feedback from the sharing & afterthoughts - Dec 06

Group feedback after showing

Forced to have a different viewing experience:
Watching spectator as another performer and in turn being watched – not comfortable like in a theatre.
The choice of how you return the gaze – Frauke said she chose to ‘watch’ so that the gaze did not become confrontational.
The suspicion created by the note-taking and also by the camera – was it switched on or not?
But clear that the audience is always invited to watch.

Assumption that everyone had seen the same scene – no one talked about it in the waiting room.

The format meant you focussed less on the content and more on the audience member as a person [would this be different if the content was more linear, more – dare I say it – of a story?]

Our after thoughts

Feedback on the scenes suggest they work well. They are intriguing and create a desire to know what happened before and after.
We talked about what might be a satisfying resolution to this. To have a through line of a piece, so we decide what happened before and after, and have a continuous flow of audience entering and exiting. So that people always enter and exit a scene in ‘motion’. So we edit the people rather than the story.
We also talked about acknowledging the editing, maybe showing the missing bits on a screen in the waiting room, on fast forward.

To bring all the audience into the small space at the end of the scenes and have the scenes unfold again.
The possibility of ‘herding’ the audience.
Play with the idea of claustrophobia [false wall or ceiling that closes the space].

Radical changes in perspective:
The room tipping on its side.
Sudden blackout. When the lights come on we have disappeared, but they can hear us talking about them, telling stories about them.

Blindfold Dona and leave her in the room dancing.

Lock the audience in a room.

notes on the piece from december 06 - raquel

The piece

[1] The format
Two spaces: waiting room and performance for two people.
By chance one person sits in the ‘directors’ chair, one sits in the ‘audience’ chair.
It is about watching and being watched.

[2] The scenes
The people entering effect a change of energy or mood. [Originally we thought they would walk into a scene already running and it would be at the moment they sat in the chair that an abrupt change would occur. We would only notice them once they had sat in the chair, then we would drop what we were doing and start the scene. I think this would be more effective]
The three performers shift between stasis and activity. It is cyclical.

Sources / Ideas
Waiting for Godo….The Beach…..Status….
Three people wanting a leader, a choreographer, someone to take control.

‘Every social animal has a hierarchy. There is stasis until a challenge is made to the leader. Then there is conflict until hierarchy is established again’.
Keith Johnston, Improv

Take this pattern for the scenes and structure of a piece [stasis / conflict].
OR Idea that we are perpetually looking for a leader in order to maintain an equality between us. The contradiction in this is interesting.

‘…but you are first but you are last, but he is tall but she is small, but you stay up but you go down, but we are rich but we are poor, but they find peace but they find…’
Martin Amis, Yellow Dog