Now that I had my stimulus material for a performance, the hard graft was about to start. I needed to come up with a performance that would express my personality, my experiences and my feelings as well as performing a piece applicable to the audience themselves.
Looking at different practitioners helped in my understanding of how Solo Performance can vary. Some performers were autobiographical, some expressed their material through music and song, others were using the human body to convey their stories.
I researched into Spalding Gray and his production of Swimming to Cambodia. This performance would be entirely made up of Gray’s own personal experiences when travelling in Cambodia communicated via a lengthy, stimulating monologue. “It might be asserted that in some cases the monologue form is ‘essential’ story-telling, a stripping away of dramatic illusion” (Wallace 1999, p.6). Having the ability to perform what is in essence and looks like a ‘stream of consciousness’ is something I wanted to explore, however my life experiences are interesting enough to captivate audiences attentions for a lengthy period of time. It wasn’t about the stories I guess, it was the way in which I could embody and illustrate them that would be entertaining. Spalding Gray “wanted to explore ‘the other inside of [himself], the constant witness, the constant consciousness” (Terry 2005, p.3), the weariness of himself and his actions through trying to capture a ‘perfect moment’ was the leading through-line to his performance. Seen as a confessional performance style, Solo Performance enables whatever may be happening privately in your life to become public and of knowledge. However Gray had the capability to focus his audience on the rhythm of his prose, he didn’t need an extreme set, just a desk, a book and his voice.
Solo Performance to me, captures two degrees of a person. The performing body; there to entertain as a object of gratification but also as a personal body; the way in which personal stories are used and how they have an individual way of telling them. Gray comments that he “begins to wonder if in the act of confessing his ‘real’ self, he is not subjecting the ‘real’ to regulation by the expectations of the audience” (cited in Terry 2005, p.53). There is an integral step to Solo Performance that invites an exaggerated truth. However whatever exaggerations Gray might put into his stories they are also based on essential truths about him.
My performance will ultimately be a monologue but I would to like to refrain from Spalding’s position. I will incorporate movement and try to embody/react to my stories and the emotions that come with them.
Laurie Anderson was an experimental artist that explored different technological ways to present her work. Through song, lyrics, rhythm, tone, visual projections, her work was conveyed artistically and interestingly. Although her work does not convey autobiographical stories from the outset, her preferred medium of technology infuses her stories.
WORKS CITED:
Anderson, Laurie (1981) O Superman, Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIqA3i2zQw (accessed 29th April 2013).
Gray, Spalding (1985) Swimming to Cambodia – Part 1, Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCGmra0eFQk (accessed 29th April 2013).
Terry, David Price (2005) ‘Spalding Gray and the Slippery Slope of Confessional Performance’, A Master Thesis, USA: The Department of Communication Studies, Louisiana State University.
Wallace, Clare (1999) Monologue Theatre, Solo Performance and Self as Spectacle, Online: http://litteraria.ff.cuni.cz/books/extracts/monologues_intro.pdf (accessed 29th April 2013).