Class Rehearsals & Feedback

I had previously shared my ideas for the ‘Bertha’ section of the performance with the class and had received positive feedback on the chosen text, simple expression and moments of character change. How to distinguish between the ‘Natalie/Curator’ character and then the ‘Bertha’ character was questioned. I decided to do this simply with light; creating a spotlit ‘stage’ for the Bertha portion as opposed to broad lighting, including the audience, for the ‘Curator’ sections surrounding it.

 

Martin suggested that I explore the distinction between the ‘curator’ – a quirky, obsessive librarian who inhabited Babel’s library, and ‘Natalie’ as my true persona / the performer. Eventually, the curator slipped away and it seemed that I would instead take on a characterised version of myself for the non-Bertha portions of the performance. It was at this point that I decided my costume should be a simple, grey shirt-dress; something plain and colourless seemed fitting for Bertha, whilst the grey also seemed to fit the cold, dystopian library. However, I added a touch of Natalie to my costume by wearing thick, woolly, slightly holey, grey knee high socks, pooled around my ankles; a trademark comfort when I’m around the house.

 

By our final session as a whole class, I was feeling fairly comfortable with the majority of my script, except for the introduction. How should my audience enter and how should the piece actually begin? It was at this point that Martin and the class suggested that I go further than being ‘Natalie the performer’ and try just being Natalie. After all, I had always felt the need to address the constructedness of the performance, for I would know all of my audience and they would know me, and so know that I was, obviously, performing. I also reconsidered the technique used in creating the script for Major Tom; telling stories off the top of your head and transcribing the result. This led me to combine some earlier text, documented in the ‘Introductions…’ blog post, with some direct address to the audience in which I would speak as Natalie, tell them that I would at times also be ‘performing’ some text through the Natalie they all know and taking on an entirely separate character too.

Straight from the Artist’s Mouth

When researching for my essay, I found it really interesting and informative to watch and read a variety of interviews conducted with the artists I was writing about.

  • Marina Abramović

 

The following extract is transcribed from Carrie Scott’s above In Your Face interview with Abramović:

MA: As soon as I’m performing, I think that I um, I, I’m not playing somebody else, I’m just me.

CS: So do you think then, that there is a line between you and the work?

MA: I don’t think so, it’s a really blurred, maybe the beginning of my career there is a line but  then it’s blurred completely, because first of all I always work from the, my experience and then this experience, it’s about me experience them, and then I try to translate, that um, ideas into the work and then I try to find the key that this experience becomes transcendental so that everybody can find himself in, inside that work and become universal, because who cares about your own private life otherwise? (1)

This interview was not only helpful for considering Abramović’s ideas, concerns and aesthetics for my essay, but also informed my performance. The above quote made me realise the value and appropriateness of autobiographical work that is not explicitly ‘my life story from A-Z’. Instead, one can take a personal point and expand and distort it, to make it applicable to an wide audience, as we see Gray do with much of his work.

 

  • Spalding Gray

In his last recorded interview, Gray said “in order to live my life in a free and open way, I have to have a monologue going. That’s my way into the world.”  (2) This idea encouraged me to continue developing a piece based on personal experience and feelings, in order to process those things, whilst aiming to create a wide-reaching piece of social commentary.

 

 

  • Adrian Howells

This interview was conducted for the British Arts Council, with Howells discussing what his work aims to do and why.

AH: “I kind of feel that what I’m doing is almost like a collective catharsis, a global catharsis, that’s what I’m after, that’s what I’m interested in [chuckles].”

This quote really struck a chord with me as I was feeling like this was the sort of thing that, as a year group, we needed; because everybody’s in the same boat but nobody’s talking to each other and that’s horribly lonely and terrifying. Putting Howells’ idea on a more immediate scale, I could use solo as a platform to highlight and bridge some of the space between us as a collective, and perhaps in doing so ease not only my own anxiety but make clear to anyone in the audience feeling similarly that they were not alone. (3)

 

 

(1) Abramović, Marina and Carrie Scott (2014)  In Your Face: Interview: Marina Abramović, Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRSvNVL0P-4 (accessed 6 February 2015).

(2) Smalec, Theresa (2008) ‘Spalding Gray’s Last Interview: The Edited Transcript’, New England Theatre Journal, 19 (2): pp. 53-69.

(3) Howells, Adrian (2010) An Interview with Adrian Howells, Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7btf8Tdg_s (accessed April 2015).

I am questioning, everything.

I am questioning, everything.

What I have/n’t learnt.

What I have/n’t been taught.

What I know.

What I can do with that knowledge.

What I should do with it.

Where I should go.

How our past impresses upon our future path.

What we deem ‘important’ and ‘proper’.

 

What answers am I looking for and where will I find them?

Introductions…

A snippet of text that created itself one distracted evening… (Excuse my grammatically incorrect use of commas to distinguish vocal pauses.)

So, I wanted to tell you a story. That’s, kind of the point of this whole thing; me being here, you being here. The whole, construct that we’re working with here means that you’re going to listen to me, whether you enjoy yourselves or hate every second is kind of by the by, that’s down to you as much as it is down to me. But, enjoyment aside, I have 8-12 minutes of your attention, give or take. Which, considering I’ve been talking for about 90 seconds already and haven’t given you the least clue as to what story I’m about to tell you, isn’t all that long. And when I realised that, suddenly this felt like a pretty serious responsibility, that is, choosing which story to tell. I mean, I wasn’t quite sure which story I wanted to tell…

 

Revisiting Babel as Script

I spent some time working out how directly Borges’ The Library of Babel was going to be involved in my actual script. This is a collection of, in my opinion, the most important extracts that I would like to involve in my final piece.

Come, come, come. I hope you enjoyed your time in Great British Literature from the 19th and 20th century! Everyone does; plenty of familiar names in there. What I’ve got to show you is something quite different. For all isn’t as it seems to be.

The Great Library in which we stand, some call it the universe, contains all. Every story that is, has been and will be exists within this great library for I declare that the library is endless, infinite. Though today we stand in just one of an endless number of rooms, each constructed just as this one is, with six sides and four bookcases each holding 32 books of 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, standing side by side, on every side, and one on top of the other, each with a single square shaft through which one can glimpse the others, continuing on from one another endlessly, and so know the limitlessness of the great library.

There is no combination of characters one can make that the divine library has not forseen, [and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance] for the Library is total, perfect, complete and whole. [For every rational line or forth-right statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense and incoherency.] The certainty that everything has already been written, annuls us.

Clearly no one expects to discover anything. And yet, I think, therefore I am, I wonder how it is then, tell me this, if every story exists why hasn’t every tale been told?

Why is it that we know and ‘love’ and remember those stories and simply accept them as the ones we should read, without question?

What if I could tell you a story that you had never heard, for you had never sought to find it?

This is my goal, my collection, my legacy.  [Methodological composition distracts me from the present condition of humanity] Here stands the works of a collector who sought the unseen stories, for, in order for a book to exist it is sufficient only that it be possible…

 

Yet, let me tell you this; the Library itself is infinite, that we have established, yet if every story can be written in 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, those letters being only those belonging to our pre-existing, predetermined alphabet, the combination of those letters though unimaginably vast is not infinite.

Those who picture the world as unlimited forget that the possible number of books is not. Therefore, the library is unlimited, yet periodic. Travelling for the greatest length of time one would find them same volumes repeated in the same disorder which, in being so, becomes order.

[When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing, my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve in the wind engendered by my fall, which will be infinite.]

I am cheered by that. But must leave you with this and urge you to remember, it is not as it seems to be.