Chris
Chris Bannerman (http://www.mdx.ac.uk/rescen) dropped in on the 20th August (yesterday) acting in a mentoring role. It was invaluable (at this stage) to have someone to push our ideas/thinking/actions onto. It reminded me of the great potential for isolation in the studio … ironic given Colin and my interest/focus on what and how audiences see.
These are some notes from our chat after Colin and I had shown a small section of material.
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Clarifying what we mean by ‘responsbility through viewing’
Are we asking the audience to be more than receptive?
Do we tell them who we are? (later, earlier). I thought, given the ‘mediated through Colin’ way I open the text in the material that my saying “I am Simon, and this is Colin” would be a little ambiguous anyway … a little like Morecombe and Wise (but probably not as funny).
Chris talked of a different set of performance codes going from ‘introduction’ to the ‘channel’ physical work on the left hand side.
What of referring to the difficulty of the audience’s task? “You may be finding this difficult”
The feeling of ‘they have chosen me out of this group’ - when being looked at directly by performers.
Allay fear of audience participation.
Talked of ritualisation of opening text/looking.
The audience has the option to frame us (when no technology involved).
Talked of ‘sensitising the space’ to what is about to happen, and what is happening.
Colin: “How neutral can your power be?”
How problematic can our relationship be?
How problematic can the audience’s viewing be?
Our job is to create the conditions for them to take up the ‘offer’.
What makes a choice/constraint a responsibility?
Making choices matter.
Something about this depends on me watching (in this way).
How can we make the looking matter?
The power of gaze.
Negotiation of power relationships including the audience.
“You can look at both of us now” - before belt?
It could create more problems than solutions (the work that is).
Our experience together - in concrete terms.
Building this into the looking.
Grounded in this experience we are having.
Chris: “about text and visual” - gaze, iamge, movement, text.
Body language - only 5% of how we relate UNTIL it doesn’t match with what is being said - then it matters a lot. The incongruency is critical.
We spoke of ordering - of how images cause audiences to revise what they have seen (curious about operation of memory in this).
Chris: “aesthetics of absence”
There is a game here - in paying attention, in concentration, in risking missing so much because of what might be seen. We can’t see it all.
“rupture”, or “door opening” … with belt scene.
How to make our performance depend on their viewing?
The viewer doesn’t need it - but what if we can develop the idea that they need it … ?
It would be a shame if they couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
Our relationship with audience, our relationship with each other.
Phew. Long post.
