6/2/14

The job of the solo performer is to create a relationship with the audience. What the relationship is, is entirely dependent upon the piece. Noel Carroll describing Amy Taubin’s work says that “the audience’s relationship to the soloist in undivided, gratifying the performer’s deepest desires not only to be seen but to be the centre of attention” (1979, p.51). To allow the audience into the world that is being created in the performance space. It can be anything from storytelling to something a little more ‘Marina Abramović’.

The audience has to remain focussed throughout even though your desired effect may well be, which in my case it might well be, to upset them. Carroll suggests that “the submerged motives of the solo become apparent because it is the play of private obsessions that commands the audience’s attention” (1979 p51). Whatever is being performed is a testament of self. It maywell convey dark secrets of one’s past but at the same time is intrinsically gripping and involving.

This article has made me think about what my relationship to my audience will be. Which in later weeks/posts I begin to explore this.

 

Works Cited

Carroll, Noel (1979) ‘Amy Taubin: The Solo Self’, The Drama Reivew, 23 (1) March: 51-58

At 12:00pm, local time, on the 30^th January 2014, the module had begun. Art and performance the main focusses looking at two “artists” in particular – Spalding Gray and Karen Finley.

But first things first we analysed a reading by Jo Bonney, entitled Extreme Exposure: an anthology of solo performance texts from the twentieth century.

From the reading it is clear that solo work has been shaped by the community or rather community’s change over time. Jo Bonney states that “the nineteenth-century emphasis on the community to the late twentieth-century elevation and examination of the individual” (2000, pXIV), is how the notion of solo performance has evolved, to now where it is in fact a reflection of society, indeed “the era of the “self”” (Bonney 2000, pXIV).

Another point which Bonney proposes which I think to be interesting is the fact that “ more than any other  form of live performance, the solo show expects and demands the active involvement of the people in the audience” (2000, pXIII), which in my opinion, and the opinion of our discussion group, depends on the audience. An active audience is just as important to ‘Documentary Theatre’ as it solo as the audience will all come away with something different and as it can be political or news based, that a knowledge of that before watching would be beneficial and more “active”.

However according to Bonney “all solo performers are story tellers” (2000, pXIII), and indeed will construct a performance which will initiate a provocative response in audiences. This also leads onto my next blog post…

 

Works Cited

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