Jozey Wade – ________-Safe House-_________

People specific performance.

Jozey Wade / May 9, 2013May 12, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Rooms, Uncategorized

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

When I first set foot in the bathroom of our house, back in January, I wrote in my many scribblings of notes (some of which can be seen below) that I was drawn to it because of the privacy, safety and solitude attached to it. I don’t think, on that first day, I could have possibly imagined the journey I would go on in that small room. Not only in relation to what I would learn about bathrooms, but also – and more importantly – about human nature, and even myself.

Photo taken 05/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

I spent a lot of time in the first stages of my process deliberating on what I could wear in the bath to cover my modesty and yet remain true to the site and performance. I did not want to wear clothes, just for the sake of being covered if t didn’t make any sense – of course, in the bath we are generally always naked. I came to the decision of being naked without much though of what it might mean for me and it was only once I started putting it into practice, particularly in front of others, that I began to find it difficult and feel uncomfortable about the prospect. “To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes and the word implies some of the embarrassment which most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone.” ((Kountouriotis, P. (2009) ‘Nudity, nakedness, otherness and a “still difficult spectator”‘, Movement Research Performance Journal, (34), pp. 1-16.)) This is true. And at first, I felt like I was naked. Later on down the line, when I became accustomed to it, I then felt like I was nude. It has since occurred to me that what bothered me during those difficult few weeks of trying to be brave was not people judging my naked body, but people judging the fact that I was naked at all in front of them.

This is where it became interesting. People’s reactions to my performance in the bathroom were, initially, what worried me. However, it ended up being people’s reactions that made this piece so interesting and even important to me. In creating their participatory performance encounters, performance artist pair, Lone Twin are always “interested in considering what good could come from these encounters” ((Lavery, Carl & David Williams (2011) ‘Practising Participation A conversation with Lone Twin’, Performance
Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, XVI(4), pp. 7-14)) and that really resonated with what I wanted from my performance. Rather than purely to shock people, I wanted them to feel reassured. I wanted them to come in, maybe expecting the worst based on what they saw, but then unexpectedly quite enjoy themselves and take something pleasant away from it. As Lone Twin said, “It’s good to dance with someone else, good to be friends with somebody else, good to walk with someone else” ((Lavery, Carl & David Williams (2011) ‘Practising Participation A conversation with Lone Twin’, Performance
Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, XVI(4), pp. 7-14)) and that is what what performance was about – sharing.

Photo taken 05/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

Even though I set up the bathroom to be as inviting as possible, with candles, bubbles, music and all sorts of bath lotions, some audience members that joined my company, naturally, enjoyed it more and felt more comfortable than others. For a couple of people specifically, the idea of being in a bathroom with a naked girl, being asked to “give me a hand” washing my back, seemed to be quite painful. Perhaps it was to do with past experience in their lives, or perhaps – like me some way through this process – they had yet to see how such an experience could be anything but bizzare and uncomfortable. Despite the fact that there were these couple of people who didn’t respond as I hoped them to, it surprisingly didn’t take away from the performance for me. Seeing how different people reacted was part of what made it interesting. Seeing the people who I perhaps expected to be uncomfortable chatting away to me and really getting involved, as much as the people I expected to be comfortable, really struggling with being in there at all. In addition, it’s worth noting that, even the people who didn’t “get” as much from the experience (and this was, as I said, only a couple) were in no way judgmental or rude – on the contrary they only commented on how they thought I was brave and how they could not do such a thing themselves. As my final audience member put so eloquently during his visit – “It makes you realise that not that many people are actually dicks!” and this could not be more true.

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

I would be lying entirely if I said every aspect of this performance process has been enjoyable for me. It has been difficult. At times I’ve felt engaged and eager and at times it’s felt almost impossible. I think that is what has ended up making it such an important experience for me. It has opened doors, not just within the performance world, but also with regards to my own mentality. No performance I have ever done before has come close to affecting me in the way being in that bathroom has, and I could not be more glad that I pushed myself, and was pushed by Conan and my fellow performers, through the doubts and difficulties. The experience really taught me a great deal about trust, sharing and human interaction – as I hope it did for my audience members.

Less ketchup, more Howells.

Jozey Wade / April 15, 2013May 9, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

Having set my sights on the aspect of purging, involving both myself and the audience, I tested out my Andre Stitt inspired performance idea.

Picture taken 08/03/2013 by Angela Graham

Unfortunately, covering myself in a substance (which ended up being tomato ketchup – as can be seen above) was not as successful as I would have liked, and I decided that it did not fit well with the logistics of the entire performance in the house.

Since then, I have explored the work of other performance artists who explore the idea of purging and/ or audience involvement.

Adrian Howells work, while not directly described as purging, deals with confession – which is, in a way, a cleansing for the soul. As a matter of fact, as we see in the above video, one of his performances is actually called Foot Washing For The Sole. In this performance he washes and massages an audience member’s feet while partaking in a confessional exchange with them. In much the same way, in another of his performances, known as Salon Adrienne, he dresses in drag (which he explains – or confesses – makes him feel more comfortable in his own skin) within a hair salon and performs as the audience members hair dresser while conversing with them in a manner that one would not normally with a stranger but perhaps with a friend, confessing and encouraging them to confess to him things about themselves to him.

This idea of spending time with a stranger in a way that you would only usually do so with a close friend really rang true with a lot of exploration I had done and discussed within the bathroom. As Conan so eloquently put – What if you are just having a bath and you invite people in?

One thing that has remained in my head throughout all of my exploration and research has been that the bathroom is a private place. What we do in the bathroom, we generally don’t do in front of anyone. But even if there are people we do it in front of – it is close family or lovers. All along I have seen this privacy as an almost sacred thing and the idea of anyone invading it as somehow dangerous or perverted. However, inspired by Howells’ practises, I have come to look at it from another angle. Inviting a stranger into this private space is sharing something intimate with them; it evokes and highlights the importance and gratification of human interaction. Without trying to be corny, there is actually something quite beautiful about it. Undeniably, it would be frightening, for both audience member and performer, but that fear and overcoming it together adds to what it would achieve.

http://totaltheatrereview.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/l_any/reviews/adrian-howells-pleasure-being.jpg

Another aspect of Howell’s work which stands out as appropriate to my bathroom piece, is that it is one to one – as can be seen in the above picture of his performance, The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding. This “shift in the traditional performer/spectator divide” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)) before anything else, almost automatically makes the performance an interactive one. It turns “the audience’s role into one that receives (and) responds” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)) much more directly, and “is actively solicited, engendered as a participant” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)). As I said previously, audience involvement in my piece is something I want. And although previously I was perhaps looking at having two audience members at a time (which may have worked just fine with the Adrian Stitt inspired idea), having explored Howells’ work, I feel that being one to one with each audience member that sees my piece would be much more effective. The intimacy that is created in is performances, largely due to them being one to one, is the kind of intimacy I wish to create in my bathroom.

The performance shown in the above picture – The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding – was actually done in a hotel bathroom. Interestingly, it is the first piece of performance art in a bathroom that I have managed to find at all, so I was quite excited to read about it. The bathroom was set up with “a bath full of bubbles and rose petals, candles in glass jars” ((Prior, D (2011)’ Adrian Howells: The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding’ Total Theatre Review, 22 August, accessed 20 March 2013, http://totaltheatrereview.com/reviews/pleasure-being-washing-feeding-holding)) which is just how intend to decorate my bathroom. I want to create that inviting, warm and relaxing atmosphere. I want the audience member to enjoy being there, despite how awkward a situation it is in reality. In her review, Dorothy Max Prior compares the bathroom scene in Howells’ performance to somewhere you would spend “an assignation with a new lover” ((Prior, D (2011)’ Adrian Howells: The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding’ Total Theatre Review, 22 August, accessed 20 March 2013, http://totaltheatrereview.com/reviews/pleasure-being-washing-feeding-holding)), which goes back to what I have been saying all along – if there is anyone you would allow to see you in the bath, it would be close family or a lover. This is exactly the scene I want to create… and then invite a stranger in.

There is a key difference however, between what Howells’ piece involved and what mine will. As the performer, Howells puts the audience member in the bath, pampers and bathes them. I, on the other hand, intend the flip this around, in that I will be the one in the bath; I will be the one in the vulnerable and private situation and I will ask the audience member to help wash me. I am choosing to do it this way partly because my performance is merely part of a larger collective performance and I must always bare this in mind, so to let the audience know they may have to bring swim wear specifically for my part of the performance would be quite difficult (and the likelihood of many audience members willingly getting naked is remote). I am, however, also choosing to do it this way because of the importance of the room in my performance by comparison to Howells’. The bathroom and what it means to us is something I need and want to get across (as our performance is about home) and I think, for the audience member to walk in on someone bathing as they usually would in the comfort of their own home, relates to and represents this more than treating them as though they are at a spa day.

Purging.

Jozey Wade / March 4, 2013May 9, 2013 / Performance process, Research, Rooms

Performance artist Andre Stitt here talks about how he uses certain substances in is performances as representation for feelings/ emotions etc. Some of the substances he uses are chosen based on personal memories of his, like the use of tar and feathers. At the end, as the narrator points out, he pushes the boat he has covered in certain substances out into the sea and it can be seen as a release or “letting go” of the dark memories he and/ or the audience possess. Straight away this struck me, in relation to what I have been working on in the bathroom.

In his book, At Home: A short history of private life, Bill Bryson talks extensively about plague and disease in history and how a great deal of it has related to being unclean and not washing. In his chapter about the bathroom, he discusses how people in the Middle Ages thought that to “plug the pores with dirt” ((Bryson, Bill (2010) At Home: A short history of private life, London: Black Swan)) was the best way to protect themselves from plague. “Most people didn’t wash, or even get wet, if they could help it – and in consequence… Infections became part of every day life… serious illness accepted with resignation” ((Bryson, Bill (2010) At Home: A short history of private life, London: Black Swan)). Nowadays, obviously, we are aware of the fact that quite the opposite of this is true. We wash daily, to clean – or purge – ourselves of dirt and grime gathered through the day, and to prevent ourselves from smelling and getting ill.

This idea of purging made me think of Andre Stitt’s work as a kind of purge also – like in his performance Where the Grass is Greener as seen in the video above. How the ritualistic aspects of his performances – with the feathers and pushing the boat out into the sea – help him let go or purge himself of unpleasant memories or feelings. How could I apply this to the bathroom?

After spending some time in there and sketching out some thoughts (as can be seen above), I tried to apply my previous ideas of how home life, or people within your home life can make you feel suffocated there. And how, more often than not, it is impossible for us to talk about these issues because we are just supposed to put up with them, or we think we are, if the people involved are family or people we love. Examples of this include overbearing/ strict parents (not necessarily physically abusive but perhaps), children with behavioural problems, loved ones with long term illnesses or even mental illnesses (like depression etc). I played with this idea of things we can’t say that grate on the inside of us, and how some sort of action or ritual within the bathroom could help us release this, or purge ourselves of it. (after all, as we have discussed, the bathroom is a place of purging anyway).

The brutally honest bathroom

Jozey Wade / February 11, 2013May 9, 2013 / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

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).

Photo 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.

Photo 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:

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

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.

Photo 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.

Reflections and first impressions

Jozey Wade / January 22, 2013May 12, 2013 / CCTV, Documentation, Home, Research, Rooms

Seeing and being in the house for the first time has filled me with all sorts of thoughts, ideas and excitement about the potential of our work here.

Firstly, with all the rooms, there is such opportunity to have so much going on for an audience or “visitors” to see and engage with. Personally, rather than looking at the house as a whole, I have been seeing individual performance spaces – what happens in a lounge is so different from what happens in a bathroom and so, performances in these spaces could and probably would be vastly different.

I’m generalising, but I just like the idea of something different going on in every room, perhaps even using the CCTV in every room but in different ways. For example, I love the thought of exploring the idea of voyeurism so that could be explored in one room, using the CCTV in that creepy/ stalker way – obviously, as someone suggested, using the audience in some way, with this idea of being watched. Also, I like the idea of contrasting images on the TV, showing what really happens in a particular room behind closed doors, with the audience being treated as visitors; I think the lounge would be an ideal place for this. I also like the idea that in another room, we could explore the very different experiences/ ideas people have in relation to home or that particular kind of room, and perhaps have something live happening, along with a variety of vastly different examples of peoples experiences in the same room, shown in loop on the TV.

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

One thing I wanted to mention about the reading, that we addressed in a way in class, is the idea, as Pearson suggests: “a places owes it’s character not only to the experiences it affords as sights, sounds etc. but also to what is done there…” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan)). I think this idea of a place having a character or an atmosphere related to what has happened there, on top of the actual physical look/ smell of the place, definitely directly relates to the house we are using.

As we discussed in the session today, the fact that we know the house is used for what it is used for, automatically creates certain images and feelings in our head when looking at or visiting certain rooms. For example, although a bathroom is usually a place I feel most safe or relaxed – due to door locks, being alone and undisturbed, nice hot baths etc – when I was in the bathroom at this particular house, horrible and extreme as it sounds, images of awful things like suicide, accidents with electrics popped into my head. Obviously, this is due to the atmosphere I feel there because of knowing the negative connotations related to what the house is used for. The marks on the wall and peeling paint (as can been in the picture below) add the that feeling of unease and remind me of the true usage of the house.

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

However, an audience may not know about the usage and history of the house, so will the house have the same atmosphere to them? Probably not. So what will an audience, with no knowledge of the house at all, feel when they enter and explore it? What will the atmosphere be like to them? It might be important to keep this in mind.