas, although our installation piece isn’t about being physically abused it still has that essence of oppression which is emphasised through the haunting atmosphere that fills the room when all the clips are playing in sync.

Watching you, watching me

Elizabeth Soper / April 2, 2013May 13, 2013 / CCTV, Performance process, Rooms

“Lone Twin negotiate not only their relationship with each other but also, more importantly, their relation with other people.” ((Williams, David and Carl Lavery (2011) Good Luck Everybody: Lone Twin: Journeys, Performances, Conversations, Wales: Cambrian Printers, p.69))

www.lonetwin.com

The audience and the performer have very different roles. In theatre the audience come to watch a performance and to be entertained in a friendly and safe environment. In site specific performance, the roles are the same, yet the environment will be different depending on the chosen site. ‘Safe House’ is in an interesting site to perform in, and isn’t the most welcoming house to invite the audience into. They won’t know what to expect and they will be interacting with the performers which generally in theatre, wouldn’t happen. “Rather than simply occupying an ‘ususual setting’, site-specific performance is adjudged to hold ‘possibilities for responding to and interrogating a range of current spatial concerns..” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, p.8))

Although our audience is coming to watch a performance, the idea of them being watched will be present as they will notice and be aware that there are CCTV cameras in each room. This questions who is doing the watching and who is being watched; the audience or the performer.

“Here the term ‘house’ is to be understood in a general sense as any closed individual area beyond the body, in which man can remain and move with safety.” ((Bollnow, O.F. (2011) Human Space, London: Hyphen Press, p.267)) Thinking about this, I have decided to experiment with this whole concept in my performance in the kitchen. I would like the audiences experience in the kitchen to be different from any other room in the house, and to go away with different reactions to it. Perhaps trying various performances on my audience will create a whole new reaction, one performance idea being me watching my audience.

Having a television playing a film of the adventures I have had as a rabbit is quite humorous, and will draw the audience in. But perhaps instead of interacting with my audience, I could just ignore them. Standing quietly in the corner gives a different feel to the room completely, as it contrasts to the humour and makes them aware that they are the ones being watched. Me watching them watching me on the television is particularly interesting, and will be fascinating to see the reactions I then get from them.

“if you dress up funny…people will shout at you” ((Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London: Routledge, p.125))

Another performance technique I could experiment with is discussing with the audience the reactions I have received, using what people have said as verbatim to tell others: “Moreover, in some examples of verbatim theatre the performers also incorporate elements of their own lives into the production, employing a self-reflective mode.” ((Haedicke, Susan (2009) Political Performances: Theory and Practice, New York: Columbia University, p.115))

Having filmed in different places in the bunny costumes I have met different people with a variety of reactions to me. Whatever reaction I get will be written down or recorded, and this can be used as conversation in my performance. This will create a different reaction all together from the previous performance idea as I will be verbally interacting with my audience in the bunny costume, which again brings humour and absurdity to be having a civilized conversation in a kitchen with a giant rabbit.

Lone Twins, ‘To The Dogs’, is a good example of a piece of their work that gradually built and expanded as it was carried out. Gregg and Gary cycled two folding bicycles through Brussels, Belgium for 24 days and ended each day by putting on a short performance at the Kunsten Festival des Arts retelling the events of that day. The experiences they had built up over this period of time and each performance expanded as they experienced more things, interacted with more people and witnessed various different places: “The interest is in how those small moments, each five minutes long, will change over time as they become situated in the growing, differing contexts of each other.” ((Williams, David and Carl Lavery (2011) Good Luck Everybody: Lone Twin: Journeys, Performances, Conversations, Wales: Cambrian Printers, p.69))