Week 5: 1/31/11 Performance Art + Audience Awareness

A. Admin

1. Attendance
2. Wednesday Make-up
3. Final Critique 2/7/11 + performance date
4. Guest Star Ian Hatcher!

B. Resource Notes and context for exercises

1. Toward an interdisciplinary approach in new media: Renaissance culture: idea of distinct forms of art as an unified structure.20^th century avant-garde attempted to reintegrate these forms. Richard Wagner proposes GESAMTKUNSTWERK “total art work”-each unit subsumed under absolute control of one artist. Blends together. However, this could be viewed as too much of a disservice to the unique characteristics and materials of forms of art. Cage proposed: “Arts are not isolated from one another but engage in dialogue”. Avant-garde in some cases was tied to the scientific and technological progress of its day: more-so in that technology opened up new ways of thinking and perceiving.

   
   

2. Towards an aware audience?
   Performance Art is very “live” and “present” may strive for critical distance in the audience. What are some techniques pioneers used for audience awareness, critical distance?

   Bertolt Brecht-known for “epic theater” made from art composed of separate elements in constant tension and dialogue. It was necessary for a spectator to be involved for the full execution, resonance and completion of work. Also coined the “alienation effect” as a goal to promote aesthetic distance in the performance. This was achieved by “show that you are showing” and jarring the audience into consciousness.

   Gertrude Stein- Landscape theater. The audience was aware of performance as a function of space in addition to time. Theater as if viewed from a plane window, the audience could choose which part of the total space to focus on. Emphasized how sight and sound relate to emotion and time, rather than focusing on plot and action. Why? It is hard for an audience member to appreciate theater in the present moment in a context that has a linear plot that unfolds deliberately over time. It is because they are always either emotionally focused on absorbing what just happened or anticipating the future of the play.

   Antonin Artaud-influenced by eastern thought and culture, especially Balinese theater. Placed importance on the mise en scène, visual design aspects, of theater. Sought a mystical trans-like state from spectators tried to achieve this by inducing an intuitive awareness or understanding of the images that made up the performance. He also rejected all aspects of Western Theater including language and a conventional stage. He wanted to make language have the same quality as in dreams.

   John Cage-wanted spectators to re-focus their process of consciousness on the performance while it unfolded. He did this by eliminating meaningful content and creating structures that were completed by performers and spectators. Also, by employing “Chance” as a way to structure and select compositions without the total imposition of the artist. Places the intention on the spectator by stating that theater is created by the simple “framing of an action”.

   
   

3. Performance Art-usually labels performance that is theatrical conceptual art (with tradition rooted in visual art), rather than simply performance for its own sake, for entertainment purposes, or for maintaining theatrical illusion.

   Performance art could be considered more immediate and present to the audience. Much of the time, the art object is the action or results from the action. It aims to be in communication with the audience, as a result it often breaks the fourth wall: the performer behaves as if aware of the audience.

   Basic elements: Time, Space, Performer's body and Relationship between performer and audience.

   
   

4. Audience Awareness, Relationship to Performer

   Try considering your audience. Without them having any background knowledge of your piece, what are you conveying? What overall aesthetic effect are you producing? How can you create the ideal impact? Is relaying intention important, Why/Why Not? Remember that the audience is aware of itself as a group and has its own dynamics. Knowing how to listen and respond to these dynamics can be key in a good performance.

   Many different ways to approach your audience

   1. Approach advocated by Stein, Artaud, Brecht and useful when thinking about “performance art” creates critical distance, alienation, intellectual awareness or spiritual awareness. See approaches under artists above

   2. In a Western/Aristotelian sense (think traditional theater) Audience as a collaborator, “building emotion together” a circuit of empathy, pathos, connection. Immerse in the illusion of theater.

   A few approaches used in #2:

   Make the audience feel as if you care about them. Manipulate their emotions. Use subconscious fears. Stir imagination in hypothetical scenarios. Use the compressed, focused time of a play to bring about revelation. Make the revelation seem exotic through the “magic of theater”SURPRISE! Suspense. NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION. Let them anticipate an outcome and then reverse or alter it. Connect through believable or recognizable characters.

5. The Wooster Group Inspired Workshop on Emotional “Throw” and Presence

   Founded 1975 with trilogy, Three Places in Rhode Island after Spalding Gray. Operates under Elizabeth LeCompte. Intelligent and interesting merge of “high and low” culture in performance. Blending of classical works into contemporary pop culture. The group often uses well-known plays and the accompanying text as a starting point or “prop” and then dismantles the text to extract useful characters, scenes and dialogue. For example: L.S.D. (. . . Just the High Points . . .)(1984) was a mash up of Arthur Miller's “Crucible” and Beat Culture/Writings. Miller threatened to sue them over unauthorized use of the text. Plays are always billed as “works in progress” and can't be considered closed systems. Of interest to this class because they were one of the first groups to integrate technology in a significant way that was in service to their vision. Previously, much of the technology was substitutional-like projections instead of backdrops-or relied on new gimmicks of film or video.

   film and video have their own vocabularies, and the process of reading them is significantly different from reading a stage production. Most experiments had simply tried to subjugate media to the rules of the theatre, and it is safe to say, most experiments did not succeed...-Aronson

   To begin everybody write down one short statement or question.
   
   Exercises:
   Attention to your present body: goal-tension, posture, and presence.
   Ensemble: 3min (quick warm-up)
   A. Spread-out equidistant across the room. Walk at a normal comfortable gait. Pay attention only to your own body and how it is present in the space at that given moment. Imagine a balloon tied at the center of your head lifting it up gently and allowing it to float and center above the neck. At the opposite end of your torso, a weight is pulling your butt down. Be aware of your body as you walk. Relax into this posture. Notice where you are holding tension. What parts seem tight? Breath from your diaphragm into these spaces to loosen them. If time proceed with class scales.
   B. Freeze at time. Choose a partner from someone next to you. Proceed to next exercise
   
   Meisner Training and Repetition: goal-listen & respond, stay in the moment.
   Pairs: 12min
   Each pair pick an anonymous submission from the class.
   A.Two actors face each other and "repeat" their prompts back and forth. An example of such an exchange might be: "You're smiling." "I'm smiling." "You're smiling!" "Yes, I'm smiling." Actors observe and respond to others' behavior and the subtext therein. If they can "pick up the impulse"—or work spontaneously from how their partner's behavior affects them—their own behavior will arise directly from the stimulus of the other.
   B. A new phrase will be repeated about every 3 min. The starting emotion will be triggered by a still from a youtube webcast.
   
   Wooster Group: Video Monitor as a prompt: goal comfortable with being “live” in our bodies/conveying to audience.
   Individuals: remaining time.
   A. everyone return phrases, count-off and explain exercise.
   B. Wooster workshop participants were asked to mirror the actions of bodies on monitors and use those gestures in an improv to audience, often taking cues for the tone and content of monologue from the video's audio that was relayed to them via small personal earphones. We will do a rapid-fire variation on this exercise using the phrases we have collected and various youtube body-building videos.
   C. I will call a number. The called performer will face the projection with the audience's back to screen. They must use gesture of the youtube video as a prompt by imitating it(like in the mirror game) and repeat their phrase in a way that uses it to convey an emotional intensity to the audience. The emotion should seem appropriate for the action that their body is doing to imitate the gesture.
   videos: body building, belly dance on steroids, talk to the hand, still alive, the boyz, body language