I am currently moving forward into the final few weeks of developing my solo performance. Over the Easter break I met up with my tutor Donald Pulford who was an exceptional help in really developing the show.  He was able to provide feedback which enabled me to improve the transitions and to provide an insight into the show that I didn’t even think of. Since meeting with Donald I have not really developed the show much. I have let it sit and breathe in my head and it is only this week with which the shaping, perfecting, explanation and the editing can take place.

The show has a name now too. Naming a show is important and arduous. It gives it an identity and I think a name can define what style, what type of performance it is. I have decided to name the show I FEEL PRETTY. The name was constructed out of various conversations about the show with my friends. I was stuck on how the show should be represented in both a mediated and marketed format. The show does not take itself seriously in that it is not a ‘serious’ show. It is more satirical, more exploratory as a performance rather than a political rant. Yet, the show is adversely political. It has to be. It deals with Nazis, Savonarola and Donald Trump in a neo-cabaret way. The title refers to the vanity of the show. In ways the title provides some sort of subversion. The tone of it suggests something, perhaps, to do with beauty, yet, the show is nothing to do with beauty as such but rather ‘presentation’.

I’d like my audience to laugh, to enjoy it. That is what I feel theatre, at it’s heart is to be about. To enjoy. If my audience do not enjoy the ‘experience’ that I subject them too in my performance then, they may not be willing to open their minds to what the show is saying. The show explores, as reference in prior blog posts, notions of vanity in political leaders. Notions of destroying objects and notions of creating a cult of personality. An image. An identity. The show ‘should’ create an atmosphere for the audience. I’d hope to have biographies of leaders, past and present. Although the show only tackles three leaders, it is the time-zones and the transcendence between these times that creates the subtle through line which is: we will always have leaders like this. Leaders that allow power to escape to their heads and mould the country and the politics into their own image.

Despite having most of the show completed there are things that need touching up and addressing. The projection of the faces for instance might need to be looked at in relation to it’s aesthetic quality and whether the ‘faces’ can actually be pulled off via projection onto my face. Furthermore, I shall be sourcing a lot of the video material that will be played on the second projector, focused on the black of the curtains. These videos will include Nazi parades, North Korean marches and Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator speech. These videos punctuate the show and underline the themes and the topic that I explore. Every rehearsal has since been generating the ‘physical’ material for the show and this week will be about perfecting that material and making sure that all of the additional elements are edited and in place.