Hi All

Today is the last taught seminar lesson blog. That means its the final aspect of the current issues in Drama, Theatre & Performance – Focusing on the audience and the reality of live-streamed theatre into the cinemas.

My views on live-streaming can be seen as a positive for the audience members who either fall into two categories. One being the audience member/s can not get the actual theatre because they live too far away or the other category group  is the audience member/s who can not afford to go the theatre. Sometimes going to the theatre say in the West End can be too expensive to go and see a performance. So live streaming is more accessible for more people. However this can encourage the wrong sort of people going to see a production in the cinema.

NT Live (National theatre) decided to display there productions across the country to make theatre more accessible for smaller communities to see theatre, but by doing this they are taking away the aspect feeling you get of Liveness when seeing a production in the theatre. The atmosphere with in a cinema screening room is completely different. The audience take away the feeling of being in the theatre. You follow certain rules when in a theatre auditorium  for example: You would not eat food (well most people follow that rule) until the interval if applicable. Yet in a cinema you are allowed to eat throughout the performance – well you’re not disturbing the performers on stage.

This issue links in with the digital performance argument with technology taking us other like a cyborg.

 “Characteristics that young people identified as key components of their experience of liveness . . . : audience; the comfort and discomfort of presentness; performer vulnerability, risk and uncertainty; proximity to the live action; perceptions of realness; a sense of relationship with the actors; and the intensity of engagement”. (2012)

Theatre does not nor was made to be shown through the cameras’ eye, it was designed to entertain the masses live in a theatre. One of the problems felt by may people who are used to going to the theatre regularly say that the camera can not pick up on every piece of detail from the stage. Even if a performance is filmed with the use of multi-cam angles – it will never give you a true representation of the theatre.

In the session we had an open debate on our own views and opinions of Liveness in the theatre and the Liveness you get from watching theatre on a cinema screen.

There is many more points both good and bad when it comes to the aspect of “Liveness”.

Right then that’s all folks… Well sort of, got my reflection blog to do.

Thank you and goodnight

Bye x

Work Cited

Penny Bundy, Kate Donelan, Robyn Ewing, Josephine Fleming, Madonna Stinson, and Meg Upton, “Talking about Liveness: Responses of Young People in the Theatrespace Project,” NJ: DramaAustralia Journal 36 (2012): 18.

Hi All

To think there is only a couple of weeks left of seminars then I’ll have to start creating a miniature performance with my trusty classmates, Heather and Selma in less than two months. No pressure…

For this seminar session, we discussed an past production we have seen which left an impact on us in terms of the spacing or its location or even the context of the performance.

I recalled a performance I saw back in 2009 with my performing arts apprenticeship class. The performance was called This is it, well it was a physical theatre piece. Now for anyone who knows me I’m not much of a physical theatre fan but it was part of the course that I went, much to my dismay. Yet I think the reason why it left an impact on me was the smell of the tiny performance space. The stage was set in the transverse style having only two actors present on stage. Now the theatre itself was not an actual theatre, the ground floor was a pub that was still in full working order. The cureent owner decided to turn the upper floor into a performance space. However the performance space was set in a cage. Yes very odd, but I really enjoyed it. The smell that kept presenting itself throughout the performance was the smell of beer and other spirits.

During the seminar we discussed about performances, and while everything is a performance or not. Space awareness as well bringing famous people into theatre, especially the story Daniel (our tutor this week) told us.

We watched a few clips of different style of performances in different spaces.

That’s pretty much it for this session as it was a verbal discussion.

See you next week.

Bye x

Hi All

Today we covered the Digital performance and Virtual practice. Now I first thought this was the element of performances being displayed at the local cinema, however I was wrong – we were told what goes into a digital performance.

Time to learn some new words…

Immersion: We become dependant on technology for example nearly everyone nowadays has a mobile phone where they are addicted too. Or we become too dependant on the internet and computers trying to discover information and new facts out instead of looking in a book.

• Immersion Performances is not a new form of theatre.

Cognitive Immersion: Suspension of disbelief – immersion in an imaginary world.

Sensory Immersion: is a variant of immersion within an environment (virtual or otherwise) in which all the person’s senses are immersed into that environment, with each one, as much as possible, reporting back data from that environment.

Hypermedia and Transparent media are the same thing.

• The internet is always developing as technology improves, some say that the internet could be interpreted as a site specific performance.

In the lesson, Dan (the tutor teaching us this week) showed us a few different videos of digital performances. One that I found really entertaining and different was an installation piece by Janet Cardiff. She was looking closely at the human sensory system. So instead of watching a performance the audience heard a group of choir singers through thirty different speakers to echo the sound you would hear if you were in a church.

Janet Cardiff’s “40 Part Motet” from 2013

So on to the Post-Human?

“the emergent relationship between the human and the machine as creating a hybrid subjectivity that is continuously moving between the material realm of bodily agency and the informational realm of digitality” (Klich, 2011, p. 189).

As technology is improving so is the human life form. We have now started using machines to improve the way we live. We have reached a point in the technology where humans are not just human beings but half human half machine. I feel like I can say that as I’ve got ten pieces of metal in my left arm. Maybe I could be seen as turning into a cyborg? Who knows..

In 2007, Performance Artist Stelarc. known for he use of robots and metal went one step further to create a “third ear” on his forearm. Why on earth would you want to do that is beyond me, I guess he wanted to prove you can do that. The ear has been fitted with a Bluetooth and microphone for the ear to become a fully functional working ear. Don’t try this at home kids, this ear was developed in a lab, yet there are many people who argue and express there feeling by saying its “offensive and distressing” (BBC, 2007). I would not go that far with the comments I personally find it odd.

Stelarc’s third ear

Dan went on to add, “technology is always improving so humans are becoming mere technological like robots. Everything for fixing sensors ie. Hearing or visually seeing, to enhancing the body features”. (Hunt, 2016).

We got split into small teams for the last hour of so of the lesson to create the #lincolnnoir on social media site Twitter. By going into Lincoln High Street, taking photos and small videos using the noir filter to create a different style of digital theatre piece. Honestly this was the best fun I have had with this module.

These photos are just some that were taken on my phone and put onto Twitter.

If you would like to see more of these please click on the link https://twitter.com/hashtag/lincolnnoir?src=hash 

Till next time

Bye x

Work Cited:

BBC Health (2007) Performer Gets Third Ear for Art [online] Available at  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7039821.stm > Accessed [17/11/2016]

Cardiff, Janet (2013) The 40 Part Motet – Sensory. [online] Pintrest. Available from https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=janet+cardiff+sensory&safe=strict&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=613&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwvZ7rztPRAhUkKsAKHY7NBRkQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=Z1hzLHjgwUis3M%3A [Accessed 17th November 2016].

Hunt, Daniel (2016) Week Seven: Digital Performance and Virtual Practice [Lecture] Current Issues in Drama, Theatre and Performance. University of Lincoln. 17th November 2016.

Klich, Rosemary (2011) Multimedia Performance, London: Macmillan.  pp. 178-203

Levesque-Payne, Sophie. (2016) Lincoln Noir Photos.

Wisco, Albert (2013) The 40 Part Motet by Janet Cardiff [online video] Available from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncWFLzVrwU4&feature=youtu.be [accessed 17 November 2016].

Hi All,

This weeks’ post is going to be a short one i’m afraid as I was not present for this lesson, but I will explain what I got from the readings.

So the dramatic text as a current issue. Surely any text could be seen as dramatic? Yes and no really its the way you approach and interpret the text itself.

Reading Dan Rebellato’s paper he asks the question “When We Talk of Horses Or, what do we see when we see a play?”. I thought about what I do when I go to see a play. I see it from the prospective of an audience member as well as a technical point of view so looking at the use of lighting and sound affects. I think now I do not see a show as a form of entertainment, I feel its different if you are not trained in the arts you would only see it as a form of entertainment.

He goes on to explain in a paragraph about  VISUALISING VS . IMAGINING

 

“…I recognise something like this happening when I read a novel; often I find that while reading I have formed an indistinct visualisation of the scene in the back of my mind. If I pay closer attention to that, I often realise I have taken a remembered image and subtracted or smudged out some aspects of it. The novel has entered an abandoned, broken-down cottage; I remember a cottage we stayed in on holiday when I was young, and I subtract from it signs of life and habitation”. (2009).

Is the best way to understand a dramatic text is to both visualise the setting like you would when reading a novel.

I was told in the seminar, they work shopped Simon Stephen’s Pornography. After reading the play and notes written by Jacqueline Bolton you get a better understanding what a Dramatic text is. As she mentions;

“When studying a dramatic play-text, it is often useful to break it down into elementary components: plot, structure, character, dialogue and themes. This seems a logical approach: by analysing these formal elements in isolation we are better equipped to understand how they interact and combine as drama. There are plays, however, that demonstrate such an assured synthesis of form and content that they resist this neat compartmentalisation of formal elements: Simon Stephens’s Pornography (2007) provides one of our best contemporary examples”. (Botlon, 2012, p. 14).

This meets all the requirements to create an entertaining and an truly impacting play.

That’s all for today, I promise my next post will be better.

Till then

Bye x

Work Cited:

Bolton, Jacqueline. (2012) Notes on Pornography by Simon Stephens. Bloomsbury. pp. 14.

Rebellato, Dan. (2009) When We Talk of Horses Or, what do we see when we see a play? Performance Research paper 14. Taylor & Francis Ltd. pp. 17-28

Hi All,

Week five already?

Utter madness to think I’ve done just over a month’s worth of MA study.

Right to continue with this post about the post-dramatic theatre. Looking at play writing, scripting and devising theatre!!

“The audience’s relationship with the piece they are seeing might not be what they were expecting to see”. (Bolton,2016).

Looking closely  at the work by Hans-Thies Lehmann, he writes about the theory on the Post-Dramatic movement in the arts world. Originally he wrote the post-dramatic theatre in German back in 1999. He explains in his work that “Post Dramatic theatre does not follow the form of more traditional theatre and text. The stage is the vehicle of the dramatic play text”. (Bolton, 2016).

What is the fiction in Drama?

Well, I discovered that Post Dramatic theatre is the latter of Drama with characters. Yet when it comes to live art, the artists are making work outside the ‘normal’ theatre. Similar to creating and devising a theatre performance – you create a performance without the use or need of a playwright. It has a triangle method of rejecting the text itself. ‘comprehensive and accessible theory articulating the relationship between drama and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have emerged since the 1970s’ (Lehmann, 2006, p. 1).

Deconstructing theatre from drama…

Peter Szondi has a method of Time, Place, Action. When creating and writing a play text.

So in terms of a traditional pantomime, mentions and interacts with the audience (sort of breaking down the fourth wall).

• Action & Plot – A clear narrative throughout the text.
• Catharsis – The brining about of a collective & reciprocal feeling or emotion from the audience, in response to what is shown on stage.
• The primacy of the text– The staging consists of what has been constituted by an author.
• The constructive of a fictive cosmos – The ability for the audience to enter the world of the play.

Theatre is not a product you can buy and take home. You are buying the experience of the performance. If you buy a play text you not just reading the words but the symbols of the performance.

In the seminar, we discussed Tim Crouch as a playwright and theatre maker going against the post-dramatic movement as Lehmann wrote about. Crouch creates the complete opposite with his works. looking at An Oak Tree (2005), the text asks for a member of the audience to join the actor on stage with a script. Also having a quick look at Martin Crimp’s The City (2008) you see the difference in writing styles. I felt that The City play felt more of a conversational play that was like normal everyday conversations you would have with people around you.

Some would see Crouch as a Post-Dramatic Theatre Artist than a playwright. I can see why that would been seen.

Right then, till next time.

Bye x

Works Cited:

Bolton, Jacqueline (2016) ‘Week Five: The Postdramatic’ [Lecture] Current Issues in Drama, Theatre and Performance. University of Lincoln.  27^nd October 2016.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, Translated from German by K. Jürs-Munby, London: Routledge.

Szondi, Peter (1987) Theory of the Modern Drama. University of Minnesota Press.