Tag: Charlotte Haythorne

Final Performance

We’ve just finished our final performance of ‘Thirty’ on the 17th of May 2012.

I personally feel very drained, which is ironic given the fact that we have just consumed copious amounts of water. I think ultimately we might have underestimated the task which we devised. In theory, eating eighteen slices of pizza seemed manageable, appealing even; and blowing 30 balloons seems like a walk in the park. However during the piece tonight it became clear that we had not anticipated how challenging this task would be. Thirty became a test of our stamina as performers.

In the post show discussion it was agreed that the rhythm of our piece changed as the time elapsed. What started off as a cool, calm collected ritual, then turned in to a manic dash towards the end of the time.  This was something we could not have anticipated, due to the fact that it couldn’t be rehearsed. Granted, we have held a couple of work in progress’, however we ultimately found that during those we rushed our task at the start. This left too much time at the end with very little happening. This probably prompted our relaxed approach at the start of the final piece.

It became clear that we would not be able to finish all of the tasks that we had set individually, therefore we began to help each other out. This added to the frantic end, with people taking on tasks that were not previously assigned to them. We were all working together to help each other complete the task. This was unspoken, we had used our word allowance within one of the tasks, therefore we had to communicate with just our bodies.
For example, there was one instance when Kirsty was struggling to drink her Carlsberg. She passed the glass to me (Admittedly I was rather confused) but then she tapped it to indicate that she was struggling. I then helped out by trying to drink some for her. Similarly other performers did this, Sammi finished the rest of Kirsty’s beer.  Gemma took pieces of Marc’s pizza, and Marc drank more water than he should have done. We worked as a team to complete as much as we humanly could.

In the post show discussion, Lee mentioned a performance entitled ‘As the World Tipped’.
Having viewed a clip, it becomes clear that the piece also deals with the presentation of statistics. The piece is on a much larger scale than ours, please find a clip below.

In hindsight I think this would have been good for our research, however it may have prompted us to over complicate our piece. What I think worked best about our piece was how simple it was. Yes, there were alot of tasks for us to perform, however ultimately it was on quite a small scale. The statistics that we dealt with were so large that they sometimes become difficult to comprehend, therefore we kept the piece on a small scale, magnifying much larger events.

 

Work In Progress #2

A couple of weeks ago we did another work in progress, and invited people to come and give us feedback on our work so far.
This proved very beneficial to us, as we were given constructive criticism with regards to improving the piece. For example, some audience members felt that the piece needed configuring better, in the sense that we needed to re-consider where the audience were.  We experimented with placing them in different boxes that were marked out with tape on the floor. This was done in an attempt to portray our statistic pertaining to immigrants.

However having considered this, we decided that was not very practical. Therefore we reconvened in an attempt to overcome small issues such as these. We planned another work in progress to demonstrate the changes we made. Please see the video of this below.

We decided to experiment by giving one individual to complete throughout the process, as well as drinking the water.
However having done this we have now decided that we feel it is best if we all complete all of the tasks, providing a sense of unity and reinforcing the fact that these statistics apply to everyone, taking place in a thirty minute time span.

Untitled from Charlotte Haythorne on Vimeo.

Having trialled doing one task at a time, we have decided that it negates the concept that these actions apply to everyone.

‘Grand Reveal’

After two presentations of our work in progress, we have been left asking how we should reveal the statistics to the audience.
The way it stands at the moment, we can either  reveal the premise of the piece during the event itself, (possibly through envelopes- containing the statistics which would be read out by audience members)

Or we could wait until the end, and have it as a ‘grand reveal’. I personally feel that this seems to have the largest impact upon the viewers, in the sense that what we are doing seems very monotonous and if being perfectly honest, random. This is until we reveal that the implications of the actions we have just been doing, and the meaning behind them. In both of our presentations this has caused a sense of shock from some of the viewers, almost as though what they have seen clicks into place, and they can begin to comprehend what they have just witnessed.

Another option was  to not give away anything at all. Let the audience leave questioning what they have just seen, and come to their own conclusions as to what it meant. One audience member seconded this, and questioned why we need to have a reveal. This was extremely interesting and gave us lots to think about- Particularly, what is our agenda for this piece. Is there even an agenda?

Audience feedback was very useful to us yesterday, for example, one of our facts regards how many words on average a person will speak during one day (Please see Kirsty’s blog post) One audience member suggested that we use this statistic to reveal the other facts, and the overall concept of the piece, but perhaps in a dijointed way so that it is not spoon fed, and does not seem preachy.

Speaking of preachy, this is not the aim for the piece. We are not doing it to make people feel bad or guilty about how many children die from drinking contaminated water for instance; but simply to provide a visual representation of statistics in the hope that they become more comprehensible.

Ultimately the question is: To reveal what is happening within the piece itself, or wait until the end?

Did you know?

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, we have been compiling various statistics that we can incorporate within our piece.

After watching this video, I found a number of interesting facts.

The ones that resonated with me most were: It took radio 38 years to reach a market audience of 50 million

It took television 13 years to reach a market audience of 50 million

It took the internet 4 years to reach a market audience of 50 million

It took Facebook 2 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.

It would be interesting to work out how many people that equates to in terms of how many people join/joined Facebook per minute.

Office for National Statistics (O.N.S)

After partaking in the work in progress last week, the next step in the process is to continue searching for more statistics to represent within our piece.

After watching an episode of ‘The Chase’ on ITV 1, and a question regarding statistics, I found a link to the following website: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html 

Clicking the link will take to you to website for the Office for National Statistics. I think this is going to be very beneficial to our research, as the site includes information on:

Business, Education, Children, Crime, Economy, Health and Social Care, Population and Travel and finally Transport.

Hopefully this website will provide some more statistics that we can begin to work on.

1 2 3