So for our second week of performance extracts we created an apple circus. I was the ring master character, whilst other characters consisted of; apple juggling, apple mime, apple poi and various carnival games that used apples instead of balls. What we tried to do achieve in this performance was injecting fun and humor into a performance by almost satirizing circus performing but at the same time showing something new and exciting by replacing circus equipment with apples. However what became apparent in this performance was that even when creating something to be laughed at, it doesn’t necessarily mean an audience will laugh at it.

So far we have been at a disadvantage, in the sense that our audience are our colleagues and friends. Erving Goffman says  that ‘Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.’ (Goffman, 1959, p 24) This relates to our circus performance, as we as a group of performers have, whether consciously or unconsciously created and tailored a performance that will make our friends and peers laugh. Our moral right in this case is that our audience will laugh, which of course they will because they are of our social group. Goffman goes on to tell us that humans, when interacting avoid conflict wherever possible and take precautions to prevent disruption, so therefore negative feedback among friendship circles is often sparse. Although special interest in these disruptions plays a significant role in a social group in the form of ‘Practical jokes and social games are played in which embarrassments which are to be taken unseriously are purposefully engineered.’ (Goffman,1959, p, 25) In other words, when performing a piece of comedy in front of an audience that knows you well, they will not take faults in the performances seriously, and take it in more of a practical joke way. In terms of the amount of laughter our circus performance produced you would think our presentation would have been a raving success, but allowing time for self reflection I can see that in front of different audience our piece would topple like a precarious tightrope walker, whose only previous experience had been with a safety net.

Through this discovery, as a group we have decided to look again at how we can make the relationship between audience and performer different between the traditional  spectator that would enter a theatre with certain expectations. After all Mike Pearson comments that ‘Audience need not be categorized, or even consider themselves, as ‘audience’, as a collective with common attributes.’ (Pearson, 2010, p, 175) In a conventional theatre the actors have the power, they are the ones that are the sole captives of the audiences attention. What we have decided is to give the audience the power. By performing our whole piece in a shop window with no sound to attract audience, it is the passers by who have the power to stop and view the performance, or even to turn their head and acknowledge it. We realized we don’t need to ‘spoon feed’ audiences and entice them into a performance space, as human interaction is more complex than that. If we as performers create something engaging it wont go unnoticed. ‘All three sets of relationship, performer/performer, performer/spectator, spectator/spectator, become part of an active matrix of interaction and available for negotiation.’ (Pearson, 2010, p, 175)

Goffman, E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Penguin Books

Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

So progress in the creative process so far. We’ve pitched our idea and have started experimenting with performance, last week we put together a five minute performance reenacting the tale of an apple falling and hitting Issac Newton. This short piece of drama looked into the historical connotations behind apples. In this short extract we were able to inject comedy into the performance making the piece engaging for all age ranges whilst remaining as historically accurate. This week we are broadening into even more entertaining ways to educate our audience and make full use of 101 apples. Our performance this week is an apple circus. incorporating juggling with apples, a apple joke telling clown, mime artist and carnival games involving apples. We have come up with the idea to have several` performances as a sort of flashmob amongst other more static uses of the apples, these performance based flashmobs will consist of the historical, the entertaining and the scientific. As next week we plan to demonstrate actual science using apples.

For this site specific performance to be successful it has to be varied, I see it as a talent/variety show with apples instead of contestants. All of us involved in this project are currently in the process of experimenting. So coming up with ideas, rehearsing them, getting feedback. This process will allow us to collect the most interesting and polished 101 things to do with an apple.

Other important updates… As a group we are now called The A Team!! (No copyright intended)

Steve Jobs, has nothing to do with Grantham. He also has nothing to do with Issac Newton, although there are definitely parallels between them. Both Newton and Jobs made us view the world differently and that’s what Site Specific is all about. This week we learned about space and what it actually means in relation to us. There is space all around us but our eyes simply view it in mundane ways. I am sat in my room – that is space. In Lincoln – a bigger space. In England – a large space. In the world and even the universe and beyond – spaces that seem unimaginable. Sat typing this blog up I am looking at the space bar, which is in a space all of its own. I reflect on this now because I very much like the idea of non-space, i.e an area that doesn’t correlate with you and what you might be presently doing. In my performance I would like to create a minimal installation, that perhaps forces an audience to eventually see the non-space surrounding it.

However getting back to Steve Jobs and why I picked him in comparison to Newton. There is one thing that links these two geniuses and that is… Apple. The word ‘apple’ has two completely different meanings to these two individuals. To Jobs it is technology and science, to Newton it is gravity and myth. It is these two individuals that have fused together my idea and subsequent pitch for Gravity Fields, 101 things to do with an ‘apple’. The idea is to create an installation that turns the myth of an apple falling and allowing Newton to explore gravity, into educational science. Having already discussed as group various ways to use an apple we plan on creating scientific experiments that would make even Newton himself proud.

I have so much to write and so little of it makes sense, however I feel that’s my fault for not keeping on top of my blog. I definitely have to do one after every seminar session because my mind just becomes completely bombarded with ideas and images.

The first thing i wanted to talk about was my response to some of the you tube clips of other site specific drama, this really opened my eyes in terms of what performance is. I found Goffman’s thoughts about presentation of the body particularly interesting as he raised the question of why do we feel the need to perform in society? This is a subject i find really fascinating, delving into societies ideologies.

The second thing is what we now have to come up with, after an enlightening chat with Jeremy from Gravity Fields Festival, this performance has already morphed from looking into shops but to looking into science, but the most important element is the fusion of those elements. So without anymore ado my 30 second elevator pitch is this… I want to create a piece based on Newton’s imagination and thought process when the apple fell from the tree and he discovered gravity. (Myth or no myth it is directly related to Newton and his theories) This piece would come about through the interactivity of a simple shop owner selling apples in a vacant shop in Grantham during the festival, the audience would enter the shop and be convinced of sampling an apple, the owner could tell the story related to Newton, and various other performers come to life and reenact the moment and his relative teachings. For example the performers could re create space within a space, having the apple in the centre, mimicking the sun. …. My thoughts on this are still vague but I like the idea of playing with the myth of the apple. It feels like the perfect blend of science (Newton’s life) and drama (creating a story)

Having had time to reflect on what will most likely be the most consuming module this semester, I am definitely excited to create something new and innovative around the theme of retail therapy.  Although for some reason I cannot see what the others have written in terms of ideas, my initial thought was to perhaps not get too hooked on the link between shops and retail therapy. I personally would perhaps like to explore into something deeper, perhaps the basic transaction between one product and another and how else this framework is used in other aspects of life. Alternatively it could be quite interesting to recreate the space, regarding the shop’s history, for example if we researched that one shop was a butchers, we could then use that as stimulus instead. How we would collect this information however, I don’t know, but using Grantham history could be very creative in terms of performing in the festival later on.

I also have some other ideas that are perhaps a bit vague at the moment but might be worth mentioning. I like the idea of using shopping trolleys… maybe for some kinds of synchronized movement.  Also I thought it could be really fun to have a dystopian shop, kind of like a shop built for a zombie apocalypse…. like I say not quite sure where I’m going with these ideas, but I am very excited for the journey.