The sticks and stones of a performance.
I would be lying if I said that Solo Performance isn’t challenging. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t struggled to conceive and find various ways of executing an idea. But I would also be lying if I said that I hadn’t learnt anything, hadn’t felt it exhilarating to push myself and hadn’t enjoyed how ambiguous ‘performance art’ really is.
Nothing is 100% set in stone just yet but here are some details about my upcoming performance.
Name of performance: The little girl with her red balloons (there is always hope)
Duration of performance: Between 8-10 minutes.
Location of performance: On the University campus bridge between Engine Shed and The Library
Stimulus and style of performance: Banksy’s street art of the little girl and her red balloon. Autobiographical style with general references.
Details/what is happening within the performance:
Over the next few days I will be plastering this Banksy image around Uni campus. I want to do this because it may subtly stay in people’s conscious and maybe reminded of it if they see me performing on the bridge next week. They may make the connection between ‘those’ pictures they had been seeing on their way to lectures, with this real life ‘little girl and her red balloons’. By making the image resound in people’s heads who are not necessarily coming to watch my performance is something I find interesting. When I see powerful images, I think about them for a while and then they leave. It’s the way life works. You have something and then in time, it leaves. Maybe in a way, I want to recreate a similar reception to the image Banksy did when he first started graffiting it around Bristol.
The performance will start with my audience on the bridge facing towards the LPAC. The bridge is site specific in the way that it is seen as ‘a bridge of life’.. letting go of something only to start another journey across the bridge. The bridge will (hopefully, if I get permission from the SU) be covered in clique life quotes that some people seem to live their lives by. The juxtaposed reality from the dream many people live and the fact that it is the hard emotional trauma’s in life that make you grow as a person and not the life quotes that help you ‘get by’. I will be based in the LPAC with 30 red balloons. These balloons will represent emotions/memories/experiences/myself as a performer and as Shannon.. throughout the performance I will be letting these go in various ways, for different reasons.
As I run to the bridge, I turn when confronted by my audience and face the LPAC. To me, this building has given me laughs, confidence, potential, stress, depression, emotional anxiety and I want to show it what I am now, show what it has done to me, for good and for worse. Shouting at the building if it were a person, purging my emotions not just as Shannon Turnbull but as a typical Drama student in LSPA, a typical student of Lincoln, a typical student at university. I will then let some balloons go, I am unsure of how just yet but I feel that raw emotion will take over and influence what I will do next.
After facing that side of my life, I will take the audience to the other side of the bridge.. the side of the bridge that looks down into the water. I will leave them there and go round the barriers to just sit on the side, staring at the water. Staring at everything that could have been. I will still have the balloons and I feel that this position of leaving the audience and being solitary overlooking deep water contemplating if life would be the same if you were alive or not is powerful and quite challenging? I will draw upon personal experiences but I will also make the conscious effort to not make it a resounding project about me, myself and I. It will generalise and I will ask rhetorical questions to the audience. This may make them feel sympathy for me, this may make them feel uncomfortable as it will remind them of a part of their life they want to forget or it may not affect them at all. This shows that not everyone is the same and that many things can affect different people, in extremely different ways. There will be some references to my own family and my own experiences that I don’t want to push onto other people to believe. This are my views, no one else’s.
I will then turn and face the side of the bridge that holds the striking picture of the cathedral. Here I will recount happy memories of life, constantly referencing quotes appropriate for each story. This is where I will be graduating. This is where I will leave a little part of my heart in Lincoln. This is where life begins. Again, I will expose personal memories and use this as a main narrative however inside-jokes will not dominate as I would like my audience to be active not necessarily passive.
I am still unsure on how to end this piece but I feel my emotion will carry me to this point. This doesn’t mean I will improvise but a lot of my stories and intentions are built up on my emotion and as pointed out in previous blog posts, my mood always dictates what I will end up doing. However I will end on this quote, ‘there is always hope’ – even though I will have been using these life quotations and dismissing them throughout my narrative, I will end on one. Maybe they do help people get through, maybe they have to be said by someone who truly knows what its like to lose something accidentally and unintentionally.. or by someone who has gained something. By letting all of your personal balloons go, gaining a sense of identity and clarity you are left with one little balloon, the balloon signifying who you are now and what you want to become.