Category: Uncategorized

Everyone’s a Performer

Lauren Hughes / / CCTV, Performance process, Uncategorized

                                                                           DESAbigbrother

Image:Online-https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=big+brother&hl=en&rlz=1C1SKPL_enGB453GB494&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=LG5AUZ-DPfS00QXdoYG4Aw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643(Accessed 20/02/2013).

“There is no single ‘Big Brother’ who is watching over us but lots of little brothers each with their own agendas.” ((Norris and Armstrong (1999) The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise Of CCTV, New York: Berg p.7)). We are always being watched,  when leaving our homes each day for work, college or university it is more than likely you will be filmed or photographed through CCTV.

“Studies by Honess and Charman (1992), Squires and Measor (1996) indicate that only between one third and two thirds of the population using streets with CCTV actually know they are being monitored.” ((Norris and Armstrong (1999) The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise Of CCTV, New York: Berg p.92)). With this gaze constantly over them, are they performing? When we trip over in the street a rush of embarrassment takes over where our minds are telling us we are hurt however we find ourselves laughing as were all this this performance together, everyone’s watching.  When walking down a street we are always aware eyes are on us not only cameras but people in windows, across the road and in cars. When our audience enter the house on West Parade will they become aware of the cameras straight away or will they spend the whole experience thinking they are aware of whom and when people are watching them?  We can use this to our advantage and show the audience they can be part of the performance as well. As the CCTV group we have discussed how we will be involved in the performance and how the audience could discover our room and then watch us as we roam the house performing as they have for us. Through this performance we can portray how people always know they’re being watched, with subtle glances at the cameras to eventually holding signs to signify our knowledge of the cameras, similar to The Surveillance Camera Players. Another way of incorporating this into the performance is interrupting the mini performances in each room and handing a sign/ placard to an audience member or performer and asking them to hold it to the camera.

“The real power of site-specific work is that it somehow activates, or engages with, the narratives of the site in some kind of way. That might be with its formal architecture, or it might be with the character of the building.” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, London:Macmillan p.35)). When entering the house other than there being a television in the front room, it’s very bear and uninviting, it’s not an ideological notion of a modern home. The architectural design of the house makes the CCTV room one of the last rooms you may see which changes your whole outlook on the house when discovering it and extends that feeling of it being unappealing even more. It crosses the boundary between the outside world and the privacy within a home with inhabitants being aware they’re always being watched which you shouldn’t feel within a home. This ‘Big Brother’ feel the house has is a great characteristic we can work with for our performance. The most eerie room for most of us in the house is the cot room mainly as it’s the coldest room and the fact it has a cot gives it a lot of potential to play on that creepiness for the performance and we have incorporated this room into both our trailers so far. The character of the house instantly triggers narratives for performance ideas as you explore all its rooms.

As the CCTV group we have decided to take our filming to other people’s homes and interview them on their thoughts of home. What is ‘home’ to them? Starting by asking them to take us to the room/ place in which they feel most comfortable and asking them why they feel so attached to that part of their home. And if they’re a student whether their ‘home from home’ feels homely or just a place to stay. Then we suggested the idea of making negative comments about aspects of their home to see if they would defend it or agree, filming their reaction to this. These recordings will either be used for a trailer or within the piece or just for our own research.

 

 

Safe House

Lizzy Hayes / / CCTV, Home, Rooms, Uncategorized

In getting a ticket for our performance our audience members fall subject to a false sense of security- they are welcome in the house because we have allowed them to be there but we do not actually live there. Is it really our home to invite them into? Are they really welcome? And are they really safe?

When I think of a ‘safe house’ I think of a discreet property that houses an occupant who needs to be kept safe from something or one. It is a temporary base for a hidden person. It is structurally a house, but very rarely a home, just as our property is, blending in nicely with the surrounding area.

Performance Process

Image by Jozey Wade 2013

In my experience of fictional ‘safe houses’ on television or in film the houses are very rarely safe and are often infiltrated by the enemy. While this is obviously for entertainment purposes the characters responsible for the victim are left shocked and confused as to how anyone could have seen past their high security system. But the answer is clear to me: a safe house is only as safe as or maybe even less safe than any other house on the street: it is just as easy to break into, just as likely to be burgled and because of its ‘secret’ resident, a much higher target of crime.

It is also easy to assume that those kept in safe houses are there under the protection of the law: someone in danger, someone on parole, someone whose identity is too precious to be introducing themselves to their neighbours without an alias. However, research has shown that ‘safe houses’ are often used against the legal system for other purposes. Human smuggling and trafficking for example require safe houses in which illegal migrants can be housed without being discovered.  Leman and Jansses state that in some countries “large smuggling networks in which the victims have a long way to travel need safe houses to conduct their business.” (( Leman, J, & Jansses, S “The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 33, No. 8, November 2007, pp. 1380 )). It has been found that in these situations the safe houses may not only be used for temporary accommodation, but as a prison in which the migrants are held as hostage while their families are forced to pay more money for their safety or a brothel like establishment. Statistics suggest “that a minimum of 50 percent and upward of 80 percent of human trafficking victims worldwide are women (U.S. Department of State 2005; U.S. Department of State 2010). Seventy percent of female victims are trafficked into the sex trade…” (( Perdue, T, Williamson, C, Billings, M, Schart, J, & Boston-Gromer, R 2011, ‘In the Matter of Human Trafficking in Ohio: The Pursuit for Justice Continues’, Women’s Policy Journal Of Harvard, 8, pp. 4, viewed 17 April 2013. )).

While this statistic is disturbing, it appears that one room in our house has accidentally created a performance that could, when paired with the title of our piece, have a deeper meaning than was previously intended. The set up of the sexual element of the bedroom piece could easily represent not only a sex slave in terms of a BDSM arrangement but also a hostage situation in which a woman kept as a sex slave in a ‘safe house’.

While the bedroom is perhaps the most controversial room in our house, I’m not sure our audience will feel safe in the hostile living room environment or the peculiar child’s room environment either, especially considering that the technology normally used for a persons security is being used to scrutinise their every move.

First Impressions.

Tiffany Abatilda Thompson / / Home, Uncategorized

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.