Performance Laboratory 1 - Milky Way - Documentation

It's easy to say but hard to put into practice that the process of producing a performance is to distinguish the essentials from the possibilities. It takes patience.

Actually, during the rehearsal days, I tried my best to reorganize all the performance elements time and time again in order to make the whole piece in a minimized manner, which is somehow contradicted to the opinion I used to raise a performer should have a certain performance skill.(e.g. dance, singing, instruments,etc.) , which I will debate later.

Anyway, I am still holding the opinion that a performance should have the responsibility to engage the audience as in the perspective of a performer, we should try our best to acknowledge our acquirements and impulse them to audience by the visual language of the performance we could make by the time all performance elements go to the section of final combination and adjusment.

Performance Laboratory 1 - Milky Way - Documentation

In my laboratory, I doubt if there should be both spiritual and physical connection between the performer and audience. I mean, performer and audience might be positioned in a similar psychologic environment as it is not necessary for our audience to TRY THEIR BEST to accept the dramatic situation that the performer tries his best to teach them unless they feel the equality of atmosphere throughout the whole performance. How to change the physical distance to make the spiritual connection is my main argument.

I made my plan of performance experiment in four general aspects.

In the script, I tried to make up the storyline in non-classical-dramatic and convincible way by mixing a storyline of the mentality of an abstract audience on the spot and another one of his memory. In the rehearsal, there should be transformations in the performance action ( e.g. a variety of physical distances, the slight offensive positions). considering the dark environment of performance, it's necessary to shape the main characters/objects by using the luminous materials. The most important of all, the sound of the performance plays an important role ever when the audience's acoustic turns out to be sensitive with their eyes off and it's the most effective approach to create the spiritual connections.

Performance Laboratory 1: Milky Way Documentation

lighting achieves a unique compromise between rationality and subjectivity.

An actor's relationship with the spectators is a transparent, particularly with the lights on full, or disrupted if he is blinded by a shaft of light or reduced to a voice in the shadowy gloom.

(Patrice Pavis, Analyzing performance, Translated by Davis Williams,the University of Michigan Press,2003)

Based on the reference above, I consider light as an efficient approach to realize the distinction of individuality of a certain character in performance. on the other side, apparently, without the help of lighting effect, it is easier for the performer(s) to loose the distance and make transmission in the audience-pectator-relationship. However, investigating the balance of insignificance and significance of the performer(s)'s role in performance is quite problematic as even though theatre could be considered as a community without any gap, there is definitely a boundary.

Performance Laboratory 1: Milky Way Doucumentation

I noticed performance is collaboration of various performance activities with the purpose of arousing audience's perception before and my perspective is somehow against the idea of discovering each performance activity separately or making one of the them a leading role. To testify my assumption, the declination of one of the significant performance elements (e.g.light, sound, performer, stage) is supposed to be a workable method.

How to take most advantages of performance activities with the limitation of non-light environment, which was part of the research on the notion of pure theatre is the main idea of my performance laboratory 1.

My research was starting with the effect of light in performance.

Performance Laboratory 1 - Milky Way - Documentation

Performance Laboratory

MILKY WAY

05th Feb 2010, 4:00PM-4:30PM

A Distances: fragments can't make up a whole piece

Although mime theatre A Distances in ICA shows perfect techniques in playing with puppet, media and depiction which I am so impressed by, it might be more considered as a combination of fragments instead of whole piece. Like most of the comedies, repetitive performance activities made the funny effect on the spot but failed to impact on the further engagement. For this piece, I tend to argue that reduction of duration of each fragment might be a good solution.

the function of imagination

The performance of compagnie mossoux bonte by Kefar Nahum is widely criticized as a sensitive and beautiful puppet theatre work, which is part of london mime festival.

Rather than considering it as a puppet theatre or mime theatre, I would like to make it a definition of physical theatre because it is obvious that we audience paid attention to the performer as much as the puppet before the performer turned out to be a conceptional puppet in the end of the show. The puppet therefore could be clarified as a mask, which is generally used in a physical theatre with the function of separating the performer's individual personality from the characteristic he express. In this way, Kefar Nahum approached a puppet as she would a role- as an encounter between herselves and the character embodied in the puppet.

like most of the physical theatre, Kefar's performance is proved to be physically multi-meaning visual piece especially when it erased any voices. The understanding of physical theatre, in my point of view, is far more developed after watching this performance as I personally illustrate engaging the audience's individual imagination instead of the performer's imagination is one of the most important principles. For example, when I recognized the conception of a scenery,which is a big bird tried to kill a small one, as a killing loop, some else sitting next to me considered it as a despair redemption. However, we both thought it is interesting. I admit that all the magic impression rely on a experienced performance skill, although it stands right opposite of highly-imaginary audience. Still I need to explore far more on how to arose the audience imagination in the future laboratory.