Spatial Awareness

Fiction/Real/Everyday

 

When we look back to the session documented, we have been able to narrow down what the main outcome of the session was. We can deduce the main areas that were being explored were
how to deal with different kinds of fictions, and how they operate when they’re put into a performance space.
Playing around with numerous games utilised by Force entertainment allowed us to fracture, disrupt and deconstruct narrative tools regularly used within literature and in performance that are designed to deliver plots and stories.  Forced Entertainment work by decomposing traditional tools used in the creating process within theatre.
We had to expose the way narratives and stories operate rather than the context behind the stories themselves to gain the proper understanding of the session.

Devices that aided this were placards and music for example that had particular influences upon speech being said in one scenario/game.
Placards with different descriptive words placed around or, in this instance, held above the person speaking’s head changed the theatrical frame/space. Altering our interpretation of what was being said by the person in the seat.
I.e., when someone was speaking of their first sexual experience, the viewer will naturally listen with a unbiased mentality (usually, until the placard is introduced whereby it subjects the viewer to a different view of the speaker;  altering the frame and space.
Additionally, music adds other elements to the frame.
The ‘emotion’ of the music, similar to what happens with the placards are introduced, changes the theatrical/space the performers are within.
When song associated with sadness was played while Daniella spoke her story, it alters her story by adding an emotion to it, obtained from the background music.
Same effect was witnessed when Gus did the same afterwards, only difference her song had a happier feel usually associated with it that made hers sense more comical.

These devices frame the performances and start to draw attention to the modes of storytelling.
The session focused around the “Fiction / Real / Everyday”, and one device that made an impact on the play on fiction and real was a task involving story telling with the inclusion of “once upon a time”.
Even if they were telling true stories, the introduction of the “once upon a time” device, makes it seem fictive seeing as how that device, within our culture is used as a fictive creating tool.

Like Forced Entertainment, who deconstruct the typical formative processes involved in forming theatre, we used their practice as research methodology to deconstruct their own performances to understand the origin and steps taken to get there.

 

Through our examining of their forming method, we can see how their performances come to be and where they originate from. Their performances and shows are the output of a rigorous practice method, involving, random improvising with sounds, costume and staging to form a mass of performance that, after dissecting it numerous times through playback, critiquing and justification, an outcome is found to be a carefully moulded cutting edge piece of experimental theatre.
Their “play” mentality towards practice creates a vibrant creating space where by traditional performance making methods would not yield the same type of drama created by Forced Entertainment.

 

When looking at the future of our upcoming project for PPP, the practises I would like to see us implement in our creating process would be, first and foremost massive utilisation of improvisation. Whether based around games such as those utilised by Forced Entertainment, or through the sharing of thoughts and ideas, it would be vital for our piece to be an original piece made up of our own group’s collaborative effort.