Author: Martyn Horner-Glister

So long, Solo!

Martyn Horner-Glister / / General, Personal, The Performance

Catharsis.

1. The relief of strong suppressed emotions, esp. through drama or psychoanalysis.

2. Purgation of the bowels.

(Collins Paperback English Dictionary, 1992, p.128)

 

The whole process of this Solo Performance has been great. It has helped me to overcome my own problems and develop not only as a performer, but also as a human being.

I’ve learned to embrace a new kind of performance as art. The feeling of not  having anything scripted, but only a rough agenda, is both terrifying and liberating!

Everyone should do something like this. I certainly hope to do more of this sort of thing in the future.

Thank you to everyone who Tweeted, who came and supported or were involved in any way with Catharsis. I owe you a lot more than I could ever say.

Much love!

Martyn Horner-Glister

Examples of Tweets I recieved

Martyn Horner-Glister / / General, Personal, The Performance

These pictures demonstrate the kind of input Twitter ended up having during my performance.

20120518-181209.jpg

20120518-181218.jpg

Unfortunately, due to the gratifyingly large volume of Tweets that I received,  I am unable to show all of the mentions throughout the performance because Twitter cannot load them all! As you can see, I’ve had to resort to using a screen shot from my phone to even show these!

Twitter was an massive help during the performance, but I would like to have used a Live Feed and streamed my performance online so that people far away would have been able to see it. Unfortunately, I was led to believe that this was not possible until the Monday before my performance, by which point it was too late to organise from a technical point of view due to equipment availability. However, should I decide to do something of this nature again, I would certainly look into using that source of technology to add a different slant to the interactivity of my piece.

The Set

Martyn Horner-Glister / / General, The Performance

Here’s a photo of my set…

 

20120518-134827.jpg

Sorry for the poor quality but this is the only one I have!

This is the view the passive audience had. As you can see, I littered the studio with socks, newspapers and words that are often floating around in my head as well as things that are representations of my fears, issues, likes and dislikes. For example, the bottle of Whiskey represented my Grandfather, a pile of textbooks represents study and university life.

I also decided just a day before my performance, that it would be a good idea to have a ‘safe zone’ for me to sit in, should I need time to collect my thoughts or pull myself together at any time.

You can also see the Twitter feed on the wall from this view. I’m attempting to get some screen shots to put up here!

Catharsis

Martyn Horner-Glister / / General, Personal, The Performance

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!

Show Time…

Martyn Horner-Glister / / Depression, General, Personal, The Performance

Right…. Big day today.
My Solo Performance; #Catharsis is on tonight (16/5/12) in the University of Lincoln’s LPAC studio 3 from 5.30 until 6.30 (GMT) and I have a request to make of all my lovely followers…

Catharsis is the inside of my head as I address issues and events from my life that have led to my depression. This show will help me in beating my demons.

If you can’t be there, but have ever known or loved me, or even shown the slightest interest in my well being, it is of VITAL importance to me as a fellow human being, to my show, and to my overall grade that you tweet at me (@mhornerglister) using the hashtag #Catharsis between 5.30 and 6.30 tonight. I shall be tweeting to let you know what I’m talking about as the show progresses. You can ask me anything, tell me your opinion of me, offer love and support, or just say what’s on your mind, and it will be a part of the show. This way even if you can’t get to see the show you can still be a part of it, help me get a good grade, I’ll be you BFF (or whatever young people say these days) and most importantly, you’ll be a big part in helping me overcome my depression.

I don’t ask anything of my followers. But today I do. It’s only one hour of your entire life to help change the course of mine for the better. Please be a part of this unique show.

Thank you.
Much love,

Martyn

PS. Please reblog and retweet this post for me today. Thank you!