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.