Talking about myself - fine. Talking about myself as an artist - much more difficult. My script and the stills from giving my first ever Artist Talk reveal my tentative approach to this task... Can I call myself an artist? If so, what do I want my art to say? What is my identity as a performer? Looking back to my original artist statement on the home page of my website, I am embarrassed. It seems very naive. The Performance Lab has challenged me to reconsider my identity as a performer, to see myself as an artist. It has led to me exploring in depth, and sometimes painfully, ‘the argument that performance functions as a useful and rigorous means of engaging with different kinds of knowledge, including those that might not be otherwise accessible.’ I have had to examine the value of pain, both physical and psychological, in researching and devising performance. My body has recalled a maelstrom of gymnastic and dance routines; Feldenkrais, tai chi, yoga and capoeira moves; the stillness learnt from life-modelling and theatre tricks like how to stand in the light so your face is illuminated (or not). I have remembered how to sing in my own voice again. The FADS space was like coming home. I bask in it. It is a space were I can play, take risks and it has very pleasing tech. The lighting rig graces the header on my homepage and has even been a character in one of my films, embodying a safe environment. Learning more about live art has been a revelation. LADA a haven. There is a bibliography of some of my early influences as well as my new discoveries on the scrapbook page. I have tried to add hyperlinks where I can as references, click to find out more. How the Performance Lab process unfolded: (click on the week to access the blog post) Week 1 Theatre as a context for experimentation Week 2 Selina Thompson, I was gutted to miss this but the family wedding took priority and was suitably fabulous. Researched Selina’s work, read salt . Impressed and inspired. Week 3 Playwriting, storytelling and adapting Week 4 Modes of performance Week 5 Pushing form further Week 6. Action Lab #1 Week 7. Reading week Week 8. Staging work - pitching and All Goes to Pot Week 9 Running workshops and sharing your practice Week 10 Jay Miller and The Yard Theatre Week 11 Action Lab #2 So where to next? That is what the coming semester is for. I am confused and that is perfectly acceptable. More dance, more stillness, more song and more silence. Today it seems as though live art is where I fit, but I celebrate that theatre is where I am from.
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Once I had worked out I was going to build on the piece recharging from Week 8 and the poem ‘skinless’ for the second Action Lab, I realised I had a lot of physical work to do. I wanted to combine autobiographical, voiced, direct to audience material with a film that referenced my stay at Our Lady. I decided to allude to domestic violence but coded in repetitive movement performed in front of video on the large film screen. To get the movements crisp enough feel they represented what I wanted to say, I put in hours of rehearsal and felt grateful for my body remembering how to work hard. I was inspired by a section of Douglas Wright’s Elegy: I reused some of the film I had shot at the Our Lady Hospital and had edited for Week 4. I combined it with the split screen, black and white film skin from Week 6 - images of the FADS lighting rig, inhospitable environments and the stills of my back to reinforce the vulnerability I had felt as a result of PTSD. I recorded a voice over of the more ‘difficult’ verbal content to contrast with the conversational tone at the start of the piece. I bookended the audio on the video with an a cappella version of ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ - this has become a touchstone for me, or maybe an unnecessary security blanket. The first visuals were old TV screens and a cassette recorder, images that are a metaphor for both ‘screening’ and ‘reliving/recording’ emotional content. Using an iPad and iMovie was challenging to create the audiovisual content that I wanted but I got there in the end: When I transferred the video to be able to project it from the mezzanine at a prearranged verbal cue it corrupted - we didn’t know this until it played and it worked really well. Serendipitous, surrealist gremlins. Thanks to the spirit of Leonora Carrington. By this stage in the process of making performances I was wondering if my practice lay more at the live art end of the spectrum and I had to decided to take a risk and combine the rough texture of the large pine box in FADS with the vulnerable naked back as a physical representation of the ‘box’ I was meant to use as advised by one counsellor to enclose my feelings when they were overwhelming.
Disrobing with my back to the audience I then stepped into the box and very slowly moved down into the vulnerable foetal position with a black screen, the poem skinless as a voice over, black screen and a ‘special’ side spot to cross illuminate the box. Jules Deering, our ever helpful technician, helped work out the best angle for this. He also helped me work out the best wash for the beginning of the piece. He got it immediately when I said, tongue only partially in cheek, that I wanted a feeling of Dave Allen crossed with Marina Abromovic. Despite not being able to execute the dance homage to Doug Wright with quite the finesse I was after, this is the performance piece of which I am most proud. It was very scary to do. Reflecting on it now a few weeks later I have even enjoyed going over my choreography notes, verbal text and physical script. The process is as chaotic as ever, but this time the execution came closer to my imagined product: Week 9 (21 November 2019) focussed on ‘Running Workshops and Sharing Your Practice - How best to construct and run a workshop’ Deborah Pearson based our workshop demonstration on devising work she had done with Frantic Assembly. We all had to share something we had noticed that morning. As usual even though there are only four of us in the room we report back a wonderful range of stimuli: Deborah’s ‘invisible writing on the door’, Bim noticing people smiling on the tube, Dee’s comments on the oiliness of pesto and my shiny city at the end of Mile End Rd. Gradually revealing the structure of the workshop as a practical demonstration of not giving “all the info at once”, we went through three more steps devising a performance piece: initially with an infinite budget and resources so we had ‘weirdly low stakes’, then a £50,000 budget and FADS as a site, then only £50 and a site to be negotiated with QMUL. My sketchbook records the process more vividly: By integrating participation in the workshop with a meta-description of the process we were reminded of some of the original advice Deborah had given us about ‘not showing all your teeth’ - by drip feeding the instructions the workshop facilitator can structure the day to build like a satisfying narrative, enhance collaboration and dispel anxiety about building something from nothing. Week 10 (28 November 2019) was a chance to meet with Jay Miller, artistic director of The Yard. A brilliant opportunity to not only discuss the most recent play he had directed there, Clare Barron’s, Dirty Crusty but also talk about local engagement and the way the theatre and its rehearsal space are used community. I had been very impressed with The Yard when I made my first visit there to see Dirty Crusty so it was a privilege to be able to speak with Jay about the production and how to make a small socially engaged space work artistically and ethically.
Staging Work - Arts Council Grants, Self Curation, Fringe Models, Pitch Meetings - How do you get your work on and support other artists to get their work on? Paraphrasing Deborah from our pitching conversation: When pitching, get to the most exciting and interesting thing as quickly as possible. Tread a strange line between confidence and openness to new ideas. What words will the venue find poisonous? Almost like suggesting clothes for friends - cool to offer something they might like but aren’t doing yet. In our student led practice that afternoon we worked on coming up with a way we could showcase each others’ work - we embraced the idea of a DIY/punk approach. Quite some time was spent on costuming before we had finalised anything else! We were envisioning an alternative cabaret with the return of Minnie and the Monotones in a new guise based on the fact that we can all sing. Bim (AKA Triple A) would research the history of our venue, hopefully The Mermaid in Clapton Pond and make a site specific response. Monty would either reprise his monologue or do his vampire song (or both). Dee would MC in platforms.
I was able to sound the venue out initially that night, but didn’t want to make a formal pitch until I knew we were all up for it. Week 7 was reading week. It came around too quickly for me. I end up rehearsing in all sorts of odd spaces because I find the journey to QMUL too daunting. Yet when I have to be there for either a seminar or a performance I overcome my heebie-jeebies, taking deep breaths despite the smell of bodies on the tube and ignoring my racing heart. I have little patience with myself for finding tube travel daunting, probably because I feel guilty for mocking other people who have suffered when I have found the tube easy. Still obsessing about the back image. Using this image both live and recorded seems integral to what I want to say about vulnerability and strength.
During Reading Week I thought a lot about Lizard Boy. Two months later I am still not ready to properly process or write about what happened there. I have already written about Week 8 - scroll down to my post from November 17th. Looking back to that performance I am glad to have experimented with using a screen as part of the set. It helped germinate the idea not just of using multiple screens, but also reinforced employing whatever is available as furniture and props. Using the large wooden box in FADS was linked to me climbing on to the television cabinet. |
Viv HarrisNotes from FADS sessions Archives
January 2020
QMUL Perf Lab
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