Just be here 21/01/2012
 
More from Tim Etchells.

"If there were a tangible contract between the performers and the audience, what in your opinion is the most important thing this contract would include?

For me the most important thing as an audience member is an openness to being there - to watching and experiencing what is actually happening. That sounds very simple, but I think for most of us, myself included, that’s hard, because you come with other things on your mind, with expectations and preoccupations and it’s very easy to get confused between what you’re looking at and what you wish you were seeing. I suppose that in some way every performance strives to create that quite fundamental contact, that contract, which is to say: We are here, you are there, and this is the moment we are engaged in together.
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This focus on engagement-  on presentness - is a struggle against the idea of the audience as a passive consumer of spectacle, against performance in which those watching are not implicated, not truly present. I know, this is a cruel way to think about an audience; a hungry animal that needs something to happen, bloodthirsty, eager for quick pleasures."

-Tim Etchells (Full interview here)

Reminded me of this post and of some of the stuff we're learning and thinking about in Wake Less.
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Two really cool devised theatre videos form Youtube- one is a clip from Kate McIntosh's "Dark Matter", which Fiona saw in Munich and wrote about earlier this year. The other one is a great recent video about process from Forced Entertainment.
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Off our chests 21/08/2010
 
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We were sarcastic to babies. We left jellyfish on the beach access steps, we wrapped a piece of dry ice in bread and fed it to a seagull, we crucified tuataras by the tracks in national parks. We thought our deodorant would get us laid by two girls at once- we weren’t even half right. We amputated the wrong limb- we had been drinking. We saw Jermaine in Patel’s and acted like he was our friend. We mouthed the national anthem, we pissed on the field. We paid her $150,000 on the quiet, which is almost $40,000 per vertebrae and not a bad hourly rate.  We needed constant distraction, a soundtrack, we had to be occupied all the time, we hated gaps, we had no attention span, we were never satisfied doing one thing at a time. We laughed at three legged dogs and sometimes we'd make them jump for food. We went around pouring raro into people's hot water cylinders. We declared war on God when we knew he was omnipotent. We sold pictures of the tumour to Woman’s Day. We hosted breakfast television; we were naked from the waist down. We knew 9/11 was going to happen and we could have warned people but our bed was warm and we didn’t have money on our phones. We rewrote Shakespeare with happy endings. We changed our relationship status to “it’s pointless.” We did our calculations in imperial instead of metric, four astronauts were asphyxiated. We tried to kill ourselves but messed it up, so we did the research and wrote a book called SUICIDE FOR DUMMIES- it was a bestseller, life got better. We put your toothbrush where the sun don’t shine. We put pornographic Harry potter slash fiction in the children’s library. We wrote fucking disgusting things with your magnetic poetry. We joined causes on Facebook.  Our ipods were full of pirated NZ music. We couldn’t keep conversations going, we found it difficult to read between the lines, we were borderline all sorts of things. We wore bangles to indicate to the boys what we were willing to do- green meant oral, blue was for with a condom, red without- we turned our collars down to show him we were up for it. We were small fish in a tiny pond. We’re guilty of static, of white noise, polystyrene packaging and bubble wrap, we put the huge amount of junk information in your DNA. We got into the stranger’s car- the offer was just too good. We cried when people died in movies because we couldn’t help thinking it could be you. We got our gum caught in your pubic hair. We wore Che Guevara T-shirts. We misplaced parts of the infant’s body, we buried her incomplete. We yelled at cicadas. We knew where Carmen San Diego was all along.
A selection from in-rehearsal explorations of Speak Bitterness in 2008. Written by Rachel, Claire, Simon, Ralph and Joel, after Forced Entertainment. Continues- click "read more".
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Comedy 05/05/2010
 
Seeing the hilarious Sammy J at Downstage last night added to a feeling that other performers have a bit to learn from comedians in terms of audience acknowledgement and presence. From Sammy's casual remark on the topic of his home renovation: "I've knocked down the fourth wall and now I've got a great view of the audience" to the almost unnoticeable "bless you" as one of us sneezed in the middle of an emotional speech - it just seemed, you know, right. As in, not a big deal. Here's to that.

Before that I'd been enjoying this clip from Sight Is The Sense That Dying People Tend To Lose First as a kind of cross between stand-up and performance art. It seems to me like a twist on the idea of the comedian in this context as a sort of educator, the one against the many, getting up and sharing with us how the world really is. And again, we've got a part to play in the performance.
In a not unrelated vein, here's a really interesting article exploring the pleasures and perils of audience interaction (as recommended by Tim), and it reminds me of some recent debates on theatreview about active audiences, and some problems we've had with our own work. Who really has the power in these situations, who's really taking the risks?

"On the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 one company had the not-so-bright idea of making an interactive show about Auschwitz, which cast the audience as Jews being led to the gas chambers. The performers (who played the camp guards) were so hectoring and aggressive that one critic physically resisted them. After the show, artists and critic got involved in a brawl, and the show’s director was given a formal warning by the police."

And I'm sure it seemed like such a clever idea at the time...
Full article
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"I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did was not acceptable," said Woods, looking composed and speaking in a steady voice. His wife, Elin, was not with him. (full story)

Tiger Woods has taken a break from his golfing career to perform a solo version of Forced Entertainment's landmark 1994 piece Speak Bitterness, in which the guilty take turns to take the blame for everything. Ok, so even if this isn't the actual intention (lord knows its hard to find and speak in one's own voice as an artist), Woods' performance is best read as a homage. Its all there: from the queasy, duplicitious exploration of sincerity, motives, justifications and the need to confess, right down to the garish blue background. The desire of the performer to tactically humble himself gives a stong element of ritual to this type of theatre. Look at the faces of the audience, playing the game with him, fully illuminated and there to be spoken to directly.

As for coming back to the PGA Tour, the planet's best golfer said: "I do plan to return to golf one day. I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out it will be this year."

Great dissection of what on earth is going on here (and with MPs in NZ, and guilty celebrities everywhere) in the New Yorker.
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Fantastic. I love stuff polls, even the more sensible ones like the one shown above. Who needs boring old Radio New Zealand when we've got this calibre of news info-tainment and logical mind of Michael Laws at our fingertips. (Oh god I'm so ashamed.)
-Ralph
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Check out the website of  Free Theatre Christchurch, especially the Theatre of Unease essay. In it, Peter Falkenburg argues that whereas NZ film has a history of roughness and difficulty, (cinema of unease), "the mirror that New Zealand theatre seems to hold up to its audience seems to be one of reassurance, that everything is all right or it will be." Worth a peek. We shared The Globe in Dunedin with Free Theatre at the start of the year and saw first hand the unsettling and very uneasy Ella and Sussn. Hope they get to Wellington again soon!

Also, have a look at the handsome and mellifluous home of Barbarian Productions

In Etchells news, hope you're following this guardian column and that you've read this.

-Ralph
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