________-Safe House-__________ – Page 18 – Where living becomes a performance.

Keep Calm and Follow The White Rabbit

Elizabeth Soper / February 9, 2013May 13, 2013 / 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.

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 / February 6, 2013May 12, 2013 / 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 / February 5, 2013May 13, 2013 / 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.

Forkbeard Fantasy

Lizzy Hayes / February 4, 2013May 8, 2013 / CCTV, Documentation, Performance process, Rooms

We have been toying with the potential performative use of the CCTV room, whether or not to have a performance occur in the room or only through the eyes of the camera’s in the rest of the house. It has been suggested to me that it could be an interesting idea to explore how we, the CCTV operatives, could interact with the technology to make an interesting performance.

This reminded me of a performance and workshop I took part in a few years ago. With my school we worked with a company called Forkbeard Fantasy- a company of two brothers who interacted with film and screens live on stage in a way that I had then never seen before.

All of their performances to date rely heavily on the projection of pre-recorded and live footage, as can be seen above. In The Colour of Nonsense (2010), among other pre-recordings and animations the company played pre-recorded footage of a woman entering an apartment in an elevator. The recording spoke to the actors and they responded to the screen as though the woman was actually on stage, though she was never physically present. The effect of the well rehearsed interaction was comical and fascinating. The actors explain, ““What we were doing was creating a living dynamic between stage & screen, where the filmed sequences become part of the world on stage into which and out of which the performers can move –from stage to screen and back again… and performers in film or on stage communicate and talk with one another across this Celluloid Divide”.” (( http://forkbeardfantasy.co.uk/new_ffs_use_of_film10.html (Accessed 3rd March 2013) ))

Another example of artists using film and projection to create a performance is installation artist Gary Hill. Nick Kaye suggests when commenting on Gary Hills Standing Apart (1996) that video recordings add the ‘capacity of having and presence and a distance at the same time’ ((Kaye, Nick (2007) Multi-Media:Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge p. 135 )). I think that statement is true of any video recording in that the person on screen is in the room without being physically present, but it is particularly relevant to much of Forkbeard’s work.
While he uses recordings and projection Gary Hills work is very different from that of Forkbeards not only because the type of performance is different, but the ways in which they use the technology. Hills Installation piece The Viewer (1996) uses pre-recorded images but without sound. For the piece seventeen men were captured on camera standing still (or barely moving) for ten minutes. These clips of footage were then projected onto a wall at the same time on a continuous loop. The use of video and projection was not to tell a story or to interact with or to represent a character, but was instead to suggest the presence of someone who is not there, to be “fully visible and absent” at the same time” (( Nick Kaye (2007) Multi Media: Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge. P. 131 )) . I think that is notion of omnipresence is one that the me and my fellow CCTV operatives can associate with. During exploration of the house we have communicated with other ‘residents’ about what they are doing or saying though we were never physically present with them.

Let’s escape from reality.

Elizabeth Soper / February 2, 2013May 13, 2013 / Performance process, Rooms, West Parade

“The kitchen today is the cockpit of the dwelling, its high-tech gadgets and stainless steel fittings and electronics confirm its status as the nerve centre.” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning Of Home, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, p.56))

http://www.divadlohome.net/shows/doma.html

The kitchen has a certain purpose and everyone uses it for that function. Most people wouldn’t use their kitchen to sit and watch TV in or have a nap. There is also the concept of time that is relevant to the kitchen. The waiting for the bread to pop up from the toaster, the microwave to ping and the kettle to boil. “Places are about relationships, about the placing of peoples, materials, images and the systems of difference that they perform.” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, p.13))

So what would happen if we changed the function of the kitchen, if its purpose was completely different? And what if the waiting never ended? This quote written by Tim Etchells made me think about the reality and how far we can stretch the imagination, playing with the audiences perceptions to create something quite the opposite to what it should be; “how long do you have to have lived somewhere until you are allowed to lie about it?” ((Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices Oxon and USA, Routledge, p.131))

Perhaps using the kitchen as a space to do something else could be experimented with. This is something that Lital Dotan from Williamsburg did when she opened her house to the public and it became ‘The Glasshouse Project’. Her kitchen had various objects in for example, using the cupboard space as a bookshelf instead of storing food.

Williamsburg Couple Showcasing Their Home as Art Gallery, Online: “http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120823/williamsburg/williamsburg-couple-showcasing-their-home-as-art-gallery” http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120823/williamsburg/williamsburg-couple-showcasing-their-home-as-art-gallery (accessed: 21st Febuary 2013).

DoMA / at HoME is another example of a performance in a house which includes different performances, some rehearsed and prepared, and some improvised. The performances differ with the various people taking part, as each person lives somewhat differently, in diverse spaces and places. This is reflected in each individual space in the house as the performers experiences of home are the influence for their performance.