Tag Archives: singing

First performance concept – Freedom & stillness

Posted on by

I want to create an autobiographical piece based on my constant battle between my aspirations and my family and relationship ties back at home. I never intended to by tied down by love, or have a relationship with my family that would make me think twice about leaving. I grew up very much with the aspirations to travel the world, achieve my goals, and chase my dream. I have always wanted to be an actress in musical theatre; I want to go to drama school, and go wherever it needs me to go to achieve this. I was always independent and had no intention to be tied down by anything or anyone. However life threw at me things I couldn’t ignore.

My relationship with my boyfriend

My relationship with my sister

The pressures of ‘family time’ from my parents.

Through music, technology and storytelling, I want to metaphorically stage these three aspects. Stage my internal battle between my love for home, and my need for a career. How I feel tethered to home life and unable to chase my dreams. I want to be sat in a spotlight, centre stage, on a drum box with a loop system by my feet. Outside of the spotlight there will be objects that represent my goals. I want to be loosely attached to three restraints (representing the three aspects of my life) that will be made from three types of material (chain, wire etc.). These will be loose enough for me to move within the spotlight but no further. The show will begin with me playing a drumbeat that will be recorded into the loop system and played under the entire show (this represents myself).

I shall talk about each aspect of my life individually (all the while sat on the box to represent my lack of mobility in life). Each time I speak about an aspect, I shall create a sound/tune/beat with the type of material that represents them. For example, a wire represents my sister as she use to play violin, therefore I play the wire with a violin bow and record the tune. Each tune is recorded into the loop box and layered on top on one another and the drum beat. After each aspect is talked about there will be a metaphorical musical track that represents my struggle between home life and aspirations.

At this moment in time, I’m not sure whether to include this. However to finish the performance I would write a song to sing along to the track that was created. As my aspiration is to do with music, I feel song and music would work well to portray this theme.

I really like the phrase ‘freedom and stillness‘ (Greenstreet, 2015) that Laurie Anderson used when asked how she would describe love. I feel it captures both the freedom and happiness one feels when in love, yet stillness through being emotionally tethered to this person. I feel like this would be the perfect title for my performance.

Work cited

Greenstreet, R. (2015) Q&A: Laurie Anderson. [online] London: The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/16/laurie-anderson-interview [Accessed 20 February 2016].

Loop Station

Posted on by

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.

SONY DSC

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].