I did my first performance today and about 6 or so people turned up. I’ve been thinking about the nature of the shelter as something that’s used whilst foraging/hunting and how that dictates the actions I make.
My idea so far was to gather (forage) objects that I’ve found around campus and to tell false histories about them, as if they’ve been dug out of the marsh by a future forager. This grew from thinking about sharing space and supplies with people like we did in ancient traditions of hospitality (all the stories of people punished for not welcoming strangers are because they broke those laws), alongside the importance of storytelling and oral traditions within cultures and when amongst strangers. I think this can develop over the next couple of days as I gather more objects and become more comfortable inhabiting the shelter and body of a person from the future.
Today’s performance ended up focusing on how to develop; I played out my idea of narrating stories about objects and then had a mini-group crit with the people to attended, which was very helpful. The main aspects to improve was: my conviction in what I’m saying, collecting more things and developing interesting and surprising narratives around them, mixing recognisable objects with unrecognisable objects, and incorporating the audience more by letting them share in the narrative more. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be feeling more confident in myself and will have made a more scripted plan of how to speak/move – I’m going to bring in receipts, stones etc. I think the main focus is to build a feeling of authenticity
LFlynn Research Blog 