Tag Archives: Song

First performance concept – Freedom & stillness

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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].

Music and storytelling

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Music has been an aspect that has cropped up many times within my research. I like the idea of multimedia and music technology along with storytelling. So the practitioner that automatically arose for me was Laurie Anderson.  She is an American experimental performance artist and musician born in 1947 in Illinois. She originally trained as a sculpture but then expanded into music, art, theatre and film. Her work has been described as avant-garde and has proved to be very popular, as her most famous song O Superman (1981) made it to number 2 in the UK music charts.

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Anderson’s blend of music, art, technology and theatre is something that I really admire. Performances such as Duets on ice (1974) saw this artistic combination come to light. She would stand on two blocks of ice on ice-skates playing a violin. She wouldn’t stop playing until the ice had melted naturally. I don’t wish to necessarily do anything quite this avant-garde, however it did make me consider the effects that music and theatre can have when combined.

This then led my research to performance artists whose genres overlaps between musician and actor, and whose work is less avant-garde. Two people that struck my attention are Tim Minchin and Flight of the Conchords. Both of these artists use song to enhance the storytelling of the performance with a lighthearted comedic edge. I don’t want to go down the route of standup by any means, but these artists have given me understanding of how to combine humour, song and theatre into one performance.

What I found also interesting is that, although extremely different, both Flight of the Conchords and Laurie Anderson commonly speak-sing they work, or move from song to spoken work effortlessly. I think this adds fluidity to the piece, eradicating the divide between song and speech. This could be something I explore in a later date.

Below are videos of all three performance artists.

(Andreas Valentin, 2011)

(Best of Tim Minchin, 2011)

(Ella Elise, 2006)

Work Cited

Andreas Valentin (2011) Laurie Anderson Duet on Ice. [online video] Available from http://youtu.be/2SGRvhseH6I [Accessed 17 February 2016].

Best of Tim Minchin (2011) Tim Minchin – If I Didn’t Have You – Full uncut version. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6gV2sdl38 [Accessed 17 February 2016].

Ella Elise (2006) Flight of the Chonchords – Albi (racist dragon). [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jVAHAuiS4 [Accessed 17 March 2016].