Introduction

Throughout this blog it will show the journey which myself and our group went through to create and discover our final performance. Directed performance gave us a variety of disciplines and criteria to choose from, and we chose what we felt we could create something to our best ability with. Costume and Comedy Character were the criteria which I chose, and below you will find all the research done which helped me to achieve our performance.

Comedy and Chracter

Comedy and character played a vital role in our groups performance. The first company I researched was Commedia Dell’Arte for all of its various characters. I have entered a website below which tells you about Commedia Dell’Arte and all of its characters. Each one portraying social stereotypes

LOOK HERE

‘The unique talent of commedia players was to improvise comedy around a pre–established scenario. Responding to each other, or to audience reaction.’ (New York Times. P1. 2011) Improvisation plays a huge part in street theatre as each performance usually has to be adapted to what the audience like.  ‘The acting styles and consequently the directing techniques, will obviously change depending on the audience and audience reaction.’ (Ayres, N. p156. 2008)

‘The relationship between performer and audience is the essence of any theatrical event and more than any other factor determines its nature.’ (Mason, B. p179. 1992) A quantum link needs to be created between the audience and the performer in the street. The performer needs to do this using postural clues, for example the way they stand, gaze, their behaviour. Whether or not they are open to the audience. Street performances heavily rely on audience reaction and participation, especially when creating intimate performances with clear character and persona. ‘Although not every outdoor performer uses audience participation they all need to have a much greater awareness of its mood and composition than is the case in indoor theatre.’ (Mason, B. p179. 1992)

A book which I found extremely helpful in my research of comedy was ‘The Rough Guide to British Cult Comedy’ by Julian Hall. This explains the importance of different types of comedy and what each one means, from irony, to parody to slapstick.

Farce – A light Dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated characters and slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.

Irony – The concept of irony has been spectacularly over-used and misunderstood but for comedians, irony is usually defined as an expression or utterance in which apparent and intended meaning are deliberately different. Irony is a favoured tool in stand ups wanting to deflate politicians, while pointing out ironies of fate or unintentional ironies is also popular.

Non-Sequiturs – A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it – pretty much anything Eddie Izzard has ever said.

Parody – Imitating the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule, as French and Saunders’ movie spoofs do so brilliantly.

Pastiche – Consciously imitating work by other artists. Bill Baileys’ act features many musical pastiches such as a west country tribute to Madonna called Moozak, a take one her hit ‘Music’.

Satire – The use of irony, diversion and wit to humorously attack folly, vice or individuals. The British satirical tradition – dating back at least to seventeenth century poet John Dryden – has prospered through Beyond the Fringe to puppet caricatures Spitting Image and Chris Morris’s Brass Eye.

Slapstick – A boisterous form of comedy – the word comes from the stick with which comic entertainers used to slap or strike each other in the seventeenth century – marked by chases, collisions and crude practical jokes. (Hall, J. p164. 2006)

Farce Comedy with Royal Canadian Air Farce Comedy:

Non-Sequitur comedy with Eddie Izzard:

Slapstick comedy with buster Keaton:

In comedy different tools are used to suit each genre, such as exaggeration, surprise, truth, wordplay and juxtaposition, all things which I researched and practised to help establish our final performance.

Costume

Costume is a style of dress sense which a person wears to help spectators perceive a character which they are intending to create. Costume almost helps someone to stereotype the person wearing it, allowing them to create an opinion without even knowing the person. It allows people to ‘judge a book by its cover’.

Costume helps to create a scene. A story can be told without even knowing what is going to happen, just by looking at the costumes which a performer is wearing.

A Time Machine by Nina Ayres is a great example of how costume can create a performance. Each aspect of the costume was done deliberately so the audience could create the best understanding of what was being performed:

Another company we researched for costume was Creation Theatre Company. Especially their Midsummer Night’s Dream performance in Oxford.

Ilotopie was a company that I researched as I believe it has the most amazing costumes which help to create spectacular performances. They work on the frontier of individual and social barriers.

Ilotopie create a fluxus, they introduce art into life and life into art. The video above shows a man in a cage, he is trapped, not free, representing his everyday life of work and mundane activities.

Costume is a way of showing how street theatre and visual art can work together.

Creative Process

Creative Process

The original idea of visual, heritage and culture, ended up in being a visual, comedy performance. Here is the journey which was taken to result in the final performance.

The visual aspect of the performance was something which I knew I wanted to do from the beginning of the module. The original idea was for the class to form different groups/families who weren’t from earth, who had travelled there to find something important, which none of us were quite sure of yet. There was an idea of a huge tree being found in the middle of Winchester high street, which was decorated all over and extremely visually pleasing.

So after that discussion I looked into tree dressing.

Tree dressing is something done within a culture, to remember its heritage. A way of linking one life to the next. An example of this is The Bo-Tree in Chir-Chat, India.

Local women tie pieces of their clothing to the branches of the ancient tree which reputedly witnessed the appearance of the god Krishna to the gopis (cow-girls). ‘It is an act of devotion expressed through one of nature's most enduring emblems to link this life with the next.’ (Common Ground, 2006.)

When people got into groups, all the focus was mainly put on the group you were in, so we drifted away from the tree idea. I still wanted to create something visual though.
We looked at circles, and the way that they have been involved in street performance in many different ways, for many years. On the street, when creating a performance, the audience will always circle around the performers, whether there is a clear line laid out of this or not. Performers used to lay a long piece of string on the ground, forming a circle shape, to indicate to performers where their stage was.
 Circles are also an extremely ritualistic source, and this is shown in landmarks like Stonehenge.

Kira, Ashleigh and I formed a group, luckily all wanting to create something quite visual. The creative process which we then went through to create our final performance, was a great one.

We went from wanting to create a family with overgrown heads and extended limbs, researching into ‘The Pink People’ who are all disfigured in some way:

And also The Egghead Aliens by The Natural Theatre Company, as originally, we had an idea of making huge heads for each of us:

To something old fashioned, looking into the heritage and culture of Winchester Town, to something nature based, looking at the Green Man, a performer dressed in leaves, with a tribe of green people, offering leaves to audience members:

Costume was one of the main criteria which our group had chosen, so it was important to create something great. We wanted to use nature as a stimuli, but realised that this was going to cause many problems due to the costumes being made out of leaves. We made all the costume that we could, like getting the wheelbarrow, buying the tops, seeds and other props, and then waited until the final day to attach the actual leaves that we wanted to use. We did use leaves throughout the two week rehearsals, however they obviously turned brown after a couple of days.

‘Allow aspects of the unconscious to create surreal images.’ (Lee, J. 2011) This was something which John had said to us in class and stuck with us throughout our development. We wanted to use vegetables as instruments.

Slapstick was the form of comedy which Ashleigh and Kira used, as they were able to bounce off each other, character and comedy for me however, were a huge struggle. John and Olu wanted me to be a character quite like myself which was actually harder than I thought it would be. I researched into various comedians, such as:

Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard – The way that she doesn’t stop talking and continues to babble, completely going off the subject she was talking about.

Vicky Pollard's character is also portrayed heaveily through what she wears, her costume.

Jimmy Cricket – A stand up comedian who talks about everyday life, but does so histerically.

Commedia Dell’Arte’s Doctore – The way he gets on with his own business and is actually very wise and extremely friendly.

John helped me a lot in forming my character and explained to me that characterization is not what I needed to create, but persona was what I should use. ‘Characterization is a performer impersonating something. Not being themselves. Persona is when the performer uses what they have.’ (Lee, J. 2011)

Chaplin is a great example of a comedian/actor that uses persona. No matter what he dresses up like, he always is Chaplin.

Chaplin is another performer who's costume also contributes towards his persona.

My character/persona ended up in being a 'woman over the fence' or 'mad auntie' type. Ashleigh's character was actually much more wise than mine, however spoke very little and just added the few odd words of wisdom to whatever I would say. Kira originally was going play a character who ate all the time, but we found that when she spoke, it seemed to be as thought she was mimicing someone with a disability, and for ethical purposes, her character had to be changed.

‘Create something different to the odyssey’ (Taiwo, O. 2011) was something which Olu had said in class which stuck with our group throughout our research and rehearsals.

Using both independent research above, and what John had taught me, I managed to create myself a character which used a lot of my persona, that I was confident enough to take out onto the streets and work with an audience.

The Performance

The Performance

Reflecting back on our performance, I was actually very happy with what we ended up with, however nothing went quite how we had planned. For example, our costumes proved to create many obstructions. When we had rehearsed we obviously hadn’t done so in a lift with people in it, so didn’t take into account that the public may not actually allow us into the lift. We were waiting for about 15 minutes until the security guard let us use the private lift. Seeing other groups use the lift so easily, with just as large costumes and props, we didn’t think that it would be a problem for us.

As we hadn’t rehearsed in the town before, we didn’t realise that children would be coming up to us whilst we were making our journey to the Cathedral Grounds. We didn’t take into account how long it would take us from the brooks centre to the Cathedral Grounds, so were unable to get to the performance space at the time which the posters said we would be.

Once in the Cathedral grounds, obviously the performance we had planned completely changed the two times we got to do it. This was because it heavily depended on the audience members and their reaction. With one group I was talking to shy children, and in another, and adult, who wanted to argue every point I made. This worked though, and I was shocked as I thought that I wouldn’t be able to improvise so much, however the performance ended up heavily relying on the improvisation. Obviously we still, used what we had rehearsed, like Leaf and Moulds Dance, as they were great ways to fill in any moments which went silent.

Looking back, I feel that we definitely should have rehearsed our piece in town, and taken the exact route which we were going to take, just so we were prepared for anything that could happen, like the lift incident. We would like to have performed for a lot longer as we didn’t actually get to do as many intimate performances as were hoping to achieve. We would also make sure that if flyers and posters were given out for another performance, we would leave ourselves enough time to get to the performance space listed on the posters, so audience members would not feel let down due to us being late. However I don’t think I would chose a time or a place for our performance in future, as it completely depended on the public, where they were, how they reacted.

The part of the performance where we all came together, for me, couldn’t have gone any better. We had a huge audience surrounding us, whom many had followed our separate groups on our separate journeys. Although finding an audience member to join in with our procession proved to be quite difficult, I feel that it was a good thing as it showed to me, that what we had created was something so crazy, strange and different, that it felt like another world, and welcoming people into it can take a lot longer than you originally think. Looking at the audience you would have thought that most of them would have liked to join in. I think we tried to bring them in too early, and if we would have left it, people would have been more willing. However I think it worked perfectly.

Bibliography

References

Articles:

The New York Times. (2011). The New York Times. Commedia Dell'Arte. Improvisation. 1 (2), p2.

Books:

Bim Mason. (1992). Street Theatre and other Outdoor Performance. London: Routledge. P179.

Julian Hall. (2006). The Rough Guide to British Cult Comedy. London: Rough Guides. P164.

Nina Ayres (2008). Creating Outdoor Theatre - A practical guide. Wiltshire: The Crowood Press Ltd. p156.

Communication:

John Lee. (2011) Directed Performance – Two Week Workshop and Rehearsal. Winchester University. Winchester University Students, Street Arts, Year Two. 7^th June 2011.

Olu Taiwo. (2011). Directed Performance – Two Wekk Workshop and Rehearsal. Winchester university. Winchester University Student, Street Arts, Year Two. 1^st June 2011.

Photographs:

Aishwarya Kumar. (2009) Chir-Ghat Tree. India

Charlie Chaplin. (1964) Memoir. Copyright ©2011 Soylent Communications

David Fisher. (2010) A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Creation Theatre Company. Design by One Limited Copyright © 2011

Jasa Jenull. (2008) KUD Ljud. Slovak Republic

Lyn Gardner. (2009) Ilotopie. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Jasa Jenull. (2008). Virtual Showcase - Kud Ljud. Available: http://www.xtrax.org.uk/virtual_showcase_detail.php?artist&id=1306. Last accessed 8th June 2011.

Websites:

Common Ground. (2006). Tree Dressing Day Around The World. Available: http://www.england-in-particular.info/trees/t-dress08.html. Last accessed 7th June 2011.

Kat Jalenart. (2008). Invazija v Gradcu. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LKRlhg01-o. Last accessed 7^th June 2011.

Videos:

Afi. (2009). Eddie Izzard salutes Sean Connery. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBU9zgFMazs&feature=fvst. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

Albert Rigat. (2008). Ilotopie en Darling Harbour. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibpq3l5fvlI. Last accessed 10^th June 2011.

fartbumdig. (2008). Hastings Jack In The Green Festival May 5th 2008. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBTe5Kjenz0. Last accessed 10th June 2011.

Goo200135. (2008). Little Britain. Vicky Pollard. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mpMEnxcVkA. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

Gosinka555. (2007). Buster Keaton The Scarecrow (scene one-room house). Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgpQ-K7n2uc. Last accessed 9^th June 2011.

Peta 5069. (2008). Commedia Dell’Arte. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxp_YjvoilQ. Last accessed: 7^th June 2011.

Tki Shawi. (2008). Commedia dell'arte 'Cafe Floriani' "Doctor intro". Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-VQsv5ZQo&feature=related. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

TranNgocGiaKhanh. (2007). Charlie Chaplin – Police (1916). Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGbYOuTRamE&feature=related. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

Weelie Bootuk. (2007). Jimmy Crickt Stand Up. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC4TaV8HEzw. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

Widjadidja. (2006). Charlie Chaplin – Table Ballet. Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKbDNY0Zwg. Last accessed 11^th June 2011.

2good4u2view. (2006). Keith Richards Interview (Royal Canadian Air Farce Comedy). Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTT6UC4qli8/. Last accessed 10^th June 2011.