Trestle Masks
The first activity that we explored was one called Trestle Masks. This activity consisted of people wearing masks and having this fixed face with an emotion on and would therefore have to physically show what their emotion was matching the mask they had.
The main rules of wearing a mask and performing to an audience was to keep your face shown at all times. If this wasn't the case the audience would be looking at the back of your head and this would drop focus on you as a character and the energy of the movement as a whole. Another rule would be to always keep your body active, in terms of physical presence. This is to show what your character is feeling at a particular moment in time and not to over do the movement but to give the audience a vivid picture of this character's story/life.
The performances that worked really well and that were effective were the ones that had a matching physical body movement with the set facial expression. For example, a student in my class had a shocked ':O' face and starting with their backs turned away, she flipped around and slammed her back against the wall as if to imply she was shocked/shy/surprised by the audiences presence. Personally I believed that that drew my attention the most and the fact that she was always engaging with the audience in terms of looking at them and really breaking the fourth wall really brought energy around the others and the focus mainly on her.
Previously said, you can build and create a story from a mask by doing physical movements that match your characters emotion/facial expression.
This mask activity can really tie in with our performance piece mainly because this view of this nightclub and everyone inside having different feelings and separate problems really can show the differences in characterisation and also bring something new to the table to show the audience this experimental piece with all of our thoughts put together. This piece of work links with Artaud in a way in which he wants people to have different views on each character. He wanted the audience to have a friend in the show and also an enemy and with this performance we will sure deliver this to the audience.
Forced Entertainment show Quizoola
As a class I believe we all did really well in this task which consisted of a number of questions being asked and a honest response was needed. Many were funny, some where initense, others in my opinion were just blunt and had no humour at all. There were questions being asked and throughout the activity you would have to be as honest as possible and this would eventually draw the audiences attention on you and also the person asking the questions.
Personally I really enjoyed it, being asked all these questions and me and my partner (Moyo) being the centre of attention. I felt that being asked all the questions you are fed off the energy from your partner as well as the audience. When I made them laugh with my honest responses I felt that I could be even more vulnerable to the audience and that was this almost called 'trap'. When you're performing you automatically break the fourth wall and you reel the audience in so effectively and this not only helps you perform but also allows your emotions to be seen if they're truly shown.In my opinion I believed that the 'Why' and 'How' questions proved the best mainly because this opened up the performer as the person they are especially if they were being fully honest. The other questions that began with 'What' and 'When' really were basic questions and could've proved easily to respond to with a lie.
As an audience member I realised that if the two performing lack energy it pushes the audiences attention away. A couple of them lacked energy and therefore I was disinterested from what they were saying. By this, I'm saying if the questions aren't being asked in the right context and the answers are blunt it's almost like the whole thing has lost its meaning. And without meaning there's no purpose. However there were some interesting questions and as an audience member I started to get emotionally engaged with what was going around me and the audiences reactions to these questions and answers. And that's what Forced Entertainment is all about. This activity was originally used by them and they used it in this site specific manner, producing 12-24 hour shows for audiences to come in and watch and they would be able to come in and out at any time to see these questions being answered.
We could use many factors from this to help structure our piece in terms of people being vulnerable and also brave and ready to let the audience in on many things they wouldn't want them to know. For example we could have people walking around asking themselves these questions, only to themselves though, something that we would believe Artaud would do as he was consindered as a crazy individual and we could have others being submissive in the bar due to the fact that they've had too much drinks and whatever comes out of their mouth they mean it because they're drunk to the max!
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