THE POLITICS OF SPECTATORSHIP

THIRD NIGHT

18th March 2016
Zellerbach Hall: Room Z-170
Audience Number: 30

Rosella mentioned that her friend had felt very triggered by the parts of the performance that deal with sexual assault. in the first instance I wanted to defend the work, felt bad for her pal of course but seemed to feel somehow that the work was being attacked, blamed. then reflecting on how I have never come across content warnings in theatre and performance. warning of strobe lighting or loud music, yes, but never actual content warning. so we put a sign on the door reading something like ‘trigger warning: themes of sexual assault/rape, please feel free to leave the space at any point if you feel uncomfortable’.

thinking about provocation and catharsis and how far these go/are ‘productive’. You can’t predict triggers. it’s complex. but interesting how initially defensive we all were. sparked a lot of discussion and self-reflection as we set up.

I watched squares in its entirety, completely calm and enjoying it. four people came late and just walked in. Logan going over each time and making them take their shoes off. they had to walk straight across the space, through squares, becoming part of the narrative, the weaving bodies and glances, the stops and stares.

the silence that framed lamps was great. we found the right length to let it sit within the piece as a whole but as a thing in itself. felt more intimate without the film cameras. no recording emotionless eye.

in gallery space we didn’t talk and the atmosphere was much better. people REALLY noticed we were mimicking them this time…to the point where they would, upon noticing, do movements on purpose to see the copied result. often we would leave them at this point, move on to someone else, not satisfy their desire for control – am I not fun to play with? – at one point one person was between Logan and Rosella both mimicking her and letting her have nervous fun with it –she became the focal point and others began watching this strange power dynamic. entrapment. reliance. though when it intensified people started to move back again, not wanting to attract attention, and waited, watched.

again we had everyone dancing at the end!

the mirror reveal - a more relaxed and calm atmosphere. though still intense there was less of a collective urge to break it. Molly took the photo and smashed the camera ‘perfectly’ this time. she really went for it, enjoyed it, obliterated it.

NOTES FROM THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION WITH THE AUDIENCE:

someone made a link between the squares and the mirror reveal in terms of an arc, and the witnessing of brief narrative moments vs being faced with each other.

C said how she really appreciated being reminded and acknowledged as an audience member that is also part of the performance – you’re here, part of this too. and how she felt that she got to witness our whole entire process in part due to the gallery space, down to the inclusion of the scrappy ends of the life drawing paper torn out of the sketchbook and stuck on the wall.

someone mentioned how in squares they totally felt a sense of becoming visible, and Paula made a good point about the arbitrariness of the squares, just tape, that we had put down ourselves. how they still had so much significance and how visible and vulnerable the performers felt inside them, having stepped there of their own accord. She made a connection to identity construction and how real it is/feels despite often being essentially the same process as putting tape down in the floor.

A question about the mirror reveal – what were we attempting??! I turned the question back on her and asked what she experienced – desire, looking, did it make a difference to be queer and look at the mirror nipples, complicity…

our audience felt that what we had created had come completely out of our experiential, phenomenological, research. the density and complexity of our work and process was all there to be experienced in these moments that appeared so simply engineered. that is our greatest success. it was all there, the violence, the vulnerability, the empowerment, the complicity. Rosella speaking of how she was always nervous before coming out with the mirror nipples, wondering whether it was liberating or violent and not being able to truly find an answer and that in itself being an answer. Molly speaking of how we used the man-dance to purge ourselves of that encounter, but also how it humanized him and how that helped us heal through it.

speaking of the BAMPFA show and how we have to/are challenged to adapt the performance. realising how attached we all are to the space that was both womb and first steps of this piece.

FOURTH NIGHT

8th April 2016
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): Performance Forum.
Performed as part of RIGHT NOW, a night curated by BAMPFA and the UC Berkeley NuJazz Collective  
Audience Number Approx. 150

adapting was strange. difficult. uncomfortable. we visited the space then spent some time thinking about what would work, back and forth, what feels right, what are the limitations, what are the opportunities, what are we ‘losing/gaining’ ?? arriving with a tentative running order and some things changing in the space, fluid and reactionary.  

The night of the show everyone feeling heavy, anxious, other stresses seeping in and now we are on foreign territory so no one feels safe. in the check-in everyone is tired, even Sarah. security guards, museum liaisons surround me with questions: “what are you doing?”– “is there nudity?” – “what’s this warning about sexual assault content in your program?” – “no you can’t collect for TGI Justice inside the museum”. smiles, handshakes, waryness. suspicion at my unwillingness to talk about the work.

I feel protective. of the work. of the performers. feel uneasy and drained and responsible.

Logan not well enough to perform and stays at home. we miss her presence. Rosella is slow and heavy. I can’t do this text today, she says – they are up on the glass-lined balcony walkway far from the audience and the other performers. out there. exposed. I feel too visible she says. we decide she will talk about how she had written a piece about sexual assault but that she felt too visible to perform it. I like it. what do we share and when? do we always have to share? why? things shift and change and we cannot always give what we want or are ‘supposed’ to. and if the audience is confused - who cares.

The audience wouldn’t come down to view the photos, too comfortable in their seats, just stared at the projection of the signposting collage footage. Looped. For 25 minutes. Some with very serious expressions, focused.

Lamps without lamps in this strange empty space full of bright florescent light. not a space in which to bare your soul but making their courage to even just stand there all the greater. Rosella’s and Paula’s hands on the glass wall creeping towards each other, high above everyone. The space swallows sound. squares is slow with only brief momentum. 150 bewildered, enchanted, smirking eyes bare down on us and we all feel the heaviness of being displaced from the space we know, the space we felt empowered in.

I am very visible alone with the film camera and giggling in delight when things go ‘wrong’  - like when Sarah doesn’t pay attention to the exits of the other three women and decides now is the time to go slowly all the way up the stairs and along the balcony, leaving Boris confused and alone on stage. reaching the top, looking down and realizing, then coming down she joins him but he circles for a while and I wonder that it means that the only guy is now alone on stage. I find myself annoyed that we have unwittingly given him that platform, that attention. I wonder about all those unexplored power dynamics.

we all feel an imbalance here. our inability to control the audience’s movement and make them feel individual renders us vulnerable. visible but unconnected. visible but unseen. it’s like we performing for a wall and this is unsatisfying, threatening. I briefly wonder why we’re even here.

at the mirror nipples a row of college boys cannot stop smirking.

Molly leaves the pause very long this time before she drags the block out. then more. after the smash we hold the silence again.

no reggeaton. no dance party.

the audience is silent, shuffling, uncomfortable and waiting. I cannot hide my giggles at this point, feeling my own discomfort intensely. C giggles and whispers to me – shall we clap? – I giggle and nod very slightly. the applause makes its way around the bewildered audience who seem unsure of what it is they have just witnessed

our sense of disconnection feels hollow in my gut. this space effectively destroyed our mission. we are all glad it’s over, feel like we have shown something incomplete, something only heavy – the camera smash added at the last minute in a attempt to echo our initial empowerment.

feeling like we have to defend the work, I try to reassure – “but it was sooo different in the other space”, my own discomfort necessitating my babbled and repeated justifications.

as the band set up behind us and Z takes the mic he says “and that was a piece by our friend Lara here, I don’t know if you want to say anything..?” I am crossing the stage to collect photos off the floor. I inwardly freak out. my piece??! hell no!! so instead of calmly taking the mic and saying something professional, I look up at the 150 faces and, in a welsh accent that suddenly decides to rise up from within me, say “well I would say it was a group effort”. I continue clearing up. I don’t know if they understood anything.

afterwards we are congratulated. people come up, say it was interesting, like they got something from it. I am almost surprised but it reminds me of how we just projected our own feelings of discomfort onto everyone, finding it difficult to read and control. despite it feeling like a betrayal of the work and our mission it has been a useful reminder of how hard it is to adapt something and how the space was integral to our work. it was like we had taken parts of our language out – a thing full of ellipsis and elision, holes and glimpses.

and Logan’s absence: her energy, her great improvisational instinct that helped the group feel brave and empowered.

the fact that we have just performed in front of 150 people in the BAMPFA not meaning success for us.