Author: Gabrielle Ruth Evans

Nuditate: The Final Performance

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.

Countdown Clock

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.

Lets talk Nakedness

Would you get naked? As university drama students, getting naked was always going to be issue. From the very beginning of our process many people gave us negative comments, saying it was a clique and ask why would even consider do it. I must admit I had my preconceptions too at first however I feel in our performance, we showed them that getting ‘naked’ exposing our bodies and insecurities was so much more than what they first thought. It was down to personal choice how much we could expose ourselves with the essence of the piece needing us to be at our most vulnerable. We did not sexualise the body, in theory we wanted to desexualise it. The idea of this however will never be fully realised as we cannot control other people’s thoughts on the naked body. The way we presented ourselves, our body language and a very bare space I felt unsexualised the space. We did not highlight, the need for anyone in the audience to look at us specifically, and audience members could have gone the whole performance without even seeing anyone naked if they so wished. I was surprised how well both us as performers and the audience coped with baring all.

In relation to this, I have researched into artist Nic Green who created a performance called Trilogy (2010) in which she broke down the body. Although the goal of her piece was a response to feminism, woman in todays society and a political performance. A lot of what she did, relates to our performance. She desexualised the body by using an ‘unselfconscious committed style of performance’ in which ‘the nudity is rapidly normalised’. (Aston and Harris, 2013,p.107). Getting naked also ‘marked progressive empowerment'(Aston and Harris, 2013) the longer the body is seen the less sexual it becomes, as the naked self becomes more of a uniform. Our piece in a way reflected this, by own change in states throughout the piece. I personally felt empowered by the end of the piece, it was such a surreal experience.

Works Cited:

Aston, E and Harris, G. (2013) A Good Night Out for the Girls: Popular Feminisms in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillian.

Exposing our Mental & Physical Vulnerabilities

Mental:

In order to transfer our own personal mental vulnerabilities to the space, we developed one of our past experiments and integrated it into the piece. The Experiment consisted of asking other people to write a question based upon when they felt most exposed and vulnerable. After doing this, we then at randomly picked a question and answered them honestly. No one knew at the time not even ourselves what kind of questions and answers we would gather. Questions such as ‘When was the last time you had sex?’ and ‘What dress size are you?’ were picked out and answered truthfully. In reflection to the first time we did this some questions did not make me personally vulnerable but others did. For our final piece, we then decided to integrate the idea of showing our mental vulnerability through simple questions therefore, we got together a selection of questions from the experiment and questions we wrote, sat down in a vulnerable space and filmed them.

mental vulnerability

The most interesting thing for me was how much I personally would let people know about my life. It was one of the hardest things I have done. It was challenging, to answer questions that truly made me feel Vulnerable. For instance, a question that hit a nerve was ‘Have you ever been mentally or Physically abused?’ As I read the question, I was visibly scared. No one in the room knew what I was going to say, I myself never thought I would be even talking about something that happened so long ago. Its not a question of me answering it. The whole project is about what makes us ourselves feel vulnerable and exposed. This question did. Physically I was shaking as I spoke, mentally as soon as i spoke the words there was no going back. I had to explain the whole story. It was a challenging thing to do, but at the time of be sharing my ‘secret’ made me the most vulnerable I have ever felt. The reasoning behind putting it into the main performance was because we were exploring our own vulnerabilities. I like all the members in the group have exposed so much of our lives, for everyone to see. Although on the day, I know I will be more conscious that other people hearing one of my worst memories to date but I would like to think it will translate that we are all human however big or small our problems are. Something that makes me feel exposed and vulnerable does not necessarily mean it would be the same for someone else. In my eyes it represents what we are trying to portray in the piece.  The more you expose yourself through your thoughts and insecurities and you breakdown every boundary, only then you can be truly feel vulnerable.

Physical:

How can we make ourselves physically vulnerable? We conducted an experiment at the beginning of our process where we looked at our insecurities and marked on our bodies what we would change about our physical appearance if we could. We then invited people in to honestly draw what they would change about us. Some as expected were more honest than others. This was testing in its self because we had to expose as much as our selves as we could. Personally I could only get into shorts which came to my knees and my bra because consciously I couldn’t bring myself to take of anymore clothes. One participant in the reflection at the end even said they would have rather have been in our position than theres. Which I find the most interesting. We exposed as much as we possibly could at this stage. At the time, I thought that was all I could do it was more of my mental boundaries stopping myself from taking off any other clothes. I felt exposed around some people I knew, so at that stage I was feeling anxious and vulnerable even before we got the date of our performance.

The next question was how could this be translated into the space? The answer, through live performance. On the day, we shall make ourselves, in front of an audience the most vulnerable and exposed we can be. This will symbolise physical vulnerability, we shall take our clothes off and expose our barest and most exposed forms. The idea of getting ‘naked’ in a studio for a performance in front of an audience can and is daunting. But for us to physically show exposure and vulnerability ourselves doing this is essential. As six twenty something women, all representing different body shapes, exposing our bodies to a 21st century audience could not be more nerveracking. Each person with their own insecurities in one place at one time, pushing their own personal comfort zones. Exposing their physical imperfections and dislikes is very rarely seen within society. 

One main influence for our physical representation of exposure, comes from Vanessa Beecroft. She created a performance called VB45, in which she had many models and actors exposing their bodies to an audience. ‘Most of the time, these women are naked, wearing shoes and make-up only, to appear as if they were stripped and wear a naked uniform, rather than being naturally nude and free. ‘ (Shapiro, 2008) This links into our performance in the physical representation as it looks at what it means to be physicallyu vulnerable. By the end of our performance, we do not know what our physical representations will be. But hopefully by pushing ourselves, we can physically show our vulnerability. This should also been seen through our body language.

The piece like Beecrofts will be unrehearsed. ‘Without rehearsal, the women always address the audience in a conscious way’ (Shapiro, 2008) The permance essesscial relies on our personal representations of mental and physical exposure and vulnerability. We have all the right materials on the day we will be ourselves and it depends on the atmophere we create in the space. We will will not be actors, every reaction in the final perfromance is our own emotion.

Works Cited

Shapiro, D. (2008) VANESSA BEECROFT Interview by David Shapiro. [online interview] http://www.museomagazine.com/VANESSA-BEECROFT[Last assessed 11 December 2013]

 

Time and Performance Layout

Time:

With our piece showing vulnerability we needed a substantial idea to bring everything together. As the piece we want to create will be durational therefore the idea of time was always in the back of our minds. By adding  a countdown clock  to the piece it will give us as performers and the audience the feeling that something will to happen within the time frame of 1 hour 50 minutes and 27 seconds. The task is to make ourselves as vulnerable and exposed as we possibly can within the time frame. The Countdown will be projected beside our mental vulnerability video. The piece will last 1:50:27 minutes, although this is not a very long durational piece, I do believe it will give us hopefully enough time to explore and expose ourselves in a room full of audience members. By having the clock projected for all to see it should in essence capture the audience and make them choose between staying in the room out of curiosity of what will develop within the set time frame.The idea to make the piece a durational piece was influenced by our work in class, as we were replicating Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present. Although we are not going to do our piece for as long as Abramovic, I have learnt from the experience that the longer you are left your thoughts the more you personally expose your thoughts therefore in theory if we are left with the key themes of vulnerability and exposure we will delve deeper into our own thoughts, and insecurities.

A Development in appearance:

The performance space has changed somewhat from our original idea. During our tech run we had realised that it had lost some of the concept of vulnerability and exposure. We were hiding behind microphones and spots and we had seemed to have created a barrier between us and the audience. This was not what we wanted at all. We want the audience to feel vulnerable, and be part of the performance space. Therefore we made the decision to split the space. By halving the studio it transformed our piece, it automatically creates a more honest, vulnerable and intimate relationship between audience and ourselves. In order to break down even more the audience performer barrier we are going to add a sofa for audience members and ourselves to sit on. This will be situated in conjunction with the door on the opposite side of the space. This giving the audience members the opportunity to walk through the space and sit comfortably. Having the sofa strategically angled in the corner means that the audience will be more exposed to the space around them and at us.  We shall be moving around the space, standing amongst the audience, in front of them or even far away as possible from them throughout the piece. Spatially with us changing the layout, and having the mental vulnerability video playing simultaneously with the timer on the back wall I feel it is essential that the free space in front around the projections will add an atmosphere, and will give us more of a special awareness and relationship with the audience, other members of the group and the space.

Initial Idea of the Performance Layout:

Initial idea of the Performance space

Final Performance Layout:

Final Performance Studio Space Layout

By having essential objects in the space and two simulations projections I feel the piece has taken a good and needed transformation from our original setting. The simplicity of the space, I also think will increase to a degree the relatable relationship of exposure and vulnerability between us, the audience and the space. Through making the space more intimate, it in theory should make the audience feel more vulnerable and maybe perhaps uncomfortable as the performance will contain nudity and content that some may find upsetting, the fact that we are choosing to make the space smaller gives the audience no room to dodge anything said or done. They can only be distracted by their own thoughts. It will depend on their own choice.

This is similar to a Marina Abramovic and Ulay collaboration entitled Imponderabilia. In which herself and Ulay stood naked in the main entrance doorway  of the museum, facing each other. As the public entered the museum they had to pass between them. In an interview with Paula Orrell, Abramovic stated that ‘Each person passing has to choose which one of us to face’ (Orrell, 2010). This can be echoed through our choice as performers to make the performance space more intimate. The fact that we are making the space smaller gives the audience a choice of where and what they want to engage with. They can choose to look at us taking our clothes off, choose to watch the video or even choose to walk out.

 

Works Cited:

Orrell, P. (2010) Marina Abramovic + The Future of Performance Art. London: Prestel Publishing Ltd.