Spatial Awareness

Composition

 

As a group the session we had to lead was ‘composition’. Composition in relation to Forced Entertainment means the way in which they put their material together. We were the last group to lead a session so this meant as a class, we had already generated a lot of material in the previous workshops. It was our job now to put this together. As a company Forced Entertainment record all of their rehearsals so they can look back and watch for any particular significant moments. Even though we had filmed all of our previous workshops, we did not have time in this session to re-watch it all back. Instead what we decided to do was to ask the group to note down any significant moments they remembered from the process. This instantly generated a range of different moments and gave us a basis of ideas to work with.

Naden (2002) explains that in regards to Forced Entertainments process “devising and rehearsing can be split into two periods – a research and development time, where ideas are very free, and a structuring time, where ideas, through improvisation, editing and discussion are subjected to a rigorous questioning of how and why things work or don’t work, and what kind of show we are trying to make.” (p.2). In terms of using practice as research, we adapted what forced entertainment would do, as Etchells (1999) explains, “the process we've worked through has always mixed improvisation with writing, argument, discussion and, latterly at least, a great deal of watching back through video-tapes of the previous day's work.” (p. 17) We researched how Forced Entertainment would go about bringing together all their material and decided to condense their review process by asking what everyone's favourite moments were, in order to layer them and create new moments. If we were to do this process thoroughly we would definitely use Forced Entertainments original methods of watching back footage and identifying what moments worked and what did not and why. Yet within the time-frame we felt this exercise worked effectively, as this review process made us think of more questions and more ways to improve the material we had. Would this exercise be more interesting as a durational performance with set rules? Does this layer work with what is going on in the space? If not – why? Would it be more effective with a different element in its place?

 

We began by using a game someone had said they had enjoyed. A row of chairs, one person’s aim was to stack them away and the others to ensure they stayed out. On top of this scenario we layered another significant moment, it was an exercise used in the generating text workshop, where we had been asked to write down a list of questions. Taking inspiration from Forced Entertainments ‘Quizoola’. A member of the group stood at the side of the two people playing the chair game and began to ask them questions. By combining these two ‘fragments’ we had created something diverse, new and interesting. It bought out new interests. For example the people playing the chair game were now not only running around obliging to their rules relating to the chairs they were also answering questions, they were becoming tired and annoyed. These feelings showed honestly through their answering of the questions.

 

There were moments where everything felt like it came together – a music box playing, someone reading out a love letter, with people moving around the space. We would challenge why these things are working, what happens if the music stops? Does it become any less of a performance? Yet there were others which did not work when layering, yet as an individual exercise really became interesting to analyse and we had a lot of fun. In a previous session where we humanized a recycling bin, it became half an hour of pure entertainment, yet when incorporating it into the other layers we had in the performance space it did not work as well. Forced Entertainment, and in turn, us as a class would question, why? Is the recycling bin performative enough on its own, is that why it needs no additional layers?

 

 

As a group we throughly enjoyed leading this session as it gave us a chance to really step into the shoes of a reflective practitioner, allowing us to look back at the development of our work over the ten weeks. We feel it was evident to see where, as class, we began to really grasp the ideas and methodologies of Forced Entertainment, week by week as a class we were becoming more experimental and open to ideas outside of our usual comfort zones. By leading our session we, as a group, have learnt to accept that not every text we generate will be worthy enough for performance. However we have also learnt to look very closely for specific moments which initially may have been over looked. as a group we are more confident progressing into the next teaching block now we have a clear idea about layering different fragments of material together to create more of a performance as opposed to just a 'moment'. 

 

As we were the group to lead the final session of our research we, again as a class, began to think about areas we would like to explore further in the next teaching block. One of the main areas which caught all of our interest was the idea of Time and Duration. We would like to explore this further as this is something which no one in the class has done before. It would be interesting to see as, a class, how we would cope with a new challenge and what our personal expectations of  durational performance would be.