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.

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 21^st 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:

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.

Initial Thoughts

Introduction: Livvie Milne The aim of our piece is to expose vunareablitly on to society, blurring the lines between performer and audience. Based on the notions of reaction to surroundings and spectacle, the observed becomes the observer, witnessing exposure from in front and behind the glass. By setting this durational piece in an intuition, this live art piece becomes witnessed by everyday people, who would not nesseccarily be exposed to such artistic context. By exploiting the notion of vulnerability in the physical framework of a glass window, we project our bodily and mental insecurities, onto the general public. The piece is based on the breaking down of boundaries, created in physce and by the expectations society puts on us. The reactions by the performer and the audience confuses these generic roles, as the performer will be able to see and hear the spectators reactions.

Exposure: Livvie Milne Exposure can come in multiple forms and be varying in extremity. The basis of our piece is on the idea of revealing something of us to an audience. The blurring lines between the spectator and performer we find both sides of the glass reveal their emotions and are exposed to the reactions of each other. The words Exposure’s two definitions are 1 the state of having no protection from something harmful: 2 the revelation of something secret, especially something embarrassing or damaging: In our piece we find both of these ideas capitalized on. The first one definition is highlighted through the physical removing of clothes. We become subject to potentially hurtful, angry reactions from on lookers. We felt the location of the durational piece was crucial. We wanted the audience not to be people who attend exhibitions or contemporary pieces, regularly. We wanted the performance not to be framed in a theatrical, experimental setting, but in the middle of an institution where young people exposed or not exposed to the arts would witness the process. There is more than just a physical exposure, (removing clothes to show body) we are also exploring a mental vulnerability through vocalizing our thoughts and emotions in the piece. The idea of putting on a brave face is rejected as a stream of consciousness can or cannot be verbalized through microphones projecting these thoughts to the observers the vulnerability demonstrated in this. The theme of Exposure is as prominent as the observer or the performer wants. The idea of a ‘Brave Face’ can be a shield to the exposure, and the observer can look or ignore as much as they choose, similarly the performer can chose to reveal as much of their body and mind as they choose. Vunerliablty is witnessed by both sides and it may be so overwhelming that both sides chose to let it block their exposure. The battle between insecurity and the openness will be clearly shown and heard in this process. The second definition summarizes clearly the inhibitions that may prevent exposure. Physical and mental insecurities, for example someone may have spots, therefore often masks their complexion with makeup, and would feel nervous exposing that to society. The Role of exposure in modern day Western society is controversial. Some may say through the emphasis on media and its accessibility that nudity is something that is common. With the porn industry in the UK alone being estimated at One Billion pound industry. Is exposure still relevant to an audience whose age consists of a modern generation who has lived through this increase of this growing market? We feel it still is. The idea of emotional exhibionist is something not often revealed, especially in the ages of 18-25. The Market is made up of airbrushed glamour models many surgically enhanced and made up. The piece we are conducting promotes the opposite of this. It is more than revealing our bodies; it is revealing our emotions, our worries our Insecurities. It rejects the idea of perfection or tampering with the natural physical form by barely exposing traits, or scars or feelings the performer may not feel natural to reveal. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4305257.stm

Boundaries: Chloe Pitts

Boundaries:

1. Something that indicates a border or limit.

2. The border or limit so indicated

For our piece, I wanted to read further into the role boundaries play within our everyday life and culture. In our modern society, there are a number of things created, to disconnect the relation and create boundaries between what our minds can create, and what we in practical reality may achieve. Every day we face a social constraint, which further increases the limitation of our capacity as individuals. Within our piece ‘Nuditate’ there were many boundaries that needed overcoming in order for the piece to be created, such boundaries included; boundaries that Society places on the individual, theatrical boundaries (including the breakdown), and the problematic boundaries of our performance space, which was later decided as being too difficult to work with due to the intimate nature of the piece versus the extremely public setting of that performance space. Society creates a strong sense of boundaries on the individual through family boundaries, religious, racial, political, national, geographical and many more social boundaries – these boundaries however are mainly constructed within the mind. This relates much to the boundaries created within the theatre; perhaps the only boundaries in theatre are the ones we place on ourselves, on our imagination. Performance Art however, ‘continues to indicate the contemporary tendency to break down barriers between the arts and to help us to understand that ‘performance’ can take many forms’ (Brockett and Ball, 2011, p. 252). Much like performance art, i wanted my performance to break down barriers through the many different technical and visual elements used within the installation piece. The first boundary we faced when creating our performance was the element of nudity in our piece; nudity in theatre can and has been criticised as a churlish way to give shock value to a production, while also being described as a ‘semiological scandal’ (Pavis, 1998, p.238). However, due to the shocking manner of nudity it highlights why it still shocks the audience and why it is still such a powerful tool. As a society, we believe we are comfortable with the naked body; as it appears to be advertised all around us, in the media. These images however are not true to life and have been photo shopped to have imperfections and fat removed, therefore what we really see is an ideal of what humans might look like if they were produced as perfect. The raw power of theatre, on the other hand, is that it can cause the audience to experience discomfort by exposing the audience to things that they might not be as accepting of as they thought. I wanted to use the nudity aspect within my piece to explore the process of vulnerability, and exposure within society through the ‘de-eroticising of the nude body’ (Harris, 2001,p.69) I wanted to achieve this by confusing the performer audience role through the use of ‘Self-reflection, decomposition and separation of the elements of dramatic theatre’ (Angelaki, 2013, p. xii) There were also many boundaries when choosing performance space, and this is one which my group faced as we tried to choose a space which was open to the whole university, therefore giving an honest true to life feel to the piece but also creating problems which might not have been encountered if performed in a theatrical environment. Within that space, the performers also had boundaries to overcome in terms of feeling comfortable with their bodies. My performance, much like society had many boundaries that need overcoming in order for it to work.

Works cited

Angelaki, V. 2013. Contemporary British Theatre. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brockett, O. and Ball, R. 2011. The Essential Theatre, Enhanced. Boston: Micheal Rosenberg.

Harris, S. 2001. Bertrand Blier. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pavis, P. 1998. Dictionary of the theatre. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Insecurities: Gabby Evans

What constitutes as insecurity? Hating the way you look? Feeling repulsed by your own body? Disagreeing with your thoughts? Loathing the way you think or speak? Being alone? When you feel worthless? A personal dislike? Basically, to be insecure means to be uncertain or anxious about ourselves, both physically and mentally. Insecurity is closely linked with the key themes of Vulnerability and Exposure. Everyone at some times in their lives will feel insecure, whether it is about what they look like or about how they act around other people. At one point or another it will affect us, however like myself, many try to mask these insecurities from public view. Over the next couple of weeks we aim to explore our own individual insecurities and why they make us so vulnerable. Personally I believe the more we expose our faults, the more vulnerable we become. I also think it is going to be a challenging aspect over the next few weeks and will need us to be fully committed as we shall be letting other members of not only our group but potentially audience members into our essentially personal thoughts, feelings and insecurities.

Intimacy:

Tiffany Thompson Defining intimacy can be difficult as there are different types of intimacy, intimacy in a relationship, intimacy in performance and intimacy within society. Definitions of intimacy are:

The condition of being intimate
An instance of being intimate

Different definitions come across however the definition of intimacy leans towards intimacy if relations with another person and not in performance. However, Maria Chatzichichristodoulou and Rachel Zerihan define intimacy as, “Intertwined with feelings closeness, trust and familiarity intimacy occurs through effective communication between some people in some kind of relationship” ( 2012, p.1) as we are exploring the notion of vulnerability on society I think intimacy plays a big part in being vulnerable. However, when being intimate with someone whether it being in a performance or in relations with someone could make you become vulnerable within yourself. Questions asked when exploring Intimacy, how can you be intimate with someone when you can’t be intimate with yourself? Can you be honest when exposing intimacy and vulnerability? How can you make the audience be intimate with the performer? Chatzichichristodoulou, Maria and Zerihan, Rachel (2012) Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vulnerability: Lauren Olerenshaw
adjective

adjective: vulnerable

1.

exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

“we were in a vulnerable position”

Our final experiment and our process, Is wholly based on vulnerability, what we have come to realise is that mental vulnerability and physical vulnerability can come hand in hand. During our process we have played with the boundaries of who has been made to feel vulnerable whether it is the audience or us as performers. What we discovered throughout this process is everyone will have a different state in which they feel vulnerable, for us as 20-21 year old girls what we found as a common ground was we all felt at our most vulnerable when physically bare, we use make up and our clothes as masks to hide what we do not want others to see.

Conclusion: Chloe Pitts To conclude, we decided to conduct a series of experiments within the dramatic context and safety of the theatre. This exposure to an academic, theatrical audience will help shape our piece before it is shown to the public. By exhibiting some of our original thoughts that have helped us reach a progressive idea, we will monitor reactions and self-reflect upon our boundaries we have, to evaluate if they prevent us, or if they can be expanded and stretched.

Nuditate

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Gabrielle Evans