Today we looked at past solo performances that had achieved a high grading last year, as well as looking at the solo work of actor and performance-maker John Fleck.

What was particularly striking to me was the diverse range of themes and topics covered in the solo performances, and how simple they seemed to be. Of course, there were performances that included more tech than others but the presentation or for want of a better word the mis-en-scene of the pieces were simple. There wasn’t too much going on. Even Meta! which along with Oliver Hicchinsons performance (I didn’t catch the name) had various elements going on but the way it was structured made sure that we as an audience were not confused. The audiences attention was directed in right places at exactly the right moments. That’s what made it simple, yet, the process to make this happen seem complex.

Simon Payne’s Meta! and Oliver’s piece were performances that really appealed to me because of their individual unique styles. They were both very much inspired (at least in my eyes) by Tim Crouch and Thomas Pain. The main reason why I liked these particular shows is because both performances reflected a unique, experimental style that I myself love to use when creating my own work.  The unique performance style of these pieces became very theatrical and whilst I liked the autobiographical pieces, I don’t think that I personally have a sufficient story to tell, without it sounding cliché or rubbish.  Billy Cummock’s performance about working class identity in Yorkshire had me thinking this way in particular. It seemed very cringe-worthy and whilst, yes, working class identity is sufficiently important in relation to Thatcherism, I felt that he could have done more with it. He catered a majority of his jokes and dialogue towards a specific audience, which was an audience of his peers. Granted, theatre should be catered towards a specific demographic of audiences, that’s a general fact. However, his audience consisted of the majority of his friends, so when he made jokes about ‘site-specific’ the comedy became very in-housed and could only be identified by the people in the room who have a personal association with that subject, thereby causing the laughter. I personally felt that this cheapened the comedy.

JOHN FLECK

John Fleck is an actor and solo performance artist. His show Bless are all the Little Fishes (1989) interested me because of his ability to compel different states of atmosphere through visercal imagery. This excerpt (below) shows Fleck dressed as a mermaid, and the show itself explores alcoholism and religion.

            “Blessed Are All the Little Fishes reveals Fleck’s attempts to grapple with the two biggest factors in his childhood: alcoholism and Catholicism. ‘It’s the story of this man’s binge, which is also    society’s binge—man at his lowest point of alienation,’ says Fleck, who, in the course of the show, dresses as a mermaid, urinates on stage, hacks up a dead goldfish, talks about bisexuality, and makes a toilet bowl into an altar by pasting a photo of Christ onto the lid. For his drunken character, Fleck says that the toilet is ‘the center of the universe, a place of miraculous visitation.’

                                                                                                                            (Blessed are all the little snowballs in hell: Screening and discussion with john fleck, 2013)

The aesthetic of the show seemed very hilarious to begin with. Fleck is dressed as a mermaid, drinking and smoking. He then proceeds to escape his mermaid ‘shell’ in a beautiful visual that resembled a metamorphosis to a certain extent. Following this, Fleck proceeds to play God and his ‘character’ changing address through vomiting into a toilet which later serves as a shrine to Christ. At the start of this sequence it is quite funny, however, as it carries on and the sequences begins to get visually unbearable it becomes very intolerable. We become sympathetic to Fleck’s character. I think the simple repetition of a particular action or event, can really affect the way that the atmosphere shifts.

Fleck’s performance was inspiring to watch because of the theatricality that he embodied. Fleck’s childhood was full of alcoholism and sexual revelation however he doesn’t make the show explicitly about him. Nor is it an autobiographically preaching. It is autobiographical in the sense that it is personal to Fleck and yet it still remains as a theatrical performance.

Bibliography

I began to start messing around in the studio over the last couple of days from Friday – Sunday.

It dawned on me as to how difficult it is to generate material for a solo show when it is just you in the room with nothing or nobody to bounce off.

Over the course of this time, I played around and started to write random thoughts and feelings that came to me. These included thoughts about the type of show I was going to create, text, and music.

I still have no idea what my show is going to be about, this post is just a collection of things that I found and thought about over the course of the past few days. I thought a lot about the use of music in the show and how music can work theatrically. On Friday, I listened to Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor K:626. One of the notable sections of the epic score was Lacrimosa.

Lacrimosa is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. I listened to it multiple times whilst mind-mapping how it made me feel and the type of atmospheres and themes it conveyed.

Mind-map of Mozart’s Lacrimosa

From the mind-map I noted down the dream-like feel of the music. Particularly the sections which are more calmer and slower in places. Lacrimosa is an orchestral piece that has a substantial amount of crescendos throughout the score which only lasts 3 minutes 20 seconds. The crescendos give a dramatic and despairing sense and possibly suggests pain and reminiscence, as written above. As I was listening to the music I noted down it’s obvious religious connotations. Lacrimosa is latin for weeping, and is derived from Our Lady of Sorrows, a title given to Mary, mother of Jesus. It also has a relation to Astrology in which an asteroid was named 208 Lacrimosa.

History of Requiem

Requiem in D Minor was the last thing Mozart composed in Vienna 1791 and was left was unfinished due to his death on 5th December the same year.
Franz Xaver Sussmayr finished the composition in 1792 and was then delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who has anonymously commissioned the piece for a Requiem Mass to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death.
At the time of Mozart’s death on 5 December 1791, only the first two movements Requiem Aeternam and Kyrie were completed in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. Lacrimosa was the final section that was completed in full and was not in ‘skeleton’ form.
The completed score, initially by Mozart by largely finished by Sussmayr, was then dispatched to Count Walsegg along with a counterfeited signature of Mozart.
Constanze (Mozart’s wife) had to keep the secret that Requiem was unfinished at the time of her husband’s death. Mozart only received half the commission in advance, so after his death, Constanze wanted to have the work completed in secret by somebody else.
Constanze orchestrated half-truths and myths post Mozart’s death. She suggested that her husband was composing the Requiem for himself, and that he had been poisoned.
Despite being incredibly ill at the time of composing this, his continued to work. Even on his last day of his life, he worked on the piece.

I found looking at the history of the piece very intriguing. Especially in relation to Mozart’s life. The history and connotations of Lacrimosa during my research also proved really interesting except when in the studio, I had no idea of how to create / generate material out of this. As I was listening to this, as well as beginning of Requiem in D Minor I began to write some text.

Below are the three texts that I wrote. All very haphazard and all written in the moment of listening to the music.

TEXT 1

I tread freely like a man with no limits

I move like one of those old sacred spirts

And coo-coo, coo-coo my wisdom away

This day, I say will mark a true enlightenment.

I wonder and wish upon a star

That, that dainty divine will close up shop

And me at the top

Will plop and top and drop the border

The order

The motar to build.

Truly life has never been so good

Truly I say to the comitee

The hood

Why has life always been this good

In the hood

In the hood

In the hood

Why has life always been this good

Privaledge.

TEXT 2

Seizing the day has never felt so good
except the being the would
stand trial for all crimes against
the constitution
the written and forgotten text

We cannot wait to seize the day
that way back when
things were good hopeful. Cheery then.
Back before old blondie took power
Like plucking the flower from the land of freedom
and crushing in his palm.
we cannot remain calm
We cannot sid Idly and watch from the sidelines
we cannot sit idly and watch from the skies
Time flies
yet, nothing happens.
Truly, nothing happens
what we see, what we do, has no effect on you
and yet when we stand we make a difference.
A difference.

TEXT 3

We are here as one
we are part of the puppet motel 
we shall not tell
those lies uttered first by them
in their crime
this time we act as one body
said nobdy. Ever.

Too strong are we to determine
the growing cause of hell-oneart
cold wreched hearts birth
an uncontrolled desire to rule.
We’re going down to the bottom
the very bottom. Frefalling to the bottom
Drowned, in aspirations are we
That is so very clear to see

All three, looking back are all overtly political in some way. I think that’s how I write and that’s how I want my show to be like. I don’t want to make a show that features preachy politics, or a rant about how rubbish the world is at the moment, because I think we, as morally conscious and decent individuals already know that the world is failing. Yet, I am always of the opinion that art and theatre always reflects the world in one way or another. I want the show to be inspired by current events, but not led by them. One of the writing exercises that I did to generate material two weeks ago in one of the workshops reflects a kind of parody rather than a preachy portrayal of Donald Trump.

VOICEOVER.  January 20^th 2017 was the day the Earth stood still and gasped in horror

               A man dressed in a suit with a Donald Trump mask enters the space from the doors first used by the audience. He addresses the audience

                                                MAN. Hi. So, umm welcome. I think I expected more of you to be honest. But I guess this will have to do so. Imagine this chair is a throne. And I am sat on this throne     and there is a big portrait of me on the back of a grizzly bear is positioned behind it. Okay?

let’s not forget to imagine that there are significantly more of you. Imagine there’s a wall seperating me from you and you from me. But you can still see me and I can see you but you are not invading my own personal space. Imagine there’s a rally outside. Someone shouting and screaming they’re wailing, complaining about me. They should’ve voted for Hilary he says. They should’ve put that woman in charge and now imagine that he, this man is being dragged away, ever so slowly back behind the seats, past and out of the space down the stairs out into the air and shot.

God Bless America

               The man removes the mask and looks at the audience as if he was just seen them for the first time

Text three in particular was very interesting when reflecting and writing. I had made a reference to ‘puppet motel’ a song by Laurie Anderson. This led me to thinking about the style of the performance. I want to experiment with it and push the boundaries of my own comfort zone. An example of this would be on Saturday’s rehearsal in which I played around with ways of delivering the text. As I am interested in the associations of music and the aestheticism of it visually I began to think about what kind of objects I could use on stage, as seats, as props, as set.

Piano Stool. Positioned centre stage.

Myself sat on the piano stool. Central in the space

I found the idea of having a single piano stool in a space interesting. I don’t know exactly why. I thought about what the stool, aesthetically, is associated with being partnered with a piano and by putting this object in the space and using it as a theatrical prop seemed interesting to me.

A music stand, standing beside the stool

When started playing with the way to deliver the text, I started to compose something quite basic and rough alongside it. My intention was not to sing the words  because singing is not my strong suit, but I wanted to reflect a style of textual delivery in which the music helps dramatasise and life the reading of the text, rather than the singing of it. This is similar to some songs by the musicians Tim Minchin and Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson’s music in a nutshell is very surreal, very electronic and is an influence on me.   There is the argument that she has pioneered a new avant-garde in electronic and synthesised music. The use of synths and distorted voices in her creates a archaic worlds and atmospheres. Alongside Laurie Anderson being an influence towards very archaic themes. David Lynch’s work, films and notably music really portrays this effectively. When I was listening to both her and Lynch I came to the conclusion that I wanted to show to become very experimental and bizarre. I don’t necessarily seek audience approval. I’d like to create a show that challenges expectations. This is how I see Laurie Anderson’s work along with David Lynch. They go beyond the reaches of their mediums and in regards to theatre the artist that I closely associate with this way of working is Tim Crouch. Notably An Oak Tree and The Author

Bibliography