Archive | March 2014

The tulips are too red

Through discussions in class, I was introduced to the American poet Sylvia Plath whose work famously talks of her depression and attempted suicide. She turned the tragedy of her pain into beauty through the words of her work. Her work is a real inspiration for me when trying to create my own poems which will be spoken in my performance. Here is an extract from one of her poems, Tulips.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.

Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe

Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.

Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.

They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,

Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,

A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.

The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me

Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,

And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.

The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,

Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.

Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.

Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river

Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.

They concentrate my attention, that was happy

Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.

The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;

They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health.

(Poetry Foundation, 2014)

I have also read extracts from her novel, The Bell Jar, and a particular section jumped out at me. The words beautifully explained how I often feel when overtaken by depression and I knew I would have to include them into my performance.

I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. (Plath, 2003, p.4)

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia (2004) The Bell Jar. England: Harper Large Print.

Poetry Foundation (2014) [online] Chicago: Available from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178974 [Accessed 15 March 2014].

Influences from the space

Mar14

After deciding where I wanted my solo work to be performed, today I explored the space and set up the flats in order to block off the area I desired (With a little help from the boys for manual lifting!) I was influenced by a performance by Gina Radford who performed in the space last year. The image of her in the space was very powerful and one I hope to achieve through my performance. Physically standing in the space was both exciting and daunting. It created the sense of privacy I needed to explore my ‘private’ self, whilst open enough to look out in the ‘public’ self. It also made me feel quite vulnerable as I was encased into a tight performance space, trapped from any contact with the outside.

The performance space: 14/03/14

Being in the space really helped to visualise the performance and inspired many ideas for the visual and aural aspects of performance. Looking out into the ‘public’ space in which my audience will sit, I thought it might be interesting to decorate that space with all the things associated with the happy, excited and sometimes childish side of my personality. The space could be covered with fairy lights, flowers, cuddly toys and Disney inspired decorations. This comforting and positive space would then provide contrast with the world within my private self and indeed the space in which I will perform. To provide a sense of progression, ‘public’ objects such as fairy lights and toys may gradually be added to the space as if through the reveal of the private self, the public self can seep through the barrier and allow the two to merge. This is a true reflection of me and my progress through the battle with depression; hiding and covering the truth from others only feeds my insecurities and often talking about it helps me feel more confident and more myself.

Isolating myself from others in the group also helped to create more text for my performance. Some of the spoken texts are poems which I have found that I can relate to and will work well for the performance. Others are texts which I have wrote myself, on the idea of the public and private self and my own thoughts when alone and able to be free with my real emotions and feelings. The following is something I wrote in the space which may end up being part of the spoken dialogue:

I often feel like I’m just existing

I crawl into a ball, numb from life,

From disappoints, betrayals and the loneliness inside my head.

It’s the hardest challenge to act as if you are living,

Living in every second and gaining fulfilment from life,

When in fact you just exist,

With a fake smile covered in lipstick

I am still undecided as to how much speech will be live and how much will be recorded; however I’m sure that will become clear as the devising process continues.

‘The Naked Self’

Mar5

In class we were asked to create a piece of work based around a set structure we had been given. This was the start of our creative process. The basic frame to initiate ideas was:

-Lights go black

-Empty Chair in corner

-Spotlight from the side

-A voice is heard

Initially I found it hard to create an idea as to what should happen and found that the reason for my difficulty was that I was thinking too much instead of just allowing idea’s to flow; after all no idea is a bad idea as they can lead you to new and more intriguing thought and vision. Eventually I ended up daydreaming about silly things that made me happy as a person, which then inspired me to go into a piece on emotion. As dialogue, I listed all the things which make my soul happy and give my life joy. Some of the words are silly little things, others play a much bigger role in the happiness of my life. Here is a snippet of the text:

“Animals. Disney. Singing. Friends. Dancing. Summer. Chocolate. Shopping. Puppies. Disneyland. Photographs”

The words are simple and I expect that as more idea’s build so will the dialogue however I wanted the start to be simple and concise. I imagined a person (me) to be sat on the chair delivering the dialogue, reacting naturally to the words as they are spoken. I also wanted bright warm colours such as pinks, oranges and yellows to fill the stage as the dialogue progresses, reflecting the happiness from the words. As influenced by Laurie Anderson’s use of multimedia and from suggestions from others in the lesson, I thought that whilst the words were being spoken, synonyms of the word ‘happy’ would be projected simultaneously such as, ‘cheerful’, ‘elated’, ‘joyous’ and ‘contented’. I then imagined a sudden change of tone with the introduction of a sound effect of either white noise or a door slam. After this, the dialogue would begin again however this time instead of happy words being projected, the words will juxtapose the spoken word. Projected words would include, ‘depressed’, ‘melancholy’, ‘troubled’ and ‘pained’. Whilst this section is being performed, the lights will flicker between the colour and the harsh spot around the chair.

For me Solo performance is a very self-expressive form, as Bonney suggests Solo performance is a, “naked presentation of a single person(a)” (1999, xiv). Although this is only my first initial idea and structural features of the performance are undoubtedly going to change throughout the process of devising, for a solo piece of work I believe that it makes sense for even in a small way the performance to be a personal experience. This personal exploration can then be shared with an audience allowing them to wonder how the piece may be personal to them or someone close to them. Emotions are something which are a big part of my life. As a sufferer of depression, it is difficult to control how I feel on a daily basis and often become a prisoner to my own mind and thoughts. Although naturally I am a happy, bubbly and outgoing person, this part of me is often hidden and for a year I hid the illness I suffered from, in the fear of people changing their perceptions on who I was or judging me for my illness. Luckily I have found the strength to become more confident about it and feel that maybe through performance I can express something personal and important to me whilst reaching out to others who may be suffering with a similar illness or at least make the whole thing less of a taboo subject. Regardless of where my performance goes, I know that song will be an important part as it the one performance method which gives me the most fulfilment. I hope to play with these ideas further as the weeks go on.

Works Cited

Bonney, Jo (ed.) (2000) Extreme Exposure: an anthology of solo performance texts from the twentieth century. New York: Theatre Communications Group