Tiffany Thompson – Page 2 – ________-Safe House-_________

Homely Home.

Tiffany Abatilda Thompson / February 21, 2013May 12, 2013 / Home, Performance process, Rooms, West Parade

Many of have good and bad memories of home and different ideas on what home is and should be like. Home for me is feeling safe and comfortable with the people around me I love and care about. Also the feeling of being at home with items around you that gives you a sense of comfort such as, pictures, smells, certain ornaments and furniture. Many people don’t have that, children in care and homeless people on the street. Homeless people have nothing just a place where they can sit and sometimes take shelter from the cold and rain. Children in care have a home and shelter but does it feel like home not having parents or people they love around them.

The house on West Parade is a shabby neglected house with peeling wallpaper, shabby furniture and old decor, there’s no feeling of homeliness we should get in a house. It’s hard trying to adapt our feelings we all have of home into a house that looks so neglected.

Living Room Wallpaper. 19/02/2013

‘Man can lock the door of his house from the inside, but he is not for that reason locked into his house’ (( Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.147.)). Shutting a door in the house or knowing you have the door locked you feel so much safer, one can feel at ease and totally relax when they know they are ‘Free from attack’ ((Little, W (1969) “The Oxford Universal Dictionary” London: Oxford University Press. )).

‘Bare rooms have a chilling effect’ (( Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press. P.144. )). The living room is the heart of the house where you can feel most safe, this is normally crowded with friends and family who sit and be social. The Living room feels warm and safe where you can relax and be yourself. Feeling at home is when you are around everyone and feeling safe also feeling that you belong somewhere. The living room on West parade is small, cold and hardly has any furniture this make’s the room un- homely as it doesn’t feel warm, cozy and safe like a living room should.

When in a session in the house just moving the furniture around so the sofa and chair facing the TV/middle of the room it felt a lot more homely. Myself, Lauren and Sam were thinking about home and about the safety of it where your free from intrusion, but what if you were intruding in your own house? The thought of watching something you shouldn’t such as peeping through a key hole, watching someone in the bath or watching someone getting changed. Are you safe in your home? Having this idea and the idea that the TV center’s the living room, why don’t we put inappropriate things on TV to watch.

With the seed planted, i was thinking what if we had videos of people having a bath upstairs being streamed on to the TV downstairs, watching something so personal so openly in the living room where everyone gathers. In the bathroom in the bath or having a shower you are most vulnerable were you think you’re safe.

Putting on a Front in your Front Room

Samuel Davis / February 15, 2013May 12, 2013 / 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.

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.

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.))

First Impressions.

Tiffany Abatilda Thompson / January 22, 2013May 12, 2013 / 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.