MAPP project
Rehearsal and Performance
The last phase of this project was given over to the more familiar activities of rehearsing set or structured material, adding technical elements and performing for a live audience. The students took up their production roles to a greater extent, and I took on the lighting design.
The first (and only) performance of The Capitalist Self-Care Club was at 7pm on 7th December 2022, at DMU’s PACE building. The audience mostly consisted of friends of the cast and DMU faculty members, who responded to the work with warmth and enthusiasm.
Each performer had a ‘spotlight’ moment where they held the main focus. These moments played on their individual performance skills, tastes and interests, and I loved seeing how the sections gave a glimpse of the artist and human behind them.
The first (and only) performance of The Capitalist Self-Care Club was at 7pm on 7th December 2022, at DMU’s PACE building. The audience mostly consisted of friends of the cast and DMU faculty members, who responded to the work with warmth and enthusiasm.
Each performer had a ‘spotlight’ moment where they held the main focus. These moments played on their individual performance skills, tastes and interests, and I loved seeing how the sections gave a glimpse of the artist and human behind them.
- Missy created a short dance sequence to Hosier’s From Eden, playing with the idea of knowing a happy secret. She performed it wearing a single sock with a compliment written on it.
- Björk wrote and performed a spoken word piece Customise Everything, riffing on the theme of how Ikea can upgrade everything from your boobs to your knowledge of Star Wars. They performed it in a style somewhere between a shopping channel advert and an evangelist preacher, while the other three accompanied the text with semi-improvised go-go dancing
'Customise Everything' in rehearsal
- Imelda played a game of will-she-won’t-she with the audience (see Moment 2) then sang and played the Dresden Dolls song Coin Operated Boy on the ukulele
- Eve turned the act of putting on her makeup into a meditative piece of live art. She used individual audience members like mirrors, looking into their eyes as she applied each product.
Moment 1:
After a run, I gave the note not to rush through the journeys on and off stage or into position to speak, dance or play. There was a sense of trying to excuse or hide the mechanics of setting up a scene- in particular bringing on and then clearing props for a scene involving a picnic. I wanted all the action onstage to be played as ‘text’ be it verbal, non-verbal, heightened or pedestrian.
After a run, I gave the note not to rush through the journeys on and off stage or into position to speak, dance or play. There was a sense of trying to excuse or hide the mechanics of setting up a scene- in particular bringing on and then clearing props for a scene involving a picnic. I wanted all the action onstage to be played as ‘text’ be it verbal, non-verbal, heightened or pedestrian.
Mess as text: a smashed cake in the aftermath of the picnic scene
In this show, as in much of what I make, everything we see onstage should be thought of as part of the audience’s experience of the piece, and everything should be able to be played in a variety of ways, even a scene change. Again, perhaps, this is an aesthetic choice that has evolved from my hybrid practices of dance, where all movement can be communicative content, and clown, where everything happens in relationship with the audience. Or perhaps as a movement director, I have just spent more time than most thinking about the aesthetics of scene changes!
Moment 2:
Imelda is a musician as well as an actor, and we decided she would perform a song for her solo ‘spotlight’ section. I pushed her to try a clown-based game in which she seemed constantly on the brink of starting the song, only to postpone the moment with some small interruption; wanting a stool, needing a drink, forgetting the words, and so on. (This was based on a game I trialled in my summer 22 intensive, Preparation for Pirouette).
Initially, Imelda felt profoundly uncomfortable with the scene; she didn’t think of herself as a comic performer, and felt she didn’t know what to do to maintain the state of tension with the audience. After a few attempts, and my modelling the game for her, we realised that what was hamstringing her was the feeling that she needed to play the game non-verbally. We talked about Avner the Eccentric’s principle of making your comfort zone bigger (Eisenberg, 2020), instead of needing to leave it. By making an adjustment to the rules of the game, she was able to find her route into the pleasure of it- teasing the audience with delayed gratification.
Imelda is a musician as well as an actor, and we decided she would perform a song for her solo ‘spotlight’ section. I pushed her to try a clown-based game in which she seemed constantly on the brink of starting the song, only to postpone the moment with some small interruption; wanting a stool, needing a drink, forgetting the words, and so on. (This was based on a game I trialled in my summer 22 intensive, Preparation for Pirouette).
Initially, Imelda felt profoundly uncomfortable with the scene; she didn’t think of herself as a comic performer, and felt she didn’t know what to do to maintain the state of tension with the audience. After a few attempts, and my modelling the game for her, we realised that what was hamstringing her was the feeling that she needed to play the game non-verbally. We talked about Avner the Eccentric’s principle of making your comfort zone bigger (Eisenberg, 2020), instead of needing to leave it. By making an adjustment to the rules of the game, she was able to find her route into the pleasure of it- teasing the audience with delayed gratification.
Play the game- go for longer than you think
Let some silence in
(think:) ‘This will be brilliant!’ ‘Perfect!... not perfect.’
Journal notes from watching runs: 30/11 to 07/12/22
Let some silence in
(think:) ‘This will be brilliant!’ ‘Perfect!... not perfect.’
Journal notes from watching runs: 30/11 to 07/12/22
It wasn’t until the performance that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Imelda built the tension and got the audience laughing as they understood the game, I then saw her realise she had lost that tension as the rhythm got established. She held her nerve, pushing one of the interruptions for longer than she ever had before so that the laughter re-built as the uncertainty and liveness of the game was revealed. I watched this student performer learn in the moment, with an audience, how this kind of performance can work, and it was hugely exciting for me as a teacher, director and mentor.
Moment 3:
As the audience entered at the start of the show, the cast were onstage, dressed in white, in a warm, colourful lighting state, with a soundtrack of female-led pop songs playing. The cast greeted audience members, and once they had found a seat and settled, brought them a white cotton sock and a marker pen, and asked them to write a compliment on the sock, perhaps directed at another audience member. One the compliment was written, the cast took the socks and hung them on a clothes airer. At the end of the show the audience were encouraged to take one of these socks from a laundry basket, held by a cast member at the exit door- to literally take a compliment.
As the audience entered at the start of the show, the cast were onstage, dressed in white, in a warm, colourful lighting state, with a soundtrack of female-led pop songs playing. The cast greeted audience members, and once they had found a seat and settled, brought them a white cotton sock and a marker pen, and asked them to write a compliment on the sock, perhaps directed at another audience member. One the compliment was written, the cast took the socks and hung them on a clothes airer. At the end of the show the audience were encouraged to take one of these socks from a laundry basket, held by a cast member at the exit door- to literally take a compliment.
Show preset: a clothes rack of socks with compliments written on them
At the start of the show, in between greeting the audience and carrying out the business with socks, the cast simply grooved gently, on their own or with each other, to the songs that were playing. It felt to me like a new iteration of the Dance Like Everyone’s Watching game; they were making their own choices about how and when to move, and who to approach.
I was struck by how watchable these student performers were in this state - they looked alert but at ease, they interacted with the audience in a way that felt mutually agreed in the moment, and the interactions were warm, with a sense of intimacy. They looked genuinely happy to be there, on stage, sharing the experience with the audience.
I was struck by how watchable these student performers were in this state - they looked alert but at ease, they interacted with the audience in a way that felt mutually agreed in the moment, and the interactions were warm, with a sense of intimacy. They looked genuinely happy to be there, on stage, sharing the experience with the audience.
Kitty with the cast, in costume, just before the house opened
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