Category Archives: Georgia Green

Final Blog: Time to think things over and reflect

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The Final Look

 

To me, the set came out wonderfully and much better than I excepted as I felt I was in a representation of my mind as well as the mind of another young adult.

IMG_4102

 

 

Why have I chosen…

Plain paper?

I have chosen to use plain paper because whatever is written on paper from the government and the media is usually full of empty promises, threats and praises towards their young population. It is also aesthetically pleasing to the eye when the lights hit the whiteness of the paper.

As shown:

IMG_4116

 

Newspaper?

This shows the media to be the only source of information about what the government is doing; they are the middle man but a corrupt middle man so the newspaper is scattered and scratched into a ball to represent their untrustworthiness.

Rope?

As said before in my other blogs, the rope represents the restraint and barriers we, as young adults, must try to break through in order to be trusted. It is just one big obstacle course with a lot of strings attached. These strings must be cut.

Union Jack Flag?

Just a reminder of where we are living and how ‘patriarchal’ we are as a country and how the government is too, supposedly.

Chair and Table?

Isn’t it better to be delivered bad news when sat around a table? Well supposedly it is, but the other reason why there is a chair and table is that they represent myself and other young adults who are trying to better themselves with education and studying hard for a £23,000 piece of paper. Additionally, they represent the constant sitting down one does when looking for a job and filling in applications or how hard it is to get a job as an inexperienced, untrusted youth of today in a recuperating UK.

 

The Experience of Performing

Well the piece felt like it wasn’t really quick from when I was practising it but, I felt a therapeutic release of stress as I performed it. It became an outlet which is what I wanted but, I felt that when I practised saying my opinions in a particular area of the soundscape, they had become personal and I have tainted the performance with my ideas. So, I took a risk and practised for half an hour before the performance with very open ended opinions. I think it went well and made the piece more all about the media rather than me. Finally, I was allowed to be the ‘mind’, the extra to the piece which is what I liked.

I will be truthful and say this was a first for me, to do a piece this artistic and abstract making was a big step but, discovering this side of theatre and performance was exhilarating and the freedom became a wonderful gift. To be able to create a piece for something I am very passionate about and express it and bring it to the table but not by throwing words into people’s mouths. There has been too much of that already.

I wanted that human to human connection as “we judge the limits of human endurance [and] value experience” (Birringer, 1998, 12) so this is an experience to see where we can push the limits with what is acceptable to perform and how to act as human in real life. I wanted to show “the ‘truth’ or ‘identity’ dominant culture” (Birringer, 1998, 16) as when this ‘truth’ and ‘identity’ is focused onto the audience, like in the journal article of Solo in Soho: The Performer Alone by John Howell whereby in the 70s, performance art “flourished in an atmosphere where the focus is on the audience” (Howell, 1979, 153); this is a quote from a piece where the interaction is hands on communication with the audience. My performance is communicating with the audience mentally through their imagination as a “performance earns the disdain of audiences wishing to be entertained or satisficed in terms of their analytic desires” (Birringer, 1998, 12). I wanted to keep the audience interacting with me with the openness and freedom of expression of their minds.

I feel this quote says a lot about my performance,

“if we observe how contemporary performance art,…derives their energy from direct experimental knowledge of bodily sensation or privation and how they transmit perception of sanctioned violence, discrimination and social deprivation in the body of politics through increased physical brutality on stage”

(Birringer, 1998, 15)

For me this quote shows exactly why I chose to do performance art instead of something which is autobiographical where all feelings, evidence, experiences and interpretation can be in one safe place; where nothing goes wrong and the audience have time to think on the matter and decide what side they can be on or not. It is time to reflect on what the world has given us and how to handle it through the mind of the audience.

The soundscape I felt went well as it was the first time I have ever edited audio together with the software called Audacity. Where I recorded YouTube clips such as:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yRenBc_Zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL51Tsh6Sdg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF0twf3u5wA

I used the style of a 1930s radio show to present the soundscape of the mixture of media to make it a bit light hearted and show how backwards and right winged the Tories are acting when it comes to a very 21st century problem. I feel that they need to get with the times and actually look up and take a big long view on what they are doing to the next generation as it is they who will step into their shoes in 5 years time or so; as “process-art are perhaps crucial at a point in history where state institutions can no longer guarantee economic and political integrations” (Birringer, 1998, 18). When I was putting the soundscape together I started to understand even more why it was important to use different media as this is what ‘millennials’ are always in contact with ie smart phones, apple watches, tablets etc. As these make it easy to access reports, hopefully, some of the audio will have been heard by the audience beforehand so they can experience it again and second question and analyse the topic better.

So this is what I felt about my performance experience of the piece.

 

 

 

Evaluation

What I liked?

  • Finally performing it
  • Having the set as dramatic and artistic than I thought it was going to be.
  • Finally cutting the string after practising without it.
  • Hearing great feedback as well as constructive criticism from my peers.

What to improve on?

I feel I need to use levels in the piece because there wasn’t any definition in it whatsoever. I needed to be “sensitive to the dramatic rhythm which is established” (Lecoq, 2000, 31) in every performance. I felt like I didn’t listen to the area and my body so the performance didn’t show enough depth with the contact of the space and the performer. Next time I must play with the idea of expanding out of the alcove into a bigger space or just practise with the framing and string then without it.

My opinions on the piece need to be clearer I felt, and I was disappointed within myself that I didn’t put enough courage into stating the opinions or sayings of the ‘mind’ I was stuck in as “words are approached through verbs, bearers of action, and through nouns which represent a designated object” (Lecoq, 2000, 50). So, if I was going to say it, I needed to say it with all my body and not half-heartedly.

The feedback from the audience and luckily it was my target audience, was positive; they liked it and thought it was inspirational and uplifting to see a performance about the current issues in such an abstract way. They said it felt as though they were in a mind and it was easily interpreted and open to change and that their issues came through it. Most of them felt it needed more vocal interaction from me which I agreed with and, the performance needs to expand or I must find something to do with the space used.

 

Overall, I felt as though this experience of working with me was very challenging but rewarding to see a performance devised entirely by myself. I may carry on with this concept and develop it in the future as I think it will me great to see it go further.

As it is all about ‘Mind over Matter’

 

IMG_4118

 

 

Work cited:

Birringer, J (1998) Media and Performance: Along the border. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Bruno, S. and Dixon, L. (2015) Creating Solo Performance. London: Routledge

Howell, J (1979) Solo in Soho: The Performer Alone. Performing Arts Journal, 4 (1/2) 152-158.

Lecoq, J. (2000) The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre. 3rd edition. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Media.

Soundscape replaced The Script

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I have tried and tried to get a script done for this piece and here is an example:

 

  Characters: Young Adult (Y.A.) and Subconscious

Starts with Blackout

Voice-over

Ramble of voices starts and the voices fade in the dominant one.

Fade in for the dominant one and a fade out for the soundscape of other thoughts.

 Lights fade up and Young Adult looks around and sees they are trapped and struggles to be set free. They are not successful.

 

Y.A.  (moaning) What am I doing? I have nowhere to go; no potential future prospects, no balance in my life.

Nooothing, nothing….. 

Exhales with disbelief

What am I doing? Where is the trust in my life and in other young adults like me?

Silence

Anguish sets in with a slight feeling of regret.

What am I doing?! I keep moaning and moaning about not doing anything when I should be looking for something!

Urghhhhhhh!

I feel I am in some sort of paradox or in limbo.

So many people say to me don’t worry you’re fine, you’re not dead, and nothing scary has happened it’s all in your own mind.

It’s not…. others like me are thinking the same…

Cue in reports on young millennials’ thoughts and feelings which get louder in the mind, so uncomfortably louder that the young adult has to breathe in heavily to stop their anxiety. 

Exhales

Just be calm, calm (breathes out) just contemplate your thoughts and do some tidying up.

Coughs, goes back to tranquillity mode.

Closes their eyes and breathes in….

Sound of the ocean starts to fade in

When they breathe out they open their eyes quickly and say…

Let’s do it…

They start to cut and, with every cut there is a specific news report or thought which causes a muffled background noise.

They talk their feelings.

I just want to sort myself out; my anxiety levels have risen because of this specific reason. There are no views for someone like me, no one to give me a chance to learn and experience so I can make my future bright and those people like me and people who will follow after me!  Everything will be fine after this… all I need is some TLC; tender loving care for my own sanity.

Y.A. looks around in disbelief and struggles yet again to break free but unsuccessfully.

Silence

Looks around, uncertain that they maybe in that scenario

They get themselves out of the chair, look around in disbelief as the muffled sound continues to get stronger until it is unbearable!

The young adult cannot stand it anymore! (Voice over is done,  time for their voice to be heard.

 

Y.A: SSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

Rambles carry on for about 2 seconds then the young adult shakes it off and then concentrates. Fades out

Mind state fragmented thoughts carry on but they start to snip the string a voice carries on.

I am going to this my way no other fuckers are going to help me!

People say to me you’ll get there you always will.

Yes, maybe,  but others like me won’t; they will be suppressed until they fit in to some stupid, fucking cubical working in a dead end office job just so they can survive!

SURVIVE! No experience of life and actually living life, just surviving, that’s not what life is about.

The government have been playing with us ‘young people’ for far too long; it all started in 2012!

 

This was when the cost of degrees went up, sky rocketed up past the moon and through the stars into the arse hole of David Cameron with his accomplice George Osbourne. 

A reporter in the Guardian newspaper wrote “George Osborne’s budgets have left young Britons with mounting student debt, depleted housing benefits, and cuts to youth employment and wage support”.

This was from a man who made us believe there were no strings attached because he wanted to make a stronger, secure and safer Britain; bull shit!!.

There is no balance whatsoever in this world, and I know it’s not just my age group that feels it but for every living thing on this planet.

It all started from around the time I was 11; this is when you start to grow up and become more aware of the news and understand what the world is all about for the first time. This is when you come out of that childhood bubble that was so abruptly burst that you couldn’t manage to take it all in!  

There is no balance.

No balance

Balance no

Balance no

No balance

The sound comes back of new reports etc. they push it away through physical theatre.

So this mind is a palace, so why is it corrupted?

It needs to get stronger, more efficient and capable to survive

Because us millennials need to have a better understanding of the worked and the world needs to better understand us.

So the first thing I need to do it is, to cut the strings that have surreptitiously attached themselves to me.

The young adult starts to cut the prison of string and rope and tries to untangle themselves

Whilst this happens, the music and the reports slowly go away.

 ‘Mind over matter’ which means the use of will power to overcome physical problems.

 

For me this just didn’t fit into what I wanted to do. I felt like I was putting words into the audience’s mouth and like I said in my Non-narrative blog, I want people to interpret it with as much freedom as possible and let them have a unique time when watching the performance.

So, I thought how can I keep the piece immersive and interesting for the audience and that’s when I thought of my time in the studio when I rabbled on about my feelings about the way young adults are being treated by the government etc.  I viewed a number of news clips on the topics on YouTube and just spoke in the space. That’s when my emotional pathway came through the most and as I felt more into the whole situation, I became immersed in it all and re-experienced the news clips again for a second time. That was very raw for me and I wanted my audience to have the same experience.

Once my final decision was made, I started working on my soundscape which was going to run for the entire performance; I worked on it for two weeks straight.

and here it is:

Whilst going through this process I looked at the Creating Solo Performance book again and found a section called ‘Approaching Technology’  and I found some of the introduction very useful before I started working on my soundscape.

There was a section in the introduction that caught my eye and I feel as though it speaks for itself:

“These… performers, designers and artisans who, through a blend of technical ingenuity, skill, story and stagecraft, created shows that brought the audience into a world where the ordinary became extraordinary”

(Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 149)

This is what I want to get a sense of in my performance when all the bits and pieces such as the set and soundscape all come together. This is the goal.

 

 

I want the audience to be overwhelmed by the way in which my piece expresses the negative feelings of the topic; this negativity will bounce off and cancel itself out if the audience feel they can change and fight the situation. This will show how “the performer’s role was to deny the illusion was taking place, to present the illusion a reality” (Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 149). so the audience can empathise with our predicament and treatment by the government as well as the financial millstone we have round our necks as we enter the employment arena.  Another thing I found interesting was that, as a performer, I have the freedom to “bring the audience into the world of your story, amplify the mood or even deliver exposition” (Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 150); this excited me so I can be as dramatic as possible in order to get the audience to face facts about our current situation .

I carried on reading the book and stumbled on a section on soundscapes.

This section is basically telling you to engross the audience and capture their imaginations as well as in my case, their memories of the past and its issues such as youth employment, recession, student loans etc. This was great as the first line I read was “use sound to provide your audience with specific details of story, character or their world” (Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 153). This is my aim.

My main encouraging quote from this section is:

“Radio news broadcasts, commercials, public address announcements…provide the audience with information that might help them better understand the world of your performance” (Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 153)

Keeping this quote in mind I answered the question from the section:

When do the audience begin to experience the sound scape?

Straight away and then for the whole duration of the piece as the sound scape is the main focus and, with the help of the set’s imagery, I hope the audience will interpret it for themselves.

What does your soundscape reveal to the audience about your performance, the world of your performance and your character?

Honesty, truth, stress relief, pin pointing out the obvious, highlighting the troubling areas and trust, safe place to feel angry with the scenarios. Hopefully after watching it, the spectator starts to feel good as if it were stress therapy to see the same frustrations and anger performed for them.

Work cited:  Bruno, S. and Dixon, L. (2015) Creating Solo Performance. London: Routledge.

Influence: Nerve Endings/ Brain and Emotion theory

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I have had this design in my head after meeting up in April with my tutor and with Darren but I felt it needed improving before introducing it to you in my blog but something has convinced me to keep it.

This is my final set design:


 IMG_4072

It got me thinking how I could portray young adults and the problems we are facing which create a constant battle in our minds as well as the rest of the world. Using the alcove will hopefully make the work immersive with the limited space used and having the audience close up to the alcove will make it intimate. I designed the set to be a representation of a mind whereby the entanglement of string and rope represents the idea of being trapped and restricted in many ways such as job prospects, debt, trust etc. The use of scattered paper will represent the media, contracts (student loans), laws and government documents. The vertical rope on the outside symbolises bars which should make the audience think of  being restricted and confined and forced into having to struggle forever as an adult.

What sprung to mind when I drew this out was that the rope reminded me of the connection between the neurons and electros in the brain (the only thing I found interesting in science) for example:

neurons

This reminded me of my first initial design:

The idea

The connection of the rope reminds me of the picture above and this links perfectly into my idea of the brain. I have researched into how the brain works on developing and portraying emotion which will work in my piece well.

I just searched  Google for ‘brain nerve endings’ and this is what I came up with…

“Those are called emotions. The brain does not have sensory nerve endings, because it has to process the feelings in your body. Emotions are cognitive responses to sensory stimuli after they have been processed.”

(Qoura.com, 2016)

I knew from this that I was on the right track and took from it the sentences marked in bold. It has given me an idea on how to portray my own acting in the piece and the way to perform using body movement. I am considering using the works of Lecoq in my piece to show the connections of the emotions triggering in the brain as it stores it by physicalizing it in the use of lights and body movement.

I started to research a little further into ‘how emotions work in the brain?’ as this will help with the development of the style of movement, sound and lighting.

I found 2 websites that were useful to portray my non-narrative piece.

  1. howstuffworks.com
  2. sciencemuseum.org.uk

The first one I went to was the science museum to get a basic idea of the brain and all its glory.

This next section will be quotes and then short clear notes at end of the section, so as the creator I want to keep it simple in description to  help with the process of the piece.

 

Science museum

The Senses:

“You use your senses together information about the outside world.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“All these sensations are changed in electrical signals and carried to your brain which them puts all the information together to produce the whole picture.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

 

What is consciousness?

“Consciousness has been described as ‘awareness of oneself embedded in the world.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“Your self-reflective awareness defines you in the context of society, culture and history”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“Many neuroscientists think consciousness emerges from the activities of our tangled network of neurons”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

Which are of your brain controls emotions?

“The neurons in your hippocampus play a role in emotions”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

Science.howstuffworks.com

5 ways your brain influences your emotions

“A lot is going on inside your hand, and your brain and its complex processes are even manipulating your emotions”

(Uttley, 2016)

“Much is involved in interpreting emotional circumstances and crating your responses to them, and how you feel and how you respond to these feelings in ways you’re probably not even aware of.”

(Uttley, 2016)

“Part of the brains information- processing network includes neurons or cells that transmit signals throughout the brain.”

(Uttley, 2016)

 

What I learned from all this information  is that the emotions in the brain bundle up and form links with certain memories; this then becomes a continuation of when you experience a certain memory, the memory you experienced with it will be there when you use that emotion with a new experience in life.

Taking the idea that the bundle of memories causes the reaction emotions that are the “awareness of oneself embedded in the world” (Science Museum, 2016) will help with my attitude and style on how to present my performance.

Here is a video I also found useful as well:

(Sentis, 2012)

 

Work cited:

Science Museum (2016) Who am I? Your Brain. London: Science Museum. Available from:  http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/findoutmore/yourbrain  [accessed 7 May 2016].

Sentis (2012) Emotions and the Brain. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNY0AAUtH3g  [accessed 7 May 2016].

Uttley, C (2016) 5 Ways Your Brain Influences Your Emotions. USA: How Stuff works. Available from:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/5-ways-your-brain-influences-your-emotions.htm [accessed 7 May 2016].

Quora (2016|) Does the human brain have nerve endings and senses in it?  USA: Quora. Available from: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-human-brain-have-nerve-endings-and-senses-in-it [accessed 7 May 2016].

Talking within the Space

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I felt this exercise was a great release when creating the content of my performance. I just walked around the studio with a mic in one hand and a microphone in the other, then just talked out my feelings and opinions whilst I put as many YouTube videos up with news reports and political conventions etc. as possible. Doing this helped me understand the pressure of the media when talking truthfully; I feel I did a great job and it gave a strong atmospheric feel to my piece.

This is a snippet of what I got:

I did a mind map of all the issues of what young adults are going through and how they are affected by them. This was a great stimulant and helped me to speak my mind in my rehearsal and experiment how best  to express the issue.

mind map

I felt free when I was in an empty space and had nothing in my way to stop me saying what I wanted to say. It became a self-evaluation process on my feelings about the whole issue of how young adults are treated by government and the public. By doing this, I got some ideas on how to approach my non-narrative performance as the content is strong when you are talking to no one in an empty space; it reflects the mind palace idea. All I need to so is to refine what I have spoken in the space because there is about 20 mins of material.

The most favourite thing I said was “my mind is clouded with all these strings that are attached.”

I felt this spoke to me as it linked well with the design of my set which is styled with rope and, is going to be put into the alcove of studio 2 in Lincoln Performing Arts Centre.

Playing in the Space

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I had Bob Dylan, the the self-righteous voice of his generation playing in the background during the session to inspire some ‘beat the system’ vibes.

 

What did I have with me?

Rope: To show entrapment, restraints, ‘no strings attached’ and obstacles.

String: Tedious, hard to work with, represents the little niggles in life, the things you don’t look for and more obstacles.

Chair: used daily for rest, support, working, schooling, leisure

Table: to eat at, place items on, dinner time,

Scissors: represents a way to release oneself from the situations of today, rewriting the saying  ‘one step at a time’ to ‘one snip at a time’.

Paper: represents constant debt, bills and loans in the mail, media becoming overwhelming and getting everywhere.

 

What did I do with the space?

IMG_3870

 

IMG_3871

I just played around with the rope and let it go where it fell on the chair and it turned out to look like a spider’s web.

So I thought what a spider’s web means to me:

  1. Strong
  2. Attachment
  3. Resourceful
  4. Entrapment
  5. Silky
  6. Invisible
  7. Beautiful
  8. Entangling
  9. Stuck
  10. Versatile
  11. Delicate
  12. Sustainability

These words relate to the good and the bad of what a young adult can be and do if given the chance.

The piece shows there is a problem to be solved and when you accidentally walk into a spider’s web your instinctive response is to get the heck out of it! So that’s what I felt when performing in the space with the entangled rope and string around me. I felt very pressured to get out especially as initially I went a little crazy with the string whilst wrapping it around me and the chair; this caused me to panic and feel a little claustrophobic with the mess I had got myself into. This was in fact, a blessing in disguise as it became the development of the beginning of my piece. I remember the feeling of anxiety and being trapped when the news of the increased rate of student loans came out in 2010. By remembering this reaction, I had an intuitive response to help the audience and myself understand that feeling of anxiety by transforming it into a physical representation and, to make the message clear, I will produce a new report soundscape.

By the way,with the chairs and tables, my first thoughts were that it resembled a ‘mind palace’ ; this term is used in the popular BBC drama Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The origins of the ‘mind palace’ came from Cicero who called it the “Method of Loci” (Sachs, 2016) this is “the journey method” (Sachs, 2016) through the memory by training it.

 

This method “was invented more than 2000 years ago” (Sachs, 2016) and was used by the Greeks as well as the Romans “to memorize and give speeches that could last for hours” (Sachs, 2016). It worked because the speaker “mentally placed the key points of their speech in locations along a familiar route through their city or palace” (Sachs, 2016) so they can visualise the particular place and remember the relationship to the point that they travelled to. They went through their mind palace as though it is a treasure hunt of sorts, “and in each location retrieved the item representing the next key point they wanted to talk about” (Sachs, 2016).

 

IMG_3884

 

My piece will represent a very messed up, disorganised and confused mind that needs a good tidy up so it can have a fresh start on everything that is happening. By applying the ‘Method of Loci’ my piece will have this sort of ‘treasure hunt’ idea by exploring the news and events that have changed the lives of young adults in the UK.

Work cited: Sachs, H. (2016) Memory Palaces and the Method of Loci. [online]  Germany: remebereverything.org. Available from: http://remembereverything.org/memory-palace-the-method-of-loci/ [Accessed on 15 April 2016].