Preview #2

Thanks again to all who came last night.

A different audience but also quite divided on similar issues as Monday night it seemed. However, whereas Monday night's conversation focused on Twitter, Tuesday's settled on the narrative events and meaning being gleaned from the text.

Both nights were exceptionally valuable and I can only reiterate how thankful I am for the investment in our process.

We begin working again tomorrow, and there will no doubt be some feisty discussion...!

Preview #1

We were honoured with an unexpected turn-out last night. My thanks to all who came and for your feedback.

We'll review what was said in the Twitter and go back to the drawing board with some things. It was certainly an eventful evening and we will draw much from your responses. I'll be more specific about this in the coming week.

Thank you for helping us to build our show.

Headshots (minus Angus/Bridie/Megan/other Laura/Sonja/Duncan))

Angus Keech is Paul

Laura Maitland is Eliza

Julia Harari is Penny

Tobias Manderson-Galvin is Ted

DIRECTION by Richard Pettifer

SOUND DESIGN by Alister Mew

SCRIPT: ROUND TWO

FIGHT!!!

ANGUS was recovering from wounds i inflicted in the last SMS Meta-Battle!!! so today director RICHARD stepped in, borrowed LAURA's smartphone and prepared himself for certain assault.

THE RESULTS:

TOBIAS

The dog returns andkicks you

TOBIAS

You suddenly find me very attractive

TOBAIS

You attempt To do forty sit ups

TOBIAS

You lose control of your bowling team and they chase you mercilessly in circles

RICHARD (via Laura's smartphone)

Fuck you

TOBIAS

I eat your cock with teeth in my arse

RICHARD

I kill you hard in perth

TOBIAS

I hold you ransom to the Thai government

TOBIAS

I come back to life

RICHARD

I kill you hard in perth

RICHARD

I kill you hard in perth

RICHARD

Suffer

RICHARD

Kill self

And so ends another amazing game of SMS Battle of the Idiots

(I lose again! Hahaha!Take that script!)

tobi.

SCRIPT

So the folowing exchanges occured over SMS between actor Angus Keech and myself, Tobias Manderson-Galvin, during a rehearsal of Smudged where we decided to enact a fight scene entirely via text message (to the horror of those onlooking). They had no idea what we were doing all they saw was the occasional shift in body position or one of us emitting a groan whilst we fiddled away on our smartphones. The aim was to kill the other player. It took forever.

So when you read the texts below bare in mind it's not a quick scene. It's like three minutes long; filled with angst and absolutely Hilarious/horrible/wonderful.

Here's what happened (all spelling errors have been left in and i've no idea what the last one means either)....

ANGUS

I kick u in the shin. Really hard

TOBIAS

Yourhead explodes

TOBIAS

I hit you

ANGUS

your penis explodes

TOBIAS

I have another p

TOBIAS

I take yours

TOBIAS

I kick you

TOBIAS
You have to wee really bad

ANGUS

My penis then jumps into your mouth and u die of suffocation

TOBIAS

I mkjy

ANGUS

My penis then jumps into your mouth and u die of suffocation

Yeah so that took about a minute and a half at least. probably more like three minutes though.

Excrutiating. :)

Later that night angus resent this to me as i was falling asleep

ANGUS

My penis then jumps into your mouth and u die of suffocation

I lol'd myself to sleep, needless to say.

We tried the scene and the whole concept again today, and here's what happened....

*firstly angus used some godawful smartphone app that sounded like a shotgungun and tried to shoot me with it- with varying results and then...*

TOBIAS

I have a force field

TOBIAS

I poo in your mouth

TOBIAS

And tape it shut

ANGUS
I vomit in your eyes

TOBIAS

I tie your hands thrther

TOBIAS

I stab your mind

ANGUS

I kill you with a glow stick. Racer style

TOBIS

What is racer style

ANGUS

Ur dead

And so another high stakes battle was enacted. This is like the worst kind of role playing, without rules, and in a setting where no one knows what's happening except the two actors. Brilliant.

Identity and Control, By Harrison White (2008)

From the chapter 7.4.5 "Suicide by Envelope"

"To explore persons and events simultaneously, turn to suicides as a unique combination of person and event that is designed to erase identities and end story. Suicide is a personal speculation about context insofar as no rhetorics are deemed available to adequate to quide future control efforts. This is failure as involution in contrast to glasnost.

"Suicide comes when the set of stories available fail to account for how disciplines are woven together in a person. Suicide is rare, for for sets of stories have evolved over time to give maximal flexibility as well as robust rhetorics to subsume identities in institutional contexts. Priests are rarely caught short in explaining things, and other persons can imitate that skill.

(...)

"Suicide is the identity disembedding. An external stochastic trigger may signal some perturbation that is overwhelmingly disruptive to the identity's embedding, but often none is evident.

(...)

"Suicide can generally be seen as an event generated as a means of filling in and making effective an identity. Events of suicide must be construed in terms of the contingent network in which they are embedded. Stories among events and actors are further developed so as to accommodate the contingencies and mismatches that are their origins. Suicide prevents a resolution of mismatch through a story centred on termination of identity."

...and so Paul's suicide in the play, which we might here put down to a lack of social power, ironically realises his character?

Brecht

Excerpts from "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" (circ 1936)

This essay is one of the most important in 20th Century Theatre. Brecht both presupposes an escapist idea of Western theatrical narrative and proposes a means by which to undo it.

"Acceptance or rejecion of their (actors) actions or utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hithero, in the audience's subconscious"

"He (the Chinese actor) expresses his awareness of being watched (...) the audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place"

"The artist observes himself"

"The artist's object is to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work. As a result everything put forward by him has a touch of the amazing"

"The audence identifies itself with the actor as being an observer, and accordingly develops his attitude of observing or looking on"

"He (the actor) is careful not to make its sensations into those of the spectator. Nobody gets raped by the individual he portrays; this individual is not the spectator himself but his neighbour"

But what relevance to Smudged?

Possible Set Design

Taken from the Wikipedia entry on 'Social Network'

Harrison White

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_White

Better get my hands on a copy of Identity and Control.

Social Network Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Agency, liberty, power.

Learned Hopelessness

Angus was speaking about the Psychological concept of Learned Hopelessness in rehearsal on Friday.

A quick glance at the Wiki is surprisingly revealing:

"Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation"

[...]

"Social impact

[...]

Another example of learned helplessness in social settings involves loneliness and shyness. Those who are extremely shy, passive, anxious and depressed may learn helplessness to offer stable explanations for unpleasant social experiences. However, Gotlib and Beatty (1985) found that people who cite helplessness in social settings may be viewed poorly by others, resulting in a situation that reinforces the problematic thinking. A third example is aging, with the elderly learning to be helpless and concluding that they have no control over losing their friends and family members, losing their jobs and incomes, getting old, weak and so on.[24]

Social problems resulting from learned helplessness seem unavoidable; however, the effect goes away with the passage of time.[25] Nonetheless, learned helplessness can be minimized by "immunization" and potentially reversed by therapy. People can be immunized against the perception that events are uncontrollable by increasing their awareness of previous positive experiences.[26] Therapy can instruct people in the fact of contingency[27] and bolster people's self esteem."

(my emphasis)

Take from this what you will. But it seems more than co-incidental that we have a socially isolated hero, an aging clown, and an audience formation that is going to feel like therapy (for example).

Simulationism...

Jeff Koons, Inflatable Flower (Tall Yellow, Tall Orange) 1979

Peter Halley, Panic Room 2002

...Simulationism is the theory that "we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation", developed by Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University and published in Philosophy Quarterly in 2003. According to the guy, because sometime in the near future we are likely to be capable of creating a virtual world with sentient, autonomous beings, it's more than likely that we are, ourselves, products of a virtual world created by other beings. Here's a short summary.

Simulationism is also, as most 'isms' are, an art movement - or was. It was short-lived, apparently inspired by Baudrillard, and was fashionable in the mid-to-late 1980s in New York, revolving around artists such as Peter Halley, Shirley Levine and later on Jeff Koons (top), amongst others. It's all about admitting, cynically but also kind of innocently, that the world is only surface - therefore, why not have fun? - although I think the three above-mentioned artists all attempt to effect a critique through parody. E.g. Peter Halley (above) describes his creations on his website as "geometric paintings...engaged in a play of relationships between..."prisons" and "cells", icons that reflect the increasing geometricisation of social space in the world in which we live."

Speaking of which, here is a quote from Baudrillard on a rant:

"Art is never the mechanical reflection of the positive or negative condition of the world; it is its exacerbated illusion or hyperbolc mirror. In a worl ruled by indifference, art can only add to this indifference, by focussing the void of the image."

Not exactly my cup of tea, really...rather than tea it is maybe food for thought? Anyway there are mirrors in it.

Magnets - How do they Work?

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/f-cking-magnets-how-do-they-work

Defs worth watching til the end when they compare ICP with Duchamp.

Finally!!!! White rappers and Dadaism! I knew it was the same thing!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulrophobia

Coulrophobia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Caulrophobia)

Coulrophobia is an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns. The term is common, but is not commonly used in psychology.^[1] The prefix "coulro-" comes from the Ancient Greek κωλοβαθριστής (kōlobathristēs), “one who goes on stilts”.

Coulrophobia can also be said to extend to a fear of covering up one's face with paint—the idea of hiding recognisable features under a layer of face paint can also unsettle coulrophobia sufferers.^[1]

In July 2006 the Bestival, a three-day music festival held in England, had to withdraw a request to festival goers to come dressed as clowns due to the unexpectedly high rate of coulrophobia among the potential audience.^[2]

Smudged Links

This is not the only presence Smudged has on the internet.

La Mama have posted the flyer they made us for the Preview, containing the old publicity image:

http://www.lamama.com.au/Smudged.html

The Brisbane Festival have a tidy portal from which one might book tickets:

http://brisbanefestival.com.au

And Australian Business Arts Foundation, facilitating tax donations for this show, have a little blurb about me and Megan for anyone interested in donating:

http://www.abaf.org.au

Pilogy

I have been on another adventure that I think contains something of our play in it.

Pi relates to us because pi is circular, like our space, for example, and infinite, like the imagination Megan champions.

Or perhaps the circle is contained, like our bodies, and infinite like our minds.



According to Zeno's Paradoxes, Achilles can never reach the Tortoise because at the Tortoise makes another movement time passes, and during this time Achilles gains on him. But then over the next period of time Achilles will gain a little more and so on. While the segments of time grow shorter and Achilles gains on him more and more, he will never overtake the Tortoise.

"There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge." (Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

I had the impulse in rehearsal the other day to make the Ted/Paul scene a slow spiral inward, but I was not sure why.

Also this looks very close to the set design:



It comes up when you search for Zeno's paradoxes on Wikipedia.

Eliza also serves pie and has an obsession with it.

Pi is like some sort of thing to do with the play that I can't explain (in case that isn't obvious!)

TO TRY AND PUT THIS INTO A THING:

Perhaps as we expose more of our private selves to the outside world, the outside world also takes from us, and we become closer and closer to some sort of endpoint, which here is represented by "clown".

Or perhaps the inequation that can only result in absurdism is what happens when Achilles reaches the rabbit.

http://im-possible.info/english/articles/escher_printgallery/



All of our most famous number artists thought this way like Einstein, Newton or Mobius. Also some of our most famous mathematicians like Escher, Da Vinci or Picasso.



I can now say with some certainly that we have solved this play.

by R. Mutt

Hi bridie i mentioned this (pete postlethwaite as scaramouch jones) and not sure if i wrote it down or not. this is bangarra i like the ideas. So this is one idea i see but also i like this even thoug i hate it as well...

Its like the extreme of the most ugly like rainbow surprise fucking yukky clown you could hope to see. vile. like yeeeeah. this is from film the clown murders (1976)

plus my all time favourite character reference so far.... i like this.....

i know this is all picture so mightn't help at all. my god the last image is horrible i love it though.

Photo taken in the rehearsal room 9/8/2010, rehearsal time 6.30-10.30pm, VCA PS3

From the Wikipedia:

Balls-Up-Hands-Down is a game similar to Volleyball in which players try to keep a ball in the air whilst receiving a High five after every 'spike'.

It was created by members of the Melbourne performance group Twitch Twitch during rehearsal for the play 'Smudged'.

To play Balls-Up-Hands-Down, players stand in a circle and a member serves the ball before receiving a High five from another player. Players continue to keep the ball in the air whilst ensuring that they receive a high five after every spike.

Balls-Up-Hands-Down is thought to utilise the dramatic convention of Split Focus, as the individual must concerntrate on dual objectives of keeping the ball in the air and High fiving the other players. It is therefore a useful game for concerntration and teamwork.

The title is thought to come from the moment in which the ball is in the air and the player who has just spiked strikes a open handed stance with both arms out, in anticipation of receiving a High five from a teammate.

Email from Britt, Producer @ Under the Radar (published with permission)

Hey Richard,

How are you travelling? How is everything going in rehearsals?

Just a couple of things – now that I can stalk your process on line via your blog I can also ask questions.

Have you moved your seating to in the round?

Have you completed your flyer – I noticed there were no logos on the current one – just a reminder it needs to come to Brisbane Festival for approval.

Also do you have a live dog or two in your show? It is in your production info and your blurb but we have never confirmed.

Thanks in advance.

Ta

Britt

(details erased)

DISCLAIMER

This electronic traffic is intended only for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you are not the addressee, you are notified that any transmission, distribution, editing, printing or photocopying of this electronic traffic is strictly prohibited. The confidentiality attached to this electronic traffic is not waived, lost or destroyed by reasons of mistaken delivery to you. The information contained in this electronic traffic transmission or attachment may also be subject to Copyright legislation. Unless expressly attributed, the views expressed in this email do not necessarily represent the views of Major Brisbane Festivals. While virus protection is in place at Major Brisbane Festivals, protection from viruses still remains the responsibility of the recipient.

Circle/Square stagecraft

The show has neccessiated a change in space from the square "in the round" to the circular "arena" style.

This happened after a conversation with Megan the other night. When I began to consider how in-the-round as a square operates in terms of stagecraft, it didn't feel right. This is difficult to articulate but I can attempt a few observations.

The Square:



If you imagine an audience sitting on the black line.

The first thing I noticed when trying to figure this out was that the space creates four corners of "dead space". This space is low energy "cold" spots both for the audience and the performers. The strongest seating positions are clearly the centre-sides, as they are closer to the 'eye of the storm'. This is created by proximity and also sightlines. It is certainly possible to 'heat' these corners, but doing so feels like it's working against the natural flow of energy the space dictates:



Now imagine that this is both the entire space AND repeated everywhere in small microcosms. Each event that happens in the space has a small square around it, with bigger and bigger squares ad infinitum. Therefore actors position themselves in relation to the event and depending on where they are, their relationship might be 'hot' (if they are on vertical or horizontal axis) or 'cold' (if they are on the diagonal). This power structure, I believe, will ALWAYS be repeated for the square, no matter where the event occurs, although of course you lessen the effect of proximity if you have and event happening in the corner (for example).




This is a skewed relationship. Not only does everyone get a different show here, but they get significantly hotter or cooler shows depending on where they are sitting. Much like the Pros. Arch, the square in-the-round created an audence dynamic that inevitably favours certain audience members over others.

The one exception to this rule might be compartmentalising the space - not practical for us because I believe the world we imagine is transformative rather than fixed. We are not walking through a house, the house is changing around us - this is the dream state. But hypothetically you could draw up a floor plan of an imaginary house and divide spaces accordingly a la Lars Von Trier's "Dogville", which then creates a similar power dynamic to that of your average room, with its corners, walls, floor etc.

For us, however, the square would have been about public and private space, about exposure on four sides and hiding in the corner. I thought this suited until I began to explore the idea of a circle.

The Circle:

Everyone is equal in the Circle. That is its essence; its fundamental idea, that from all sides it is a different point of view but essentially the same.



Therapy.
Ritual dance.
Campfire.
Arena.
Forum.

Where the square is man-made and does not actually exist in nature (only as an ideal) the circle does, (albeit still in unreal terms).

Bubbles.
The Sun.
Earth.
Whirlpool.
Eyes.
Cells (medical).

Of course, squares may still happen in nature by accident, but nature does not BEHAVE like this. So if the first point about a circle is that it is equal, the second point is that it is natural.

Perhaps because of this, the circle is used on a symbolic level to represent something mystical, spiritual or primal (Yin-yang, various Pagan symbols) , and the square is used to denote that which man has made (flags, buildings, rubix cube, rooms, computers). A combination of this, such as a circular computer/building or a square bubble, becomes confusing.





(As a side note this makes the 'invention of the wheel' an ironic symbol of man replicating nature on a symbolic level for the benefit of 'progress' in a literal and also metaphoric level. Also perhaps the fundamental shift in thinking when we realised the earth was round, and thus perhaps that the world we were creating was different to its nature.)

The circle acknowledges all perspectives and favours none. The skewed dynamic of the square is taken away and replaced with complete equality and three-dimensionality. There is no cold anywhere, there is complete exposure only.

The shifts in power dynimic are therefore created purely by proximity to the centre and the edge. The centre point acts as the point for complete balance, but also complete exposure. The edge represents a predatory position. Those on the edge want to be in the centre, to control the point of balance and the primary focus. Much like a game of 'look at me', or like hyenas.

Because Paul is the object of contest for the play Smudged, it is probable that he becomes the event most of the time he is on stage and that the others are trying to knock him off his perch, a task made impossible because he is our point of identification and therefore the centre of the circle at any one time.

But it is of course more complex than that, because there is a broader circle and its energy to contend with. For example, if a character is occupying centre stage and Paul is not, there is an interesting juxtaposition between the 'geometric' power of the stage and the 'identification/event' power held by Paul.

I have spoken enough I think, what a long post. But there is obviously a lot to think about.

The politics of the back of a flyer

Here is my proposed back of flyer:



I'm sort of surprised it's turned up like this...? I mean... once you start to size things, decide what to call them, inevitably there is some information you have to leave off for space reasons... and choose their position... you are essentially making political decisions. Doesn't this flyer go against the democratic 'forum' principles with which we are making the show? (Plus there's something extremely vain about putting your name in huge letters.)

The counter-argument is that this is a format that 'the public' will understand. The public understand what a 'director' is, they don't necessarily understand what Atenian Democracy or Metatheatre are (unless they have been reading this blog), or even what the word 'devised' means, for example.

I guess it comes down to power. Or perhaps, for us, exposure. (What does it say about me that I would put my name in such big letters on the back of a flyer????)

Any thoughts about how to change it to a more democratic marketing tool are welcomed.

Shock-headed Peter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOVSp-fYUQc

Trash Pop - Wannabe

Katy Perry - I Kissed a girl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAp9BKosZXs

Justin Bieber - Baby:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4

High School Musical 2 - Fabulous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCl5gs7GFWY

And of course...

Telephone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U

Pantalone

Laura was talking about Pantalone in rehearsals the other day - here's a short video of an Italian man transforming himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSo5BcqpbQ

Clowns...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNoU6fJsOAw

best watched on mute as some one has put a song over it how horrid.

Flyer High

Sonja and I went on a little journey this morning as we attempted to add to the fantastic image she has taken of Tobias for our publicity.

It began with me trying to follow her impulse of using the "happy birthday" ideas of the play by putting the phrase on the image.



This was too simple and looked bad, so we looked at some other images of birthday messages:



How cute, huh? Inevitably they contain little question marks that make you want to open the card. Although of course they are about as subtle as a sledgehammer - with an anvil attached.

I'd had the idea that the message was something that cut against the image of Birthday clown. We had a look at a few images of Forced Entertainment's Tim Etchells current exhibition A Short Message Spectacle (an SMS) which has neon signs of extemely personal statements placed in awkward locations around Norwich, England.





I also read out some of my early (April? May?) attempts to express the play in one single, personal sentence:

"I know that I am me because I can see you"

"I know I'm me because I can be someone else"

"I know the world is real because I can create a false one"

"The world must be real because it is so false"

(These started as something different but eventually morphed into a subjectivity tautology, I don't know why)

It seemed like it was about finding the right words that expressed some sort of conflict with the image, and also clouded the idea that it was a birthday card. After playing in this playground for a little while, we came back with this:


Using a particular syntax to express some sense of anxiety for the viewer - is it a question? A statement? Command? Suggestion? An ACCUSATION, even?

The logo I have been using to describe the company found its way in down the bottom in both labeling this as a piece of technological theatre and presenting the anxiety arising from happiness and sadness together, in the same motion.

What do you think of the Flyer?

And episode 2:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/geeks-tweets-and-bums-on-seats-20100709-103g8.html

Laura contributes to the (/A) blog, episode 1:

Whilst I find much of this quite disturbing, I can hear the future echoes of my grand-children laughing at me for being out of touch with technology. Thanks, Belvoir St.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng