Unit One Assessment Feedback

There's a Gorilla in the Building?

Jake Good came to talk to us, we were introduced to him first as a gorilla in The Street then as a walking suitcase and then as one of his characters Mustafa. I found his talk enjoyable and gave us an insight into his character development process. It made me see how detailed the research and experimentation is and was very informative. We had the chance to ask whatever questions we wanted and therefore got some great insight. Although street performance is not necessarily the direction I want to take my work in, it gave me a greater appreciation for this art form.

Jake Good as a gorilla
Photograph by: Marina Bussandri

Jake Good as a walking suitcase
Photograph by: Marina Bussandri

Jake Good as Mustafa
Photograph by: Marina Bussandri

Images & Sketches for Powerpoint Presentation

Here I used: watercolor paints, pencil, charcoal, photographs and collage to create these images to better explain how my Production of Howard Zinn's "Marx in Soho" would be performed and held at Highgate Cemetery for my Unit One Assessment.

...................Highgate Cemetery Poem..............

Behind Waterlow Park is a jewel of the City,

Standing since 1839 it has played witness to many.

Private to start,

Both for living and deceased,

Now open to all in both The West and The East.

Over fifty thousand plots and more than twice occupying,

Neither dark nor sombre, the tranquility's surprising.

Reading on a bench,

Taking in the surroundings,

An escape from the City is what this paradise brings. 

Throughout acres of land are memorial symbols:

Obelisks, urns, crosses and angels.

Prominent and less dominant,

Are the paths that unfold,

As one wanders along where others have strolled.

Intertwined with the nature that encapsulates the grounds,

Hidden by trees our hosts are hard to be found.

Fauna and Flora,

Forever accumulating,

An adventure to explore a place that is truly illuminating. 

Bound by clear limitations yet full of potential,

A performance at this location would either thrive or fail.

Whimsical and atmospheric,

A show would no doubt be,

Emphasising elements of culture and mystery. 

Open-aired and unprotected brings problems to the surface,

With London's reputation it's a great disservice.

Unpredictable is the rain,

And more common than not,

This would certainly prove to be a weak-spot.

Manipulating daylight would prove to be challenging,

And additional lights are less than fitting.

Inhabitants of the wild,

Hard to control,

Adding risk and volatility to an already unreachable goal.

Yet arises the opportunity to exploit a place, 

That embodies perfectly both beauty and grace.

As the sun sets,

And the hours pass,

These grounds become what I would deem as first class.

An unrivaled elegance and ambience alike,

Here could play host to some unique new sights.

No issue of space,

No boundary of height,

A setting adequate for a subject both heavy and light.

Having visited time again to gather more understanding,

It felt right to help with the audience's expanding.

Now my peers comprehend,

What I encountered,

With the aid of images and music they are no longer floundered. 

I wish only to have shown the exquisite format of the grounds,

To better their appreciation of what I found.

Individual headstones,

Inscriptions and phrases,

Would have heightened the fascination on all of their faces.

How blessed I feel to have experienced this treasure, 

I would recommend to all as it's worth a venture.

I pray you take,

All that you can,

And cherish what's above as well as below ground. 

'Marx In Soho' Presentation Notes

Overview
*summer months (June, July, August)
*weather issues, outside

Location
*Behind Waterlow Park
*North London
*Karl Marx's grave, buried 1883

The Play
*'Marx in Soho', 1999
*Written by historian, Howard Zinn
*One man, 70 minute play
*Karl Marx convinces the authorities of the afterlife to allow him to come back from the dead to clear his name. He appears in your city to make his case
*Zinn stated that h wrote the play to "show Marx as few people knew him, as a family man, struggling to support his wife and children"

Audience
*3 rows of about 20 chairs, total audience approx. 60

Set, Props & Costume
*suit, recognizable beard
*ghostly make up
*No set except table with lamp and books on it, beauty of cemetery is the backdrop, emphasizes the play

Lights
*Early summer evening
*Red electric lights flooding the foliage behind the grave upwards

Total Experience 
*"Enjoyable to many, interesting to others, and no doubt offensive to somebody."

In Conversation With...Livi Vaughn

General Points
>Main designer fro Punchdrunk Theatre Company.
> (Orgnanized, can run a budget)
> World's come from a human personal place, character (eg.where does this so called person like to sit?)
> Suspension of Disbelief
> Still having real experiences, avoid technical take over.
> Maths and Art
> Lepage (manipulation of the object, transformation)
> Robert Wilson (Space, simplistic, confidence)
> Charles Matton (American painter, scale models)

"Mark of the Red Death" - 2005, Battersea Arts Centre.
> Creates emersive worlds, "jumping into a cinema screen", incredible details involved like smell, sound etc.
> Scaled from tiny to massive.
> Audience allowed in changing rooms, total audience freedom (where to go, which performers to follow), like a game?
> Roundabout performances, final finale more complete.
> Immaculate details (real for audience)- but if too much is too real- nothing is wow, so need to balance detail & clutter.
> Room has to speak for itself, hold the audience's attention even without performer & when in there doesn't overpower the performer.
> Use cheap materials where possible (eg. Paper).

"It Felt Like a Kiss" - Manchester, with filmmaker Alan Curtis
> More linear instead of free roaming.
> All about the set.

"Sleep No More" - New York (version of Macbeth)
> Started 10 years ago, ran for 6 months in Boston (20-30 performers & 200-250 audience).
> The audience always wear masks, anonymity, approach where can explore work without being held back by yourself and pre-conceptions.
> Also separates the audience from the performers. Dramatic experience when a dead, magical etc character (one on ones) removes your mask and tells a story.
> Amazing experience but must make people feel safe, how do performers react to certain situations?
> Can't portray level in details on a model, need to be in space to get the actual ambience.
> Design for limitations. (eg. Budget/space).
> Dark space, lighting always 5%.
> Organic matter and repetition.
> In a world almost like a series of clues.
> Storytelling, objects.

What I thought?
I thought having a talk from a woman in the working world of performance design and practice was a great boost of knowledge and inspiration. The fact that she was an ex-graduate of our course really helped us to relate to her and give us an idea of where we could take our interests. She spoke about her own work which was totally engaging as well as some of the technical difficulties and the unglamorous parts, such as working within a budget. She was a speaker who was engaging and I feel like I got a lot from her talk.

The Semiotics of Theatre: Costume Chapter Notes

The Semiotics of Theatre: The Theatrical Code as a System
(p. 83-92)
Erika Fisher-Lichte

The notes from this book have been unbelievebaly informative and usefull for both of my Unit 2 Word & Image documents as well as my general understanding of costume and identity, which I have no doubts will inform my practice.

Notes:
> Constitutes an actor's external appearance.
> Costume is more predominant that make-up or hair, as it is easier to perceive in purely quantitative terms.
> As a rule, the audience's first identification of a character is based on the costume.
> This relationship already appears to be developed and ordained by the social meaning of clothing: functions of theatrical costume largely coincide with the functions of which clothing can fulfill in social life.
> James Laver comes to the conclusion, "it would not be far off the mark to say that all clothes for special occasions and stylized clothes of any kind are, in effect, theatrical costume. We are at least on safe ground in suggesting that all clothes are in origin theatrical costumes."
> Clothing in particular functions as one such means of identifying oneself, Erving Goffman refers to it in this sense as an "Identity document". For clothing informs others relatively quickly and completely about the role it's wearer wishes to play. In this way it gives rise to certain expectations with regard to the future behaviour.
> Units of costume are: material, colour and form. they collaborate to give different meanings, which all relate to the identity of the person and/or character.
> Clothing is capable of communicating: age, gender, religion, distinction between social classes, status, occupation, culture/ ethnicity, climate region, historical function.
> In life these clothes have a practicality connectes (eg. labourer's uniform and it's movement and comfort). However it loses this quality when it becomes a theatrical costume (as it denotes the clothing of character x).
> Costume in theatre has no practical function to serve.
> Costume can also draw on mythological codes, govern the appearance of: Gods, angels, demons, figures from fables as well as animals.
> Use of costume as a means of specific characterization was developed above all in western theatre int his century.
> Costume is also capable of performing general symbolic function which are not exclusively related to character, but rather to the entire performance; underline the meaning of a character (eg. protagonists wear bright colours and supporting/ secondary characters wear 'colourless' muddy tones).
> A distinction has to be made between movements which are imposed by the costume and those which are called for by the costume. (eg. Skin tight dress and heels do not permit long strides; whalebone corset& farthingale permit only measured upright movements).
> Such disparencies are frequently employed as a medium for characterizing the figure, thus the character's identity emerges.
> However external appearances only provide the outlienof an identity, sketching the contours of a role that in concrete form arouses expectations which have to be met. This concretization is performed by the actor through his actions. The linguistic and paralinguistic, mimic, gestural and proxemic signs he produces fill the role outlined by the external appearance with concrete. Concluding the character's identity only takes shape in the course of a process.
> A character's identity cannot be fully constituted solely by external appearance.

The Workshops

Sound & Light:
I found that this was the most useful and informative workshop. The hand on approach threw me in at the deep end, as I had little previous knowledge of the technical aspect we explored during the week. However I found the basics of light explained helpful and I learned from the other students. It was great to see what my peers brought to the table in terms of sound and light background and experience.
Our group's performance was not particularly successful, however the basic idea we had would have created a fantastic piece if carried out in the right way. On the days where we devised the composition and tried out different ideas, our teacher was absent, which I did feel had an impact on our performance (in the sense that we had a lack of technical and theoretical advice). Watching other groups carry out the same task in different spaces with different equipment was very informative as to the range of of atmospheres and visual effects that can be executed using the amazing light and sound equipment available to us. The group in the White Lab's piece was very effective because it was clean and the narrative was easy to follow. In addition there were elements of humour which made it even more impressive, including trapping a torch between black curtains and running it vertically in order to emulate an elevator.

Space:

Flocking

Photography by: Jiwon Sueng

During this workshop we learnt about the actor to audience relationship within space and different staging methods. This was very interesting and incredibly relevant to me as I like performing. It gave me insight on how I could make myself feel safe or vulnerable when standing on a stage. A talk given by a drama student meant that what we were being told was accurately informed and he could speak from first hand experience. He was invasive and charismatic meaning the morning session flew by and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Having acting experience I felt like i understood the ideas and concepts being discussed yet still found them exciting and helpful, especially as classical Greek theatre and staging was discussed and how the body/ actor naturally responds to the space.
Learning about flocking interested me to an extent, experimenting definitely illuminated and clarified the concept but after the first hour I did not find I was learning anything new. Watching example videos of artists using this idea, or performances in which flocking is evident would have been something enjoyable to watch and given us more depth on the topic. I understand the importance of getting to know the space but measuring in methods such as bananas and scissors was tedious and not the most informative of practical class.

Northern Cafe Space Exercise

Photography by: Marina Bussandri 

During the week we did short exercises, where in our groups we had to arrange the audience in the space to allow them to guess the scene (eg. football match/crowd, supermarket ). These exercises were effective, to the point and very enjoyable. Quickly my group understood what worked and what didn't ad we started to build up good communication.

Audience:

Home Made Top Trump Cards
Photography by: Marina Bussandri 

During this week I learnt the importance of knowing your audience. In both an entrepreneurial and performative sense. We started by establishing different types of audience members (eg. The child, the creative, the business upper class theatre goers). After that we researched the target audience for many major companies and organisations, mainly in the theatrical/ performance world. We made Top Trump cards with potential audience members and the levels of categories such as wealth, intellect etc. It was a useful exercise which i found benefitted me and the way I would approach a task in the real world.

Unit One: Word & Image Preparation

Requirements:
> 300-500 words, at least one image.
> Evaluate in terms of potential for performance events.
> Reflect on presentation one, what could have been done better.

What the location was like (Highgate Cemetery):
> Style: not like a grim gothic expected, more poetic, not all in unison (modern vs. traditional)
> Scale: large, different sides, not a distinct route to walk along.
> Little spots of humor: funny headstones, also some shocking.
> Atmosphere: It was surprisingly tranquil, mellow, thought-provoking- thought of deceased however not in a grim or dark sense, the exact opposite. Light, open, natural, not suffocating.
> In touch with nature, lots of greenery, trees, overgrowing ivy and plants, deceased are one with the earth.
> Relaxing environment, even had benches dotted around so as to be able to enjoy the surroundings.
> Peaceful sounds, not too noisy, nature, distant quiet chat from visitors.

Things to think about in terms of performance dynamic:
> Space
> Audience
> Sound & Light
> Text
> Location/ weather
> Scale
> Theme/appropriate
> Costumes

Location potential for a performance:
> Great location in emersive theatre due to the shape of the paths and layout of the space, the audience would be placed in a scattered way, the possibility of taking the audience on a journey down the paths or space them along the central path.
> Weather: as is open air would limit events to being outdoors and consequently dry seasons, London weather is unreliable and therefore so would event dates (possibility of shows being cancelled).
> Space: Large space technically but a lot of it would be impractical. 2 sides connected through gates and road so have the possibility of using one or the other, either east, west or both.
> Sound & Light: As the venue is outside, if the production was during the day, elements of light would be hard to control. However if during evening could be very controlled and atmospheric. Sound would be simple to control very quiet as away from busy streets but would always have the slight background sound of nature (birds etc.).
> Scale: The space has the possibility of being on a grand scale (number of people wise) as open air, height wise not many restrictions except for the trees and foliage causing obstructions.

How well did the presentation go?
> Positive feedback for the song which i too thought embodied well the atmosphere of our trip to the cemetery.
> Audience seemed to respond well, understood the type of experience we had.
> Comments about the adventure playground feel of cemetery maybe could have shot footage in a more exploratory way.
> Possibly shown drawings of previous ideas so audience understood our experience even more.
> Could have created sketches to explain the layout more clearly, or shown maps.
> Could have shown a wider range of headstones, maybe photos on a display sheet in addition to the video.

Unit 1, Part 1

Photography by: Marina Bussandri

For this brief, my partner Erin and I were asked to visit Highgate Cemetery in North London and give a presentation on our experience. We made this video which included video footage and photographs of the location accompanied by music. The song by Bon Iver entitled Holocene, was a choice that we decided on together. We found it emulated the tranquility of the location perfectly and aided our video in showing to the audience the experience we had. We started by talking to our audience, giving basic background information, and once we had shown the video continued to talk in a discussion format with the audience, answering questions and taking comments. I felt like our presentation was successful as we were able to answer all the questions posed, and received positive feedback from the group.

 Follow the link below to watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5n_1vodBD4

Photography by: Marina Bussandri

Photography by: Marina Bussandri