The world in the life of Shannon.
My Performance Space.
After exploring bridges in Lincoln City centre, I am 100% set on using the University campus bridge as my location of performance. Here are some pictures I have taken of my performance space to initially show proximity. All sides are documented. (facing LPAC, water, cathedral, Business & Law building, etc).
WORKS CITED:
Pictures are all taken from my iPhone on 11/05/13. Copyrighted to Shannon Turnbull.
My performance is site specific in which I am performing on a bridge relevant to the subtext of my performance. This bridge is the main University campus bridge and is used every single day by not only students, lecturers and working people of the University, but also locals of Lincoln travelling to enjoy comedy at the LPAC or drinks at the Tower Bar, etc. I chose this space because it is symbolic, it helps people reach one destination from the other. We trust that it will not fall and collapse and we never stop think how important they are. Bridges are symbolic in the emotional aspects of our lives also often being quoted in ways that express anger, hope, desperation and moving on.
“Build a bridge and get the f**** over it”
“I hope we can move on and build bridges between us”
“I’m done. I’ve burnt my bridges with you”
“Bridge over troubled water”
I decided to have a look at different types of bridges around Lincoln, see what they do for people on a practical level and explore other potential space. I know my performance will be taking place on a specific bridge however I would like to explore and see if there is a better space for me to perform on. “Autobiographical performances that are site specific, double the dynamic of the real subject/performed character with the audience embodied experience of a particular geography that is likewise both real and performed” (Stephenson 2010, p.336).
These bridges are all architecturally individual in both appearance and construction, however Uni campus bridge fits best with regards to space, audience, location and duration of piece. I have received permission off the University’s Student Union and Health and Safety manager (Garry and Colin) to purchase some glass pens/chinographic pencils and write on the glass panels of the bridge. The writing will consist of life quotes, sprawled along, not in linear order or pretty pattern. I want to do this because it creates a striking image and symbolically represents our ‘bridge of life’ consisting of literal life quotes scrawled upon it. I will interact only slightly with the writing by smearing my hand across them in disgust, but I hope that the audience see’s my intentions. The life quotes follow you through your journey over a bridge, leaving one thing in search of another. What I find ironic about my choice of structure and narrative is, I live by life quotes. I like to live my life referring to them and will also cite them when talking or giving guidance to my friends. I am going to enjoy the fact that I turn them on their head and think negatively about them, I don’t want quotes to become a sort of religious bible people have to abide by where they preach to others in my performance, I want to show that those positive quotes can become negative and that major life events can influence your decision to believe in them. However, this is how I live my life and this distinguishes the difference between myself and ‘Shannon the performer’. I appreciate that Solo Performance allows such a dynamic and ambigous narrative of events.
WORKS CITED:
Stephenson, Jenn (2010) ‘Review of Deidre Heddon ‘Autobiography and Performance’ in Theatre Survey, Vol 51, pp:335-337.
Here are a selection of quotes I will be referring to in my narrative and that will also feature on the glass panels on the ‘bridge of life’. Some are famous, others well known and do not possess an author, some I have made up myself.
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.
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).