Week 2:

Marina Abramovic:

Despite studying Abravovic’s work in previous modules throughout university, I still found learning about her various performances extremely interesting. In previous modules we had looked mainly at The Artist is Present (2010), a silent and durational piece in which Abramovic sat with a chair opposite her and the public were welcome to come and sit in the chair for as long as they pleased. This performance sparked many different reactions from audience members, with many becoming emotional and even shedding tears. A performance of hers which I was not previously aware of was Rhythm 0 (1974), where Abramovic wanted to test the limits of performer and audience relationships. In the performance, she had a table of 72 objects which audience members could use in any way that they chose. At first, the audience were cautious and modest with the objects, however, as this piece lasted 6 hours, the audience began to act more aggressively with the objects as time went on. I find the idea of exploring the relationship between a performer and their audience a very interesting one, this performance could have of course ended terribly for Abramoic as at one point an audience member pointed a gun at her head, while another took it away. This shows a level of trust between the artist and the audience, which is necessary for a performance like this, despite whether the audience betray that trust or not. I think that the concepts and notions behind Abramovic’s performances are very interesting and although I don’t think that I will take inspiration directly from her performances for my final piece, I have realised the importance of a performance having a solid concept behind it. This is something that I would like to think I will take inspiration from.

Traverse Stage Exercise:

In the workshop we were put in to groups and given a different type of stage to develop a solo performance from. My group were given a traverse stage to work with which initially gave us the idea of creating a form of fashion show or runway walk. We wanted to have a screen at the back of the ‘runway’ which would show something contradictory to what was happening on stage, for example, if the performer was walking to an upbeat song that had connotations of happiness, then we wanted the screen at the back to display something that was the complete opposite. After playing around with this idea for a bit and discussing it further, we decided that it might not work so well as there are only so many opposing emotions that can be portrayed on stage and through multimedia. Our second idea for a traverse stage was to do something in relation to Brexit. We decided it would be effective to have one side of the audience represent ‘remain’ while the other to represented ‘leave’, this would create a sense of tension between the two halves of the audience. We wanted to focus on the negatives of the arguments for both remain and leave as usually, in the media, it is the positives that are more openly voiced. Focusing on the lies as well as fake news, we wanted to create a piece of theatre that was politically bias yet still thought provoking to an audience.

My Ideas So Far:

I’m still looking to develop further my ideas around creating a performance focusing on homelessness, however, after this weeks workshops I am very open and willing to explore different ways of staging my piece. I had never considered anything other than a proscenium stage, however, I think it would be effective to stage my piece in a different way. I am now considering either a site specific performance, as I think it would fit the concept of the piece well, or I think it could be interesting to explore a birds eye stage possibly performing in the dance studio with my audience looking down on the performance from the windows above. This will create the idea of homeless people being looked down on, both physically and metaphorically. These ideas of staging are something that I am excited to explore further as I think it could add an extra element to my piece, if I decide to go with the idea of representing homelessness in my final performance.