This post is dedicated to informing our readers of how our performance has developed from our initial conceptions to what we now have.
To begin with, as a performer I am captivated with the combination of durational and one-to-one performance. This is because I feel that a one-to-one performance allows both the performer and the non-performer to begin to experience a very personal journey together and if the piece is durational then they get to complete that journey together uninterrupted.
As the members of this group feel similar to how I do about this performance medium, durational one-to-one performance has always been the heartbeat of our performance idea. To begin with, we wanted to explore the question of ‘There are tens of thousands of words in the English language, so why do we only ever use the same two to three thousand over and over again when we talk to each other?’ To explore this question we were going to take it in turns to read out loud every word and definition in the largest dictionary we could find from cover to cover. We were going to group the words together so one person would read A through to E, the next person would read F through to J and so on.
Through discussing and refining this idea we began to ask ourselves what was the real reason behind asking this question. We came to the conclusion that because we are limiting ourselves from using the full extent of the English language, we were limiting ourselves in the interactions we were having between each other. This provoked the new question of ‘What are we limiting ourselves from in our interactions?’
To answer this, I looked at the very core of human interactions and discovered that it is intimacy which is at the heart of all interaction. For example, if we are very intimate with someone – say a lover or close family member – then we are very happy to engage them and are very open to them in our interactions with them. Likewise, if we are very hostile with someone then we do not even try to engage them and instead we try to cut them off or block their interactions with us. I soon realised that depending on where you are on this line affects your interactions with someone. I then started to question ‘If someone could be moved along this line towards a place of intimacy, would their interactions become more personal, deep and connecting?’
I decided that they would, and when we as a group discussed all of our individual thoughts and research we decided that our piece as a whole should be about moving the participants along this line from where ever they happened to be personally to a place of strong and powerful intimacy with us. Our overarching line of enquiry was ‘What happens if we are very intimate with the participants? Will they reciprocate our intimacy? If they do or if they don’t, what happens then?’ I must stress that our group are not concerned with intimacy in a lustful or sexual way, but instead intimacy between two people as a feeling of closeness.
With our definitive line of enquiry decided upon. We began to list situations of intimacy. We came up with the following – Being with family can be intimate, sharing secrets can be quite intimate, talking about your body can be quite intimate, being held and holding someone can be quite intimate, being on your own can also be quite intimate in the sense that you become more one with yourself.
From our list, we had four one-to-one stations and one solo station. We agreed who would be on what station and arranged them as the following.
Station One (Beth) – Family Intimacy
Station Two (Shellie and Media:Laptop) – Sharing Secrets Intimacy
Station Three (Gabriel) – Body Intimacy
Station Four (Jordan) – Being Held and Holding Intimacy
Station Five (Participant on their own with Media:Live Stream) – On Your Own Intimacy
Personally I am glad to have set up the fractionation that occurs between the first and second station. They go from exploring intimacy with Beth in a representation of family type intimacy to having to sit at a laptop and anonymously type to another anonymous person over an online messenger. We have decided that this different type of intimacy, one of anonymity, is quite jarring and this has been intentionally set up with the hopes that the participants will begin to miss and crave a genuine person to talk to, which they will be presented with in station three. Once they are given a genuine person to talk to, we hope that this will allow the participants to want to move themselves further along the line towards intimacy, which is the aim of the performance.
Please bear in mind that what I have explained to you is how our performance has currently developed. We have a work in progress show coming up soon so this may all change but for now, this is our performance.