Nuditate [ Latin translation: Vulnerability]

Final Performance: Wednesday 11th December 2013

Duration: 4pm till 6pm

Where: Studio 1, Lincoln Performing Arts Center

Aim: Expose our own personal mental and physical vulnerabilities to a public audience.

I never thought I’d be happy for the countdown clock to read ‘0:00:00’. The performance was one of the hardest things, I have ever had to do as a performer. I did no think it would be as challenging as it was to have an audience listen to your thoughts. It is by far easier to be someone else, than to be yourself. To expose everything you are to a room full of people you know and strangers and for them to see your most inner insecurities.

My Thoughts and Feelings on what happened in the final piece.

We all started the performance dressed up. Hair done, black dresses, heels and makeup: at our most comfortable. Throughout the performance, we all took items of clothing off and dropped them where ever we were stood or sat at the time. At the beginning of the piece we were all darted around the middle of the room, by the end we had all retreated around the edge of the space, with no one even stepping anywhere near the middle. It was interesting to see that everyone in our group did this. I felt that if I was to move into the middle of the space I would draw even more attention to myself. But looking back I was too vulnerable at the time to do the simple task. Throughout the piece, I pushed all of my own personal goals and boundaries. I was my most vulnerable at the point when a question about my mental vulnerability came on. The exposure on the video a times got too much for me, at one point I could not take it so I shut my eyes and turned to face the back wall. Much to my surprise that when I opened my eyes, my group had formed a spontaneous wall around me.To protect me.

At various climaxes, you could feel the emotion charge the atmosphere in the space. It was an emotional rollercoaster: nervous, excitement, anxiety, scared, sad, happy, nervous, emotional, You’d then get an adrenaline rush after you took a piece of clothing off only to go back to feeling of nervousness. A lot like the fragmented video playing in the background, i felt throguh out the piece my thoughts were fragmented together. One minute I was laughing the next reduced to tears. This in reflection is what the audience must have felt too. The video was tailored in away to take you on your own personal jouney. To proke thought into the audiences minds. Showing we are more simular than at first we think.

What would I have done differently?

• Reflecting back onto our whole process, I would have liked to focus more on mental vulnerability. Taking the time to really, think about ways to display the information. I would have also liked to have seen how the atmosphere would have been different if the performance was a one and one intimate piece.
• There was a bit of speculation in saying our piece was a feminist piece. It never set out to be one, it was just how the group fell. If we were to do it again, I would love to and a male to the group. It would have changed the whole dynamic atmosphere. What I did find interesting was that , even though there were no male performers in our group. As soon as a male walked into the space, the atmosphere did change. I personally felt like inorder to take another piece of clothing off, I had too look away or forget they were even there.
• Personally, I do not think I could have pushed myself even more. However if we were doing it for a longer  amount of time, I feel I would have somehow done something completely radical and unlike myself. With more time I would have worked myself up to maybe even stare into the eyes of an audience member. There were times when I felt like I could not even look at them, when I wish I did.

Finally, I am very happy with our final product. It has grown so much from the first time we ever set eyes on the themes of vulnerability and exposure. I feel we have most definitely covered and approached these two key words with all our energu and mind. My personal aim at the beginning of the process was to see how far I could push myself and to not hold back. I feel like I achieved this, the more uncomfortable I felt, the more vulnerable and exposed I made myself by taking off another iteam of clothing or delving deeper into my emotional memories. I really wish the audience could have been in my shoes, for at least a moment during the whole piece. What we have created is something rather interesting and different. It almost makes me want to recreate it, but on a larger scale sometime in the future.