We have decided to perform in 413, in traverse. The audience will come into the room, sit in the dark and they will see to projections on either side of the room. There may be a projection of a video of a man bleeding himself to death. The projections will show pictures of members of the class on them. The audience will have a piece of paper in their hand and they will be told to write whatever they want about the person they see on the screen. We will assure the audience that these will not be used in the performance. However, we will use them later on. This will encourage them to break their own moral codes and prejudgment and 'being nice'.
Then Sarah and Tom will demonstrate a Meisner style conversation which will demonstrate the development of a relationship from the first meeting, to trust, to arguing, to forgiving and then to loathing. This piece works well as a way of showing a truth which romantic and sexual relationships can hold. I think audience members our age, or our parents age would be able to relate to at least an element of this.
The rest of the class then enter the room and hug them in the middle. Then we find our partner and begin the lustful walk which then develops into the almost kiss. We do this moving around the space then find a still space. We then will have some mating rituals of humans showing. Me and my partner are doing the 'grabbing' ritual of gypsies. This is where the male grabs hold of a girl he wants to kiss and physically forces her to kiss him. This is a violent and patriarchal ritual. Then we go into a humanized demonstration of an animal ritual. We are doing that of a Zebra. This is where the male cleans up their space around them making it look nice so when the females come around they like the space and if they do they mate, then the female leaves.
We then all go into a line with the almost kiss locked, then go into other rituals. We start biting each other then intertwine like swans, then spit on ourselves to rub our scent. We then smell the scent on the other person. After this section we then go into the section where the two people start kissing and everyone else pulls them apart.
The ideas we have but haven't developed yet is to have some of the skinnier people in the class shoving their faces with food. As if they were breaking a moral code. A group of girls smearing make-up of their faces to cover insecurities. Someone pretends to wee in a bowl and someone else drinks it. Of course, it will only be apple juice.
Our piece isn't using a linear narrative. We have a strong theme of courtship rituals and moral transgressions. We want the piece to focus on moral transgressions and courtship rituals and how the two interlink.
It is difficult to allow yourself to just exist onstage and for a relationship to develop between you and your partner. You just have to allow yourself to look into someone eyes and let go of any awkwardness you may feel. You can't let yourself just connect with another person, without acting anything in this piece and a story emerges. I think this is why it worked so well as an initial performance idea.
The part where we have to spit on themselves is difficult to do. We have been directed to actually spit on ourselves which is a concept people in society would view as disgusting. This is how a lot of us feel. This will be a challenging part of our piece to do. We will just have to try and let go of these feelings towards it and allow ourselves to be disgusting and unattractive onstage.
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