In today’s lesson we went through some of the finer points of our essay criteria and what we should be looking at doing. This makes me feel better!
However, we also talked about the final performance itself.
Now as we went around the room sharing thoughts and ideas for our final pieces, I suddenly found myself wondering who has read this blog. I’ll be honest it was un-nerving. I’m not sure why but I got the feeling that a few people had read it. Up until today (as a narrow minded individual) I presumed that hardly anyone had read it, just because there were very few comments on any posts. I can now see that this was wrong. Ah well.
The ideas I came out with in class are slightly different to those I’d posted earlier. I’ll tell you them now now:
I want to be open and almost autobiographical in my piece. I still want to address the issues around depression and how I’m suffering with it, but I’m doubting the idea again and wanting to revert to my original plan of the Grumpy Old Men style of show.
Donald asked me why I was concerned about my piece. I confessed it was a case of worrying about people’s perception of me combined with managing to do the piece about depression with sensitivity and possibly getting it wrong. It was then pointed out to me that if the piece is about myself, there are no wrong answers. Fair point, I suppose. Then it was also pointed out to me that we leave University a few days after the show anyway, so why worry about what people would think? We’ll see.
We’d been made to think recently about the staging and atmosphere we wanted to create in our shows. This has made me think about how I’d stage my piece.
I’ve been thinking about having a projection of myself constantly against the back wall which could just comment along with what I’m saying on stage, almost as if it was my inner voice or my conscience. I’m not entirely sure, perhaps I’ll have it completely contradict me. This will be an ideal way of getting in material I have previously written along the lines of Grumpy Old Men. I’ve also thought that the whole space of the studio could be a performance space, so there would be no set place for the audience to sit or stand. For example, perhaps I could have props and set in different corners of the room and then something central, but then the whole time the projection is there on one screen. Always there, always judging whatever I do. It would be almost as if the audience was in my mind with me. I could even limit the audience, restrict the numbers by issuing personal invites and sharing an improvised experience. There is no reason for not imposing a condition that each invited member of the audience wears a certain colour.
All of this is food for thought. I’ll refine it and get back to you.
Martyn
