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Tuesday 18 March 2008
spalding gray- swimming to cambodia extract
looking at ways of re-telling personal stories, using a soundtrack, minimal props/set- mic and glass of water, monologue.keeping the attention on the real life story- not 'dressing it.' not being someone else.
links to the closet for my nunnery performance- pretty much used closet as found- mops and screws and all- a simple real life backdrop, non theatrical, amateur darkroom, cupboard, den. soundtrack to immerse you in this closet- radio in background- working atmosphere. my story from childhood- more engaging/humorous/relaxed nature depending on whether i knew the participant and how comfortable i felt in this intimate space with them. how would this change in an open space- retaining the intimacy of storytelling without the physical spacing/environment a closet encourages?
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7 comments:
Hey,
I love Spalding Gray and the way that he works. I can definitely see where the links are in your Nunnery Project.
I would argue that Gray has worked very hard at building up a persona here. I think he may be telling the story in first person as himself but he is certainly not 'being himself' if you know what I mean. The language and narrative structure is quite sophisticated and dressy. I think that that is why everything else being so minimalist works so well - it leaves your attention to be focused purely on the language and his performance.
Xx
hey laura
thanks for this- i think you've raised points that make me want to look at spalding gray more- am new to his work and its only-shamefully-a youtube snapshot at the moment, am waiting for the swimming to cambodia book on order.
the presented construct of'I'm talking about me' fact/fiction is interesting-i have no idea who he is off stage (is this important?- although i know he watched one of my favourite films about storytelling (big fish) before his disappearance) and i only have a fragment of knowledge about him on stage.
in the Nunnery piece i was trying with great effort to play 'me' which seemed at the time ridiculous- what is to 'play' over to'be'??,in non-matrixed theatre there are no actors,no personal details, am i now way off from this connection?! in deliberating over how to be true to my physical self (outfit)and personal history- i felt the need to embellish my real life story at times to reinforce the geeky girl guide persona i was presenting,and make the story worth hearing- and now i am wondering further about my performance persona in different sharing storytelling contexts. the loss of truth and sincerity of details of my Nunnery story at times concerned me in then asking others' to share their stories...but how sincere/truthful were they? Does it matter?! my story wasn't surely about the details but they pieced together the bigger picture of the theme in the loss of innocence in childhood?
the keeping the attention on the right parts in a performance is also important and i don't think i did this enough in the Nunnery- the photogram image was appearing on the table and i was using body gesturing within my storytelling and trying to keep eye contact, when what i could have done was to allow for greater pauses between the parts of the story lingering on key words in the story that reinforced the image over developing and gesturing for the participant to look into the tray at the image.....arrgh...worm of cans.
xx
Hehe! Can of worms indeed my dear!
Is "playing you" being you? I think it is a way to let your personality shine through. Part of Spalding Gray's charm is that he is a great performer and we saw what he wanted us to; in the same way that in your performance we saw what you wanted us to. I'm not saying that aspects of Gray's 'true' personality weren't present, just hyper. Hence in my opinion not himself. Although his inspiration is most certainly him! I can totally relate this to you but in a much more naturalistic, smaller scale of performance.
Perhaps you letting the audience collaborate shows more of you than you telling the story. How much did you control your reaction to a story that you didn't know was going to be told. I would say that 'you' were in your spontanious reactions to each individual audience member and the exchange.
I'm also not sure that it is important how "true to yourself" you were. You found a way that let you feel comfortable performing your piece and let your personality come through which I believe is something that will always draw an audience in.
xxx
hey lady
i think the hyper self is something i definitely need to explore. like i said to you this morning i feel i am goign to treat the stand up course as something to explore persona and humour and objects as a seperate strand (maybe nic green calamity/absudity/geeky/ low tech-esque) and maybe further down the line after a few weeks of it, rexamine what the stand up offers my MA work.however i think the more i explore my presence can only but help give me confidence in being in my work.i don't however necessarily want my MA work to be auditorium based which is why i feel the stand up and MA start seperately as see what happens....
in working with participants in the closet i tried different tacks- sometime i joined in with the stories, sometime i listened and thanked them at the end, depending on how i related to them/their story or just to see what happens when i do/don't intervene. i liked joining in as it went into the element of chance, much more informal.stories sometimes began to get intertwined with each others.the loss of innocence i had started in my story became a common connection between me and participants.
being 'true to myself'i suppose became about really a wierd conscience i had for my story to be told 'as it was,' that it had to somehow be 'non-theatrical' and more 'happenings' (although now thinking about it happenings were mostly fabricated so i now lose my own argument....doh!).areas i gave in retaining truth and thus embellished to make it more interesting or me sound more geeky (i never ironed my guide shirt- oh gawd its out now!)as in the run throughs people told me the story wasn't interesting enough to draw people in. thinking about it now, in the closet i was performing based on real life, but the context was not entirely real life ( i had moved the contents of the closet around and removed some objects for ease of access for a performance as well as introduced new ones- radio, photographic equipment etc)so it was ok.storytelling in real life, down the pub like, is always embellished through words, gestures, tone of voice etc for enhanced impact, its unavoidable.
and now i'm stumbling around somewhere incoherent.so i'll leave it there!
x
and...my spalding gray book arrived this morning so i'll get reading....
x
It's not incoherent. I know what you are saying. Perhaps the question you need to be asking yourself is how often do we perform? How often are we ever really ourselves?
It is those questions that lead me into loving identity politics. I began to ask myself similar questions to what you are asking and it lead me back to my own identity, I still don't believe in a stable unified self... so why not perform!?!
I'm looking forward to the project in the factory as it will take my work out of the auditorium for a bit. I think one on one maybe the way to go. Was thinking we could try some non-verbal stuff out? Then maybe see what that does to the 'truthfulness' of the performer.
xxx
xxx
hey a good question in how often we perform. in thinking about the last week everyday performances;
cashier reciting learnt sainsbury sale-speak jargon and repetitive actions to me at till when i was purchasing items- this is the kind of stuff i got told off over when working at safeway as i 'didn't smile enough' nor 'count back every penny of the change' (so the mystery shopper said to the manager...)
when shopping you are following a known ritual of the body in space- enter through door, pick up items from shelves as wondering round aisles, queue for till, engage (!) in transaction with cashier, purchase, leave through exit door.and why ange taggarts non-shopping work is so interesting, subverting this behaviour. what's interesting about this and the non-verbal is that unless you are with someone, need assistance in some way, most of this is non-verbal- an unspoken code of queuing in silence and chip and pin action has ensured you probably speak even less to the cashier. when i was a cashier years ago what fascinated me in the hours of relentless clock watching boredom was making up identities for customers based on the contents of their trolleys and their appearance (condoms and nappies purchased together were always a snigger for me aged 16,'one kids bloody enough,' and the 'cat family' always smelling of concentrated catpee-ness mum, dad, old son (or brother- he seemed a been-at-home-too-long kind of old),buying 25 cans of can food every saturday morning)
the person i was in the nice stripey safeway uniform (and flesh coloured tights)that then ran out the door at 9pm on the dot to the pub and drank to oblivion.....
we perform in the everyday to or reacting against a set of codes of behaviour- set on the seat on the bus-don't put your feet on the seats-and lost of people invariably do.rules and regulations are interesting in controlling us to behave/misbehave.
we do perform differently to family, different friends (some of whom do understand what i'm doing this year (that's more than me), others who don't and how you describe your work/level of engagement in discussing it with them changes according to this)
some friends say they will always be 14 in the eyes of their parents and invariably become that again when they get together, especially christmas. they aren't 'allowed' to be any different.
i suppose there are the public/private personas here. how we are are 'host,' relaxing behind closed doors with guests and a bottle of wine,becoming more vocal possibly incoherent but more honest? as the number of bottles consumed increases, and then transforming self into next day 'student' sitting in the reading groups stone cold sober trying to sound, of course, well-read, articulate and of worth.
so yes we are constantly performing. the versions of self i should maybe start to keep a diary of- there is no constant we are constanty adapting.how these selves may collide could be interesting....
funny how i've started to think about working at safeways again. its 12 years since i last worked there and went in there the other day and a couple of people i worked with still pushing trolleys, putting out the eggs,date checking the cucumbers (worst job ever if its a rainy day and there are a plethora of them to be reduced). for me seeing people still doing the same job is like time has stood still. the douglas coupland book i am reading 'the gum thief' of life at staples office supplies is also making me think back to the repetive lives of the inhabitants of the retail space.
in relation to the-space-in-between factory project;
the non-verbal stuff fascinates me now after the geraldine pilgrim workshop, as jordan mc had previously said to me to try out the nunnery piece in this way- how can you communicate a story without words? how can the photogram technique be employed without speech? using gaze,gesture,body in space, etc. how the performer has to respnd, adapt, present and re-present themselves.
the one-to-one thing is good to explore again, hope to get some good stories/photos from the local studies centre of the factory.
phew! am enjoying this dialogue with you on here laura!
anyone else?
x
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