Category: Tasks

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.

Thirty – The Performance.

Last night we finally performed Thirty for the first time. I say the first time, as we had never rehearsed it at it’s full length. A decision which had both its pro’s and con’s. I feel that the piece strives on spontaneity and the performers being challenged for real. If we had rehearsed the eating of the pizza or the drinking of the water, we would of had time to prepare ourselves for the effects they had on us. Thus, I believe creating an unauthentic performance. I am fascinated by the concept of performers having to partake in some ‘for real’ in order to make the performance as realistic as possible. We never ‘acted’ the drinking of the water, we actually did it. The discomfort and panic on our faces, as we raced toward the end of the piece were real. This can be likened to the work of many contemporary and solo performers, such as Marina Abramovic. Abramovic endures real pain and exhaustion in her endurance pieces; she never ‘acts’; but performs a task to her audience. Sometimes the tasks that she undertakes are incredibly simple, such as eating an onion. As task that is much more difficult than it may seem!! Please see this video from 2.12 to see an example of this at work…

 

It was in the last 10 minutes of the performance that I felt the relationship between myself as a performer and the audience. For the first twenty minutes, the audience had sat and watched us perform our monotonous tasks. Twenty minutes into the performance, I became aware of just how much of the tasks we had left to complete. I felt a strong sensation of frustration with myself, for not having snapped enough cocktail sticks and began to share them between the other performers in order that we could attempt to get the task completed. Here, I felt a recognition from the audience that I was panicking, they suddenly realised that the point of the piece was for us to complete all of the tasks. As I forced my self to drink more and more water and beer, I could feel the audience willing me to continue. This was obviously completely a feeling that I felt in my own head, but I do believe that I made a connection with the audience. A reassuring laugh from them as I staggered with beer in one hand and pizza in the other, pushed me to continue.

To make a completely honest statement, I have to say that I am disappointed that we did not manage to complete all of the tasks, but this leads us to think of different ways in which we could refine and change the piece. Perhaps experimenting with one task at a time, would have been easier. To eat 18 slices of pizza each and for that to have been the whole performance, is something that I would like to try. My main concern about the piece once it has finished, was that I hoped the audience didn’t feel as if we had failed them. Of course, we did fail in completing all of the tasks; but in the feedback I have had from audience members they could see, feel and sense the amount of effort we were putting in and this compensated us not finishing.

Please read my further blog post, for notes on how I believe we could develop the piece.

Advertisement plan

Our Advertisement Plan:

To begin to strategise our advertising plan we had to consider the question of “who is the target audience? who uses, purchases, decides? Where is the audience?” (Farbey, 1998, p. 19). Once we can establish our target audience then we can design our types of advertisement.

Target Audience:

Our target audience will be  students at the University of Lincoln, tutors that teach them and the people of Lincoln City.  Therefore this will effect where and how we advertise for our performance.

Where To Advertise And The Types Of Advertising Implemented:

The types of advertising that we agreed to use where as follows:

  • Posters.
  • Stickers (for coffee stirrers and ‘coffee cup advertising’).
  • Word of mouth.
  • Previous performances.

The locations for these types of advertising will be where our target audience will be from Monday 14th May onwards such as the LPAC and around Lincoln city. The justification of these locations are that 3rd year Drama students and lecturers are in the LPAC this week either performing or watching performances, furthermore students using the library for revision purposes use the LPAC cafe for refreshments. This will potentially give us a vast range of audience members to watch our performance.

As well as this, advertising our posters in various locations around Lincoln city such as high street shops will extend our range from those that are on campus to those not from the University.

The next step would be to design the posters and the stickers. The design of the poster was taken from my initial idea of a black background with white lettering stating our company name and behind this in white lettering will be numbers to represent our statistics. Improving on this was crucial because as Bryan Holme states in The art of advertising “the poster artist aims to achieve instant contact with the viewer, so the advertisers message- perhaps no more than a single word- hits them at first glance” (1985, p. 5). So what we developed was the writing on the poster so that someone would find it interesting enough to read it. So the new posters state in large white lettering THIRTY STUDIO 2 7PM 17. 5. 12 and behind this writing is one of our statistics copied multiple times to fill the poster. This will instigate curiosity in someone who sees our posters with them trying to make sense of what the statistic means in relation to our piece. Furthermore we produced posters with different statistics so those that see them will become even more curious and want to see our piece.

As well as posters we printed out stickers that state a statistic and information about our piece. With the help of the staff at cafe Zing in the LPAC we were able to stick a batch on some coffee stirrers and then the majority will be stuck on to coffee or tea cups by the cafe staff. This ‘coffee cup advertisement’ works well as this will lead to conversations about what our performance could be about and therefore creating a snowball effect of conversation and interest for our piece.

One problem with the posters is where to place them in the LPAC because the “advertisement can suffer from its surroundings, from ad’s with conflicting messages and aesthetics” (1985, p. 5) in that there are a lot of other posters around the LPAC advertising both students performances and professional performances. To tackle this we put up over twenty posters across all three floors of the LPAC including the cafe area, main doors into the building, faculty door and most of the studio doors.

Our advertisement campaign has already been given great feedback from staff and students alike in the way we have designed our posters to encourage curiosity from our target audience. We are confident that our simple yet effective way of advertising will help us to achieve the high number of audience members that we want.

 

Farbey, A (1998) How to produce successful advertising: A guide to strategy, planning and targeting. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Holme, B (1985) The art of advertising. London: Peerage Books.

“Hidden Statistic”?

We decided to hold a fifteen minute work-in-progress of our performance on the 19th April, in order to gage how an audience would respond to its different elements. Primarily we were looking for feedback on:

  • the layout and configuration of the space.
  • the way we should ‘reveal’ the statistics if, in fact, we do reveal them.
  • who they believed we were in relation to them, the piece and each other.

I felt that the work-in-progress was extremely useful in helping us develop the piece. Without the audience’s feedback, I fear that our final piece would not have been challenged and stretched to its full potential.

My biggest concern about our piece that came from the feedback is the use of technology in the piece.  We were  alerted to the fact that our piece is not truly a piece of ‘intermedia’ because the live performance could stand alone from the technology we used and would still make sense. In order to improve and validate our piece as ‘intermedia’ we have to ensure that our use of technology is integral to it. One of the suggestions we were given regarding this eas to magnify some of the more detailed tasks we undertake, such as snapping the cocktail sticks, by filming them and projected them live onto a large screen.

Expanding from this idea we came up with the notion of the ‘Hidden Statistic’. One of the tasks takes place behind a large screen, hidden from the audience. The live video image of it is projected onto the front of the screen so that the audience can see it. Perhaps this could be taboo statistic, one that is often kept quiet by Governments or glazed over.

Fellow group members: Any ideas on what this hidden statistic could be??

Sound Track.

We have set ourselves that challenge of doing this performance without any vocal communication between us. Also, we have given ourselves so many tasks to do simultaneously that it would be difficult for us to keep track of all of the different timings. To combat this problem, I have been undertaking the task of creating a soundtrack which plays different noises to signal the different tasks to be performed. The  track I have attached to this post is the one that we will using in the 15 minute work-in-progress that we are performing on the 19/04/12 in Studio 2. We will listen the sound track through a few times first to get into the rhythm of it and become familiar with the sounds. Following that we will throw ourselves into the full 15 minute piece, as I believe there is no better way to develop this piece than to do it.

The sounds featured in this soundtrack are as follows:

  • Beep – One performer drinks cup of water.
  • Two beeps -One performer drinks a cup of water and one performer blows up a balloon.
  • Three notes played on an organ – One performer ties a knot in a piece of ribbon.
  • Sound of ripping cloth – One performer cuts the ribbon.

For the current sound track I chose noises that are relevant to task that they prompt. This way it makes it easier for the performers to recognise the sounds and what task they have to do. This is all subject to change, depending on the feedback that we get from today’s work in progress.

The track can be heard here: 15 minute WIP

1 2 3