Category: Final Piece

Thirty – The Performance

The final piece was performed  on Thursday 17th May 2012, Studio 2 19:00.

On the morning of the performance the atmosphere in the group was positive, personally I felt that we were extremely prepared and could not have done anymore. Only performing would take this  piece to the next stage. We set up with plenty of time to spare, experimenting with lighting and the projections. Previously we had discussed where to seat the audience, if at all. We had an immigration statistic and would transport the audience  around the studio, representing the statistic. After pursuing this in the work in progress we felt that it over complicated matters and was unnecessary. Therefore deciding  on seating the audience in straight rows so that they could simply view the statistics. Another point which caused us trouble was who we were in relation to the audience and the performance,  after numerous discussions on this we agreed that we were scientists/researchers, displaying statistics for others to interpret and absorb.

 

As the performance began we all suddenly felt apprehensive and overwhelmed, the tasks we had discussed for weeks were about to began. Although we had rehearsed for 15 minutes we had nrver done a full 30 minutes, looking back, a bad choice. As the perfomance took its course it became apparent very quickly that we dis not have enough time to complete all the tasks. Half way through I could feel the audience really connect and will us on, becoming emotionally connected to us as performers which I did not expect.  Almost wanting to give the tasks to the audience to help, like a life or death situation. As actors we were so focused and I think that this completely drew the audience in, using the silence of the room to heighten and exaggerate emotions within the room. Personally, as the time ran out the pressure mixed with the amount of water and beer became unbearable, questioning our stamina as actors. The time ran out and tasks were uncompleted, this had never happened before. I didn’t know how the other performers or audience would react to this, had we failed? I didn’t think we had, we successfully did what we set out to do, represent statistics.

This experience has been completely new to me and I have enjoyed being a part of a new performance style. I have learnt not to over complicate things when devising theatre. I still standby our choice not to rehearse these tasks repeatedly, the honestness of them would have disappeared, thus causing us to ‘perform’ rather than undertake challenges. We accomplished what we set out to do as a team, working together throughout.

Thirty – The Tour??

In our feedback we were asked how we might develop the piece, for a tour, perhaps.
We knew that we needed to refine the piece, simplify it, perhaps concentrating on less statistics more boldly.
I suggested that perhaps we could create new pieces on different themes. This way, there could be a running motif throughout the entire piece.
This then prompted me to think about using the piece for a tour around the UK. Every time the piece moved to a different city it would use statistics about that particular place. This way the piece would change every time and also be relevant to its audience. Statistics could include:

  • Crime rates
  • Population/births/deaths
  • Sales in items in shops

I really like this idea; to create a new show in every city.
Thirty – Lincoln
Thirty – Manchester
Thirty – Ipswich
Thirty – Paris

Final Performance – Kirsty

Our final performance of ‘Thirty’ was yesterday (17th May 2012) to a sold out audience in Studio 2 of the LPAC.

All I can start by saying is that I feel we definitely underestimated the task at hand. On previous runs of the task, we had never fully run the whole 30minutes with all of the tasks involved. The most we had test run before was 15minutes and we definitely and unfortunately felt the negative effects of being so blase about being able to do double of that, “no problem!” After around 20 minutes I began to feel full from the epic amounts of water we were consuming, this was also being accompanied by a pint of Carlsberg! And there was still another 10 minutes to endure. Not to mention on top of this another performer was also consuming the same amount of water as the other performers but then also eating 18 slices of pizza. To echo one of my colleagues ” Thirty became a test of our stamina as performers” and it really did. We did not
It became clear at around 20 minutes past the hour that we may not finish our own set tasks. Therefore we had an unspoken set rule that between us we would share out the tasks we felt we would be unable to complete. This was proven true when at one stage I felt like I could not physically drink any more fluids be it water or the pint of Carlsberg. So I passed these on to Charlotte who, hates beer, but managed to drink some to assist me. Gemma ending up assisting Marc with his pizza and Sammi ended up helping blow up the balloons also. The end of the performance culminated in a manic free for all, with all performers fanatically trying to complete the set tasks in the allotted time. Afterward we discovered from some audience members that they like the frantic ending and were willing us on to finish. We even had some feedback from one audience member saying they wanted to get up and help us. We did initially discuss giving things out to the audience if it got too much, but the idea did not make it to the final stages.ultimately set out to perform an endurance task, but this is what I feel it became.

A constant throughout our rehearsal process was the argument with ourselves on how to reveal the statistics. Some times we thought we sound just tell the audience, either have them on the walls of the studio, in envelopes for the audience to read out and even written on ourselves. The idea that we finally came up with was to include them within a statistic, within the performance. The statistic about speaking (please see blog post entitled ‘Talking Words’. Link: https://mmpgrouptwo2012.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2012/03/19/talking-words/) gave us all 90 words each to say throughout the piece.

We decided to write down all of the statistics and cut each word out, mix them up and randomly pull out words. this gave us our 90 words. We ended up speaking what sounded like gibberish. The paragraph below is the words I spoke during the performance.

Die 18 party every born gets destroyed Hermione every Dumbledore rainforest September drive every LMFAO’s 1 words married 2nd 70p a Hogwarts people harry the bar the it lost the wizardry every named wall water downloaded privet child 30 54 9 every minutes London a tower Amazon child underground illness minutes 50 27,000 students since minutes Lincoln every who student rock from times night hundred sat minutes school seconds 80,000 from couple in and cat minutes pints obesity on in  on not a dissertation minute gets every uk couple university

Unknown to the audience these were the statistics, just mixed up. In our post show discussion one of our tutors mentioned that She was able to decipher some of what we said and to relate them to the tasks we were doing. Of course, she knew what our performance was about but did not know each statistic word for word.

Overall, I worry that the audience realised that we were unable to complete the tasks and were disappointed with the performance in general. However from talking to some members of the audience, they did not necessarily realise that all tasks were supposed to be completed and were impressed in what we had accomplished. So therefore I think as a group, even with our own negative thoughts about the piece, we should be proud of what we have achieved.

Digital/Video/Analogue/Video

The use of projection in our piece had the primary function of displaying the time, to both the audience and the performers. I took on the responsibility of editing the video and sound used in the piece, with the other members of the group helping to collect the recorded video material.  By displaying the clock on the back wall of the ‘stage’ it gave the audience a means of feeling a sense of understanding about the piece; knowing that it was representing a period of time. the videos also acted as visual aids for us as performers, so we knew how long we had left to complete the tasks. The presence of the large read digital clock projection added an urgency to the piece. The clock start at 19.00 and the audience knew that the piece was called Thirty, they could assume that the piece would end at 19.30. As the clock reached closer and closer to 19.30, the piece became more frantic as mentioned in the blog post ‘Thirty-Performance’.

I really liked the red digital clock projection, as it maintained the clinical feel of the piece. If I could of, I would have spent more time on the second video; an analogue clock face; edited with  video of an egg boiling, and the cast being cover in water (representing a statistic about lost umbrellas). In the feedback, Lee Sass expressed that she would have liked these videos to have been more obvious, less fleeting as she kept missing their short appearance. I agree with this sentiment and if I were to make the videos again, I would have played them on separate screens highlighting each one more closely.

Although I did like the video in our piece, I was also very aware of the fact that the piece was NOT reliant on the use of it, which is an important part of multimedia performance. In order to combat this, perhaps a live or online element could have been utilised in the piece to make multimedia an integral part of the piece.

Here are some screen shots of the videos:

 

Advertising Images

For our advertising we designed a range of simple posters and stickers that we displayed around the LPAC. We wanted our show to be noticed but also wanted to use them as signals to the audience as to the nature of our piece. Each poster had a black background with large, centralised white text announcing:

THIRTY
Studio 2
17.05.12
7pm

The use of numbers rather than words for the date was a concious one, hinting to the clinical mathematical nature of the piece. On each poster also, the background was covered in small white text; each one stating a different statistic from the piece. Audience members had to seek out different poster around the building in order to learn all of the different statistics, something that we were told by audience members that they actually found quite interesting!!

As well as displaying the posters in conventional places around the LPAC, we also put them in ‘hidden’ or unexpected and unusual places. This was again to deepen the potential audience intrigue about the piece. It was also a nod to the fact that statistics surround us in our daily lives, whether we notice them or not. They do not control our live, because they ARE our lives. We are the statistics, whether acknowledge ourselves as part of them or not.

Here are some images of out marketing…

1 2 3 4