As of yet, I’m not sure what I want to base my piece on or what themes I want to explore. However there are a few performance concepts that interest me and that I would like to explore further.

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the notion of reenacting and imitation is something that I find fascinating, such as work from Anna Deavere Smith and Eric Bogosian. I also have a love for music and find the works of Laurie Anderson very interesting. I really enjoy the way she incorporates music into theatre, and this is something that I would very much like to incorporate into my final piece somehow.

Over the last week I have wracked my brain and watched performance after performance in the hope that some Laurie Anderson styled inspiration will appear. However to no avail. I realised I was trying to hard, so I decided to simply put my iPod on shuffle and wait. Inspiration came in the surprising form of Ed Sheeran. I was listening to one of his live performances and realised that he was using a loop station to create the depth and layering of music.

Loop stations can record numerous sounds and layer them on top of one another. Typically it’s used for music (instruments) however, could I use this in a different way? Could I use this as a system to build layers of character’s speech? Could I incorporate rhythm and present a rhythmic performance of imitated testimonies? Could I combine my love for music and singing with character acting?

Below is a video example of how a loop box works.

(Lucie Feenstra, 2013)

I don’t want to run away with this idea this early on in the process, however this is something that I would really like to explore further.

Work Cited

Lucie Feenstra (2013) Live Loop Pedal Performance – Rhythm Interactive. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvs2zupOA-I [Accessed 11 February 2016].