Self- Evaluation

Firstly, I would like to say that my writing style always sets up it's own framework to work in and then picks itself apart from the inside. I give myself linguistic concepts with which to work in and use them to construct an argument to which the audience falsely agrees. From the love/ virus to the something/ nothing debate, I think my pieces present short evaluations of accepted constructs. To use the term again, the "post-romantic" notion always comes through of swaggering between completely dry and ironic, to that slightly caring, sensitive and rose-tinted.

I am more optimistic that this piece acheives it's aims more than the random element of my last piece. I think stillness and self indulgence was needed, as well as the notion to destroy the less organic speech. Editing seems to be important in the rehearsal stage for me, as I realise now that the spoken and written word impact in different ways. Something can be read or something can be said and differentiating what to use when is key in formulating more streamlined pieces. By allowing myself stillness and a slow pace, I have been able to enjoy speaking and performing.

In terms of performance, I think I have learned the invaluable lesson of enjoying the silence. There is no pressure to entertain; the piece is constantly in motion but that does not mean that the performer should be. Pace and tension are good tools, and as this piece is based on concepts of time, awkwardness, and ethereality, I allowed myself to indulge in the luxury of time.

However, in reading new definitions of performance art, I feel I must conceptualise beyond the 4th wall. I don't think I'm at that stage yet, but I must think of the body as a presence to perform art, not just as a performer. I need to strike a balance between the ambitious and the simplistic; to create something stunning and spectacular, but also with a clear point that follows through and leads the audience to my conclusion.

Saying that, my confidence in creating has increased. This piece was more natural and in turn I feel more excited about presenting it. Well, maybe "excited" is an over statement, but I am intirigued as to whether it truly does meet it's aims.

As for the music issue, perhaps silence was too big a leap for me. I did keep it simple, though, so as not to detract from the piece. It is repititious so that it will drop out of the audience's conciousness but leave enough to create an atmosphere.

I would like to give a quote by Sarah Kane: "theatre has no memory, which makes it the most existential of the arts...I keep coming back in the hope that someone in a darkened room somewhere will show me an image that burns itself into my mind." I think this somes up my piece quite nicely. By it's very nature and it's discussion of time it is existential, but by representing it as a performance piece, I have encapsulated the essence of notions of the movement of time and the uncertainty of the future. By letting it exist in the moment, it reaffirms the transitional nature of performance, life, death, expectations and the future.

Movement analysis

This piece is surprisingly tactile for me, but as soon as the music struck up, I remember focussing on my hand against the wall, and this intensity of emotion, or at least an intensity of focus. I had to start off small in this piece because stillness and tension was such an important part of it. I also had to say to myself, "Take as much time as you want" in my head over and over again to slow my speech.

As discussed, the chairs are very simplistic, but I got used to them after a while. I had to sit whilst trying to incorporate being comfortable with sitting and not having the compulsion to entertain and move frantically, but also they were transitional; their positioning and meaning in the piece became part of the liveness. Also, the chairs in Chadwick had this lovely, red padding emphasising the focus on touch. The reason I lower the first chair gently is to create an expectation of it dropping that never happens. It also means I can sit on it in an unconventional manner. Earlier rehearsals had me trying to sit in the chair the correct way while it was on the floor, but logistically it was difficult and dangerous, and opened up too many potential problems. The creation of expectation ties in with the speech; the audience expect something to happen, but ultimately I am just lowering the chair. This also sets up an expectation to replicate the movement when I tear down the chair when I say "Let's freefall towards the future", except the movement of the chair crashing now becomes a surprise.

I incorporated the ribbons into my costume as I thought ripping them off (or sometimes they fall off in the crash moment; either works) demonstrates a 'freefalling' of material as in the way we float haplessly towards the future. It also incorporated that sense of change and instability, as further demonstrated by tying the ribbon to the chair and to myself. Not only does the positioning look like a bungee jump, but it also represents how I am tied irrevocably to the consequence of my actions (e.g. the chair falling over) as we move into the future, just as we are tied into this inevitable future we know nothing of.

At the point before I say "Ever woken up at 4am", I just sit on the chairs for a moment and look nonchalant. This was to emphasise that I didn't really have to talk to the audience, as well as an awkward sense of passing time. Accentuated by the ticking clock, the audience are expecting me to speak, but are very aware that time is passing and a so called 'nothing' is happening, but if you think about my friend's comment related to the performance continually being in motion something is happening, just not what they expect. I think this emphasises the notion of the live presence in relation to people's expectation of what they see on stage. Again a very Beckett-esque idea (that I seem to be drawing on a lot even though I am not a fan of his work!), when I think of some of his works like "Breath" and "Quadrant".

The 'inhaling sharply' at the end is supposed to represent both that moment of waking at 4am when you theoretically here the clock stop, as well as a shock and surprise of the insinuation of death. I also wanted to create an expectation from the audience that the piece had ended, only to come alive again."Coming alive again" insinuates that the performance has just begun and hasn't ended at all. There is also the shock factor.

I stripped a lot of elements from this performance, and I think the minimalism works well. The music only took a couple of spooky synths to create some atmosphere... I didn't really want much considering initially it wasn't even going to be there in the first place. It did encourage me to move and talk differently though, and in that way i think it was essential to the piece.

Textual analysis

It has struck me how ultimately Beckett-esque this piece is. To explicitly say that nothing is happening destroys the audience's expectations of something happening, and yet this paradoxically adds to the tension when something does happen, or it still doesn't destroy their expectation of something happening. From the outset, though, I think the 'nothing' I am talking about is more the little events inbetween life. Like when you strike up a conversation with someone and say "So what have you been up to?" and they say, "Oh, nothing really." When in fact something must have happened, unless they stepped into a void between time and space!


I also use "hmmm" as a non expressive and completely neutral word. It makes the audience pause to think, and it's ambiguity can mean "I see your point but I'm not sure I agree with you" or "you've given me something to think about on this issue". It will draw the audience to the conclusion they were thinking of anyway, and it's so open to interpretation that they can take it how they want.

Returning to the example of "going out" where "nothing happened", I then say something happened. But the information divulged is the thought that it was the thought of going home. I think I incorporated that "homing instinct" that you have when you're out and suddenly you think "I need to go home". But I then go on to say, "I'm stepping into the future", meaning that I am trying to take step towards my inevitable "destiny" or advance the process of the future. When my friend says, "But you are in the future", I wanted to convey a sense of the future happening all the time, just as the present is instantly transferred to the past, time is ever-flowing and doesn't stop.

I put in a piece about waking up with someone to sexualise the piece and, ergo, make the audience feel a little bit uncomfortable. I also sing a line to vary the pace and break the tension (quite Brechtian in a way). The line is also quite romanticised ("You and I are two bodies that move as one"). This is followed by the "freefall". For some reason I really liked this word as a description of the way we fall towards the future with no sense of what will happen next.

The concluding piece tries to share the sense of 'nothing happening' and draw the argument to a close. The panic of death or the end leads us to want to speed up to a place in the future where we are happy, or to go towards that imagined future. Of course, when I say "and skip all the points inbetween where absolutely nothing happens", I refer again to people's flippant remarking that nothing ever happens in their lives. All anyone really wants to know is are things getting better, or are they getting worse? If we knew things were going to get worse, would we continue living? Referring back to Camus, he argues that life is worth living, but on a personal note, can we forever freefall towards this unknowing future? Will it forever be out of our grasp? Can we take control of it? Are we victims of fate?

"Are things getting better, or are they getting worse?"

So as soon as I started rehearsing, the script changed completely. Moving away from the view of the self, it focuses entirely on the existential view of time. Is something/ nothing happening? What is the future? Can we get there? Are we living it? Funnily enough, as soon as I got into the rehearsal room, the notion of "no music" went out the window. I tried a little for atmospherics; to get me in the mood, and I noticed it changed the way I spoke and moved. Music, I think, is my choreographer. It dictates my mood and movements.

Added to that, I originally took in a script with lots of ideas bungled together in one piece (which you could say is typical Allan), but when I started speaking the lines, I kept the three that felt most genuine, which were the "nothing happened" lines. From there it just extended into a whole 10 minute piece on nothing/ something, concepts of time and freefalling into the future.

In a huge contrast to my last piece, this piece is very slow moving and intense. In a sense it has been a real trial, but I asked a musician friend of mine about stillnes and he said, "I find intensity of intention can work well to keep the energy going when things are slow - in music, I was taught to keep an internal sense of the music being continually in motion", so with this in mind, I have to remember that the performance is constantly in motion, whether I am still within it or not. In fact, stillness and silence does more to create tension.

I realised the "nothing is happening" is direct inspiration from Deborah Levy's "The B File". Also, the tone of the piece reminds me of Camus and Sartre. Half "The Nausea" and half "The Myth of Sisyphus"... To ask at the end "Are things getting better, or are they getting worse? Can I start all over again?" questions whether we can truly know the future, and if we can't or if we did, would we choose to carry on? And should we?

As this piece describes time, I have tried to incorporate an element of 'liveness' into it. When I walked into the rehearsal room on the second occasion, there were chairs arranged all over the stage. I experimented in using them and it seemed to add a dynamic to the tension as well as serving as a useful prop to interact with as it could so easily have turned into 10 minutes of me talking. This adds to the dimension of the time factor, as objects exist in time and by the end of the piece I have affected the layout of the stage and determined the 'future' of the objects lying around there. Though clunky and cliched, they seem apt and simple. I don't want to complicate my thinking by trying to replace the chairs with more interesting objects or situations. The piece may very easily and quickly become cluttered and over complicated. I am very much bearing in mind Helen's advice with "less is more". I have one thought, one aim and one subject and I want them to come together in a streamline.

I woke up today, and nothing happened

I think I finally understand the concept of work never being finished. After writing out a script, I realised that parts of it continue the concepts only touched on in "Born, Never Asked" (a full length play for stage I wrote), and I finally realised that all those words I have been writing were meant to be spoken aloud. What I have been missing is the cathartic experience of performing; to create something intensely personal so that you and the audience share a powerful moment. I realised this after the Stacy Makishi workshop when I wrote a very intense piece that I almost didn't want to share, but I'm glad I did because I felt the mood just go. It lifted as soon as the piece had finished, and I experienced a true catharsis that was not forced or nervous.

I think the overwhelming statement I am making is the abscence of music, perhaps only with the sound of ticking (this is to be decided). This incorporates my wish to incorporate the use of silences, and placing more importance on the words. In a sense, I wish I had used this piece to be marked on "writing", but I am happy with the way ther script is fleshing out.

In content, it appears to be an analysis of an existential view of time; that it only exists as long as we are living in it, incorporated with the emptiness and loneliness of self exploration. Are events in our lives really happening? Or can everything be reduced to nothing? Is anything really happening? I think the text also ties in with the postmodernist view of it being the "end of history"; there are no more moments or big events anymore. Also, it talks about the future as a concept. This is not a new idea, but more the idea that every step we take, we step into the future, even though the future is not a place but a process. The concept of destiny assumes that the future is an "A to B" process, whereas free will would determine it is an unknown circumstance. That is not to say I agree with the latter, but it's certainly interesting to look at it that way, especially when we have phrases in common usage such as "It was his time" or "Must be fate".

I also really like the play on "nothing is happening", where I say "And I said to myself..." and I say nothing. Because nothing is happening I have nothing to say or think.

I have also made this piece intensely personal. I can see it's very dark and exposing, but to create that catharsis, I feel I need to gouge my feelings out to get the real truth and integrity of emotion that this piece needs. I have to also add that Stacey Makishi has given me the courage to do what Mem Morrison was trying to acheive; that intensely personal work that hopefully takes me and the audience on a journey.

Thinking about self in relation to Lacan, I think my mediatized self is my "mirrored" self; more narcissitic, unrealistic, while my stage self represents the Other. I was relating it back to previous performances and "Astariel" (which is my usual stagename under which I have performed music, and who I think I was trying to evoke in my last performance) is that mirrored self. A performative self who is much bigger than me; almost a superego. I think this piece concentrates on the middle ground of the "ego"; a relation between intense personal desires and thoughts and the inability to run away from the natural order of things.

I'm very much looking forward to rehearsing; I want to be extremely intense in this piece; to provide the discomfort of Kane and the emotional detatchment and analysis of Crimp.

Throwing Laurie Out the Window

So after a disastrous presentation where nothing seemed to go right, I decided that this intervention is probably where I leave Ms. Anderson behind to try and gouge something out of my own voice. I have instead turned to my writing heroes like Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane and Edward Bond for inspiration, and my own theatrical writings to go to the dark place.

I make it sound ominous, but what I mean is I really want to spill my guts this time. This time, I'm looking at the stage as a canvas for an emotion. As Helen has said, I'm trying to think with singularity this time, or to have a more streamlined piece. I keep having one thought which is "I have one big clock, and it just keeps ticking" with the constant ticking of a clock. I'm reminded very much of the Glass Man from the film "Amelie", who filmed the clock outside his window so he could always see what the time was.

Also from the makishi workshops, I realised how cathartic it could be to say the words out loud that you keep. especially in front of an audience; it gives them a sense of purpose, more meaning.

With this very much in mind, I started with the initial idea of trying to convey what it was like to work the nightshift; isolation, tiredness, insomnia. And so this time I started using the workshops more efficiently and workshopped this particular material with Stacy Makishi on the 21st of November. When it came to doing the writing exercises, I was very interested that I wrote some answering machine messages from myself. From there, I started making links with Lacan's sense of "the mirror stage" and "the Other". Could there be interplay between me and a mediatized self? A technological self? A self that existed in the past juxtaposed with a self that exists now? By producing a mediatized self and a live self, I will be physically representing both the 'Real' and the 'Imaginary' parts of the ego.

In terms of 'liveness', this also means that I will be existing in the past and in the present onstage. I find this quite interesting, even though it would mean a lot of dialogue would be pre-recorded. But perhaps it is the interplay that would be more interesting, or how to use the screen to interact with me and the audience.

This has been heavy in my mind for the past couple of days now. I also thought about Cindy Sherman, and how she interprets sense of self in the "Untitled Film Stills" series. Is it possible to make my two selves enitirely different? Should they be?

For the music and movement, I am focussing on stillness, emptiness and the use of ticking working up towards a frenzy.

I think it's hard to go on further without establishing a text, so my next step is to write a provisional script and keep going.