This week’s focus was playwriting, storytelling and adapting. Working through my own ideas before this session I had recorded some voice memos as an alternative to writing. In one labeled ‘Silver Swan’ I reference Spalding Gray. Swimming to Cambodia had such a profound effect on me when I first saw it. I had loved Jonathan Demme’s film Stop Making Sense, but Spalding Gray was influential on my young artist self in so many ways. Here was an actor using autobiographical material and being political in a really intelligent, humorous and engaging way. I almost wanted to be him. Swimming to Cambodia even had music by Laurie Anderson who was, and is still, a goddess. Having missed week 2 with Selina Thompson it was fascinating to watch the performances Bim and Monty had devised. Bim used a semi-Swimming to Cambodia desk as part of her set and took a naturalistic tale to superbly surreal extremes. Ladybirds haunted me for days. Monty had rehearsed a repetitive digging movement to a realistic soundtrack, synchronizing his movement in a very satisfying way. Following the nursery rhyme prompt I improvised a macabre version of the ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’. After feeding back Deborah produced some scripts for us to peruse. I snaffled a copy of The Future Show and here was another Spalding Gray reference. Exploring these texts Deborah described differing approaches to writing texts: ‘a play is an object in and of itself’, ‘a generalized imprint’. A performance text on the other hand is a ‘blueprint for you’.
Our homework, apart from reading the introduction to Jordan Tannahill’sTheatre of the Unimpressed, was to create something with a beginning a middle and an end. The aim would be to challenge the audience with what signifies these moments. When does the performance start? How do we know it has ended?
The challenges I faced doing this are the subject of the next blog. I’m finding writing about it super scary. At least I have plentiful notes.
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Viv HarrisNotes from FADS sessions Archives
January 2020
QMUL Perf Lab
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