I’m not entirely sure how I feel after the performance yesterday.
Good, I guess!
I sat in Studio 3 wearing only my boxer shorts, showing that I had nothing to hide and was going to share everything, every little insecurity and issue was on display for all to see. I then talked through my issues, likes and dislikes for the duration of one hour.
After all the nerves and anxieties of having no script and not knowing exactly what I was going to say, everything seemed to come together very well. The live link into the offices for the interactive audience worked well, and as for the amount of people who came upstairs to watch through the window… Wow.
The interactivity of the audience in the office and those who were, in some cases, over 200 miles away was an element of the piece that I am the most pleased and proud about. When I felt I was flagging and ran out of things to say, those people talking to me via the use of my Twitter feed were of a great help and support. Comments such as “You have a nice smile” and “nice abs” were weird but lovely.
The constant updating of my Twitter feed projected on to the wall felt very uplifting and showed just how much people were paying attention to what was being said. Because I was busy with my performance, I had Jimmy Morehouse update Tweets from me to my personal Twitter feed to display what it was I was talking about at any time using the hashtag #Catharsis. This way people who were many miles away knew what was happening. The only way I can think to improve this would have been to use a live feed to stream from the camera online. That is certainly something to use should I ever wish to do this type of performance again.
The passive audience, as I wanted the window crowd to be, became interactive. So many people these days own Smart Phones with the Twitter App installed on it that they quickly realised they could watch from above and Tweet directly at me. It could be argued that I should have enforced a no phones policy for my performance but that would have gone against the feel of my piece. I wanted my performance to be fluid and unrestricted, I was baring all and hiding nothing so why should I enforce rules upon my audience? I’m glad things happened the way in which they did.
More to follow!
If I were to do it again, I would definitely use live streaming to a website! I would keep the Twitter element because it can also be used for instruction, effectively making me a puppet for the audience!
I would like to think that, even though the audience was made up of my peers and people who knew me, I would have given the same performance. As a human being I am a closed book, and so people find it difficult to know what I really think or feel. Therefore, what you saw in the performance was me completely exposed, showing all my insecurities honestly and completely openly. The performance would be the same if the audience were consisted of strangers or my closest friends and colleagues.
I really loved the impromptu nature of the performance and the unmanaged, unorganised mess you made of the auditorium. It felt very honest, and as though you hadn’t set out to “impress”. I don’t know if you’d have wanted to make it slicker, but if you did, perhaps you could have found some activity or other to be doing while you were waiting for new tweets, or for inspiration regarding what to say next. Of course, this might have ruined the honest simplicity of the piece.
I really enjoyed it, and I think it was both exceptionally entertaining and quite moving. Here’s a question to answer: The audience were your friends, peers and generally people you knew. How might you perform it to an audience of complete strangers?
You deserve to do very well with this piece, Martyn. Well done!
Hi. If you were to go back and do the performance again, would you do anything differently? It was clear that time passed quicker than expected as you ran out of things to say at the end. Would you then possibly utilize twitter for this, with the audience instructing you on what to do? Would you also consider a live stream to this website for those at home to watch?