Weekly report 9
- Sep 24, 2018
- 7 min read
Sarah: Shall We Dance?...Maybe not.
Weekly Post
Week ten. This week has been both productive and practical. We have been working in the studio on our performance as well as visiting props store, recording studio, costume department and lights store. We are finalising the visual aspects of the space and how we want to use all the elements of the piece to communicate our message and investigation to the audience. We also had two great supervision sessions which both really helped us to gain clarity of our direction for the final few days leading up to the performance.
Ensuring authenticity through performance
I have become increasingly aware through our feedback and our own response to our work that we should not be afraid of including 'Sonia and Sarah' within our work, after all we have chosen to use our real names as an indication of how close they are to us. We have adopted a style which combines a ‘character’ that we have created with our own personalities and character traits. Up until now I think we may have been trying too hard to perform ‘characters’ and present our ‘performance’ to our audience – I think that, in the words of Queen Elsa, we need to “Let it go”. We have to find the balance between us and our characters and use the point at which they meet to inform the entire performance. We can be ourselves – just heightened versions. As we were advised this week the piece we present can have flaws and we can come out of character it is, after all, a work in progress. The main aim must be to ensure the authenticity of what we are presenting is present and clear to our audience.
Our performance focuses a lot of the ‘masks’ we put on and present to others in our day to day lives – I think it’s imperative that we don’t mask Sonia and Sarah too much.
Recording Studio
In the recording studio we were able to record the audio’s that we want to use in the final performance. This was an important element to include in our piece as it has been part of Sonia’s ongoing investigation throughout her MA course – we wanted to include these elements of recorded voice as it has been shown, through Sonia’s experiments, that by listening to recorded voice as opposed to live voice an audience will focus more on the words they are hearing. This is an important element to our piece as the dialogue that we are recording reflects a combination of our own internal thoughts and our research into our chosen area of investigation.
Keeping It Real.
After our rehearsals this week it is apparent that we are ‘performing’ too much. Bobby Baker has been spoken about during this process many times and I decided to sit down and watch a couple of clips of her work. The two links below completely affirmed what it is we need to do. She is brilliant as ‘performing herself,' creating a completely natural stage persona which is the perfect balance between character and reality. This combination enables the audience to feel as though they are being shown a slice of ‘reality’ as opposed to being ‘performed’ at – it creates the authenticity in the piece and this is what we need to aim for within our work. It is a huge skill to be able to do this successfully and we are aware of our own performance skills in comparison – however it is a great reference point and just watching these clips created a clarity for me as to where we are aiming.
Keep on Moving
We have shown our movement piece to both Jo and Sam this week and the feedback was similar in both instances – “too neat”, “too choreographed’, “too controlled”.
When we structured the piece we worked methodically through it and came up with the movement fairly easily – however on refelction it is too polished and ‘choreographed. We want to show the short-circit in the brain, the unravelling of our ideals and expectations. To do this we need to make the end of the piece more chaotic and frantic –both Jo and Sam agreed that this is what needs to happen and it will make the intentions of the piece clearer to the audience – in our Sunday studio session we intend to work on this section and try to let go and push away from 'perfect' moment and focus more on the message we are trying to pass to our audience.
Agreed Actions – Surprise Attack
Something we have spoken about with Jo is having a set of agreed actions that we both have that we will carry out during the performance eg: Sonia sweeping the make-up into the bin and Sarah taking it out again and placing it back in the exact same way. Our plan with these actions is to have one or two each that we are going to do during the performance and the other person has an agreed response to those actions. However, we will not know when these actions are going to take place. We will not rehearse these moments, they will just happen live on Thursday during the performace – we hope that this will again create the element of authenticity that we are seeking and take the piece, and us, out of the comfort zone of polished and perfect performance.
Imbedding the Research
After the sharing session last week we considered the feedback we were given and tried to include more of our research within the performance piece. We looked back through our work and were able to identify some quotes that we have found interesting or stimulating – we then went to the studio to record these and they will be played over the top of “Barbie Girl” during the mask cutting section. An obvious way to include further research but also an effective addition to the work as the audience will listen to the words they are hearing whilst they have the visual reference of the cutting and sticking of the superficial images of beauty that society expect us to conform to.
This week we will continue to work in studio and are looking forward to Thursday and the culmination of all of our work and research .......
SONIA: “Why do you need to achieve perfection?”
Right now I’d be (a bit) happy if we could achieve the kind of performance we want!
… Who am I kidding? S&S are too tidy and controlled to settle with anything less than precise! What are we going to do?! Sarah, I think it’s better to let Elsa go build her castle and bring in the professionals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-uVmKZGLDQ&feature=youtu.be
During this week…
We went to the recording studio and we did it like pros!
I really like to be in the studio. Sarah keeps saying that recorded voice has been part of my investigations during the Masters. I have to disagree with it (just slightly). I used it before yes, but it’s because I like the possibilities that it can offer. For our performance I think it works for the first scene that, the audience is listening to our thoughts while looking at us physically reacting (or not) to them. Since the purpose of the first scene is to create an intimate setting and allow people access to what’s going on inside our minds, I think that having the lines recorded has a stronger effect than saying them live.
We went to the costume store and the prop store, looking for props, carrying tables and chairs around (since we needed the lift, it was obviously broken! Rory, what would we do without you??)
Sam was with us on Thursday (the 13th) and she reminded us that the final piece was still too choreographed. A few weeks before she told us that the fact that the characters were going out wasn’t clear at the beginning of the play. This reminded me of an idea I had long ago. During my late hours “dancing” around in the studio, I noticed how my dance moves are so different from Sarah’s and how interesting it could be showing that just with our feet and film it. Then we requested Maggie’s help to film us and we came up with two sequences of movements each (one with bare feet and one with shoes on, me in converse and Sarah in pink heels) and another two with both. Instead of dancing we decided to do slow movements trying to show our character’s traits with them. We decided to play the video together with the song “Cheap thrills” by Sia because during the lyrics she talks about getting ready to go out and the rhythm is faster than our movements so it creates an interesting contrast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywdZXeNIcR4&feature=youtu.be
Friday the 14th Jo was with us in the studio. She also reminded us that the final scene is too choreographed and controlled. I was a bit surprised because I’m so uncoordinated compared to Sarah! “Find the mess in it” said Jo, How do I show the one that’s in my mind? I wonder. We also need to layer it more. I completely agree. Sarah and I have been focusing on our explorations and then translating it to the performance, so we just reached the final script. Only now we can look at it and layer it more and see if what we are trying to say is passing through. The problem is, we are crazy people and we want to do everything! Right now I’m very concerned about the light design.
During the afternoon Rory, the saint, (our beloved Rory has been helping us with, well everything!) was listening to all my requests and helping me (okay, fine, doing all the work!) rigging and focusing the lights.
… Why am I complaining? This is the beauty of being a theatre maker. The heavier and more technical activities you do, the more you appreciate the artistic creation and you see theatre as a complex and collaborative art.
Taking it to the next level… always!
As Jo says we need to unpack, layer and subvert it but my mind is (as always) trapped in its own maze and “this is not good/self-explanatory/clear/etc. enough” spiral of thoughts:
… And now it’s too straightforward! What to do, what to do?!
I had a previous look through Bobby Baker’s drawings and I found them both funny and awkward. Jo mentioned the artist has a few videos on YouTube where she talks about daily life moments and she wears a lab coat (as we do when we talk about the “tips to be confident” and the “10 beauty commandments”).
Apart from the ones Sarah posted I also liked these two. It’s so awkward, I felt uncomfortable just by watching them…
Let’s focus on show discomfort and play with the idea of performance. I don’t mind going in and out of character but I think that first, we need to understand what they are really saying and how they should do it. After layering the characters we can see what else in the play needs more depth.
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