Performance ideas

“The potential title card – scrapped!…”

Tom Baines

A slight aside at this point.

I showed this title card:

solo pic better

An idea I decided to scrap. The reason for this is that one of the uncomfortable ‘experiments’ I will be preforming in my lecture will have some bases in the chemistry domain, however the whole lecture is now not going to based around chemistry. Also my appeal to this was that Breaking Bad is a very recent drama series by America and has grown in popularity, so I decided to use something which would catch people’s eye and be relatable . 

In my opinion there are two reasons for me scrapping this idea:

  1. Chemistry students probably won’t be uncomfortable with some of the things I show as they will understand the science and the theories behind it would possibly be to basic for them. Why come to see a lecture on things they already know?
  2. It will limit the amount of people who come to my performance.

Hence, why it will now be a lecture that I can direct across the whole university to a wider range of students.

““The Old Man and the Lecture – Part One – The start…”

Tom Baines

My performance so far is:

To deliver a lecture which will encompass some of the 5 minute presentations that I have done so far in class, which will shock and make the audience feel uncomfortable. However i am unsure as to how they will fit in at this point so may get cut out. The lecture will be like a student life talk on ‘how to survive second year’, thus will be aimed at 1st year students.

It may be difficult to perform a lecture to my peers so I have decided to aim it at 1st year students around the university so my performance becomes more like ‘invisible theatre’.

From feedback of my idea to my peers and to staff, it is apparent that many people would not come to my performance if it is a lecture given by myself. Therefore I have decided to be in prosthetic make up to disguise my appearance to deliver the lecture. The lecturer that I will be will be based on real people to achieve a certain quality to the character such as what Anna Deavere Smith does with her performances. The lecturer I will be will be ‘famous’ for giving life talks.

In preparation to this performance I will host a book signing event which will raise awareness to the character I am and make it seem more famous to attract a larger range of pupils to come along. I will also advertise with large posters and other flyers to make it raise more awareness and also to advertise it using some of the internal communication emails across university departments (if I am allowed!), as well as a twitter page promoting my character.

“Let’s play a game?…”

Tom Baines

One on my 5 minute presentations was that of the game ‘bloody knuckles’ where by two participants slide coins along a table to hit the other’s knuckles. The participants take it in turn. The loser is the first person to bleed.

The following video is how to play it the ‘Russian’ way, which is what I did in class.

(<play the video from 0:39- 1:11>)

As you can see there is a ‘sliding’ technique to push the coin across the table and of course it is done in a forceful way to create the desired effect. He does also mention the spinning of the coin, which is omitted in some version and obviously was in mine. 

For my version, I asked the audience whether they knew of the game. Some responded with ‘yes’, others did not. I explained the game so that everyone was clear and then explained that I was not going to slide a coin back at them. I also showed them the sliding technique. The idea was to make me bleed by pushing the audience’s levels of comfort and giving control to them.

photo 1

I offered the audience to choose which coin they wanted. They had a choice between anything from a one penny coin to a one pound coin. Everyone sat in a ring around me, as I stood at a table and everyone took it in turns to ‘hurt’ their classmate – with interesting results!

The majority of the boys were looking for the right weight and technique to make sure I did bleed whereas the girls were more reluctant to take part. (This was highlighted to me more by a member of the class when they has stated, ‘would I still had the desired effect if I had started with the girls first?’). Each audience member seemed to have their own way of sliding the coin but the coin began to not hit me and slide off the table. Eventually, as it was taking a long time, I reduced the number of coins on the table to a fifty pence piece, a one pound coin and a twenty pence piece. I then asked the audience to take it turn to slide each of the three coins into me as quickly as they could, in quick succession to try and speed up the desired effect. At this point I had interesting responses.

As the boys sped up and really ‘went for it’ and slid the coins as hard as they could there were many ‘ooos’ and ‘arghs’ as the coins repeatedly hit into my knuckles hard. One such response, from a female member of the audience, ‘oh I don’t like this’, to which point it was her turn when the response ‘yay I did it’ came out when she had got the technique correct. Its fine don’t forget they’re going straight into my knuckles!

At the end of the 5 minutes I showed my hand and wouldn’t you know, the desired effect had been reached and many audience members were uncomfortable as they realised that they had caused this.

photo 5photo 4photo 2

In my opinion and in some cases the feedback from my peers in this exercises that this got a more desired ‘uncomfortable’ effect than the previous presentation. This is something I will look at further in my final performance.