Genesis of 'Birth'
The first bit I had put together for this fragment was a 'Birth' script. It is supposed to be the opening of a book that I want to eventually write. I was interested in re-articulating the voice, making it difficult and experiencing it through an erotics of sound. It presents utterance as a form of birth, but after the first time I read it aloud to an audience (in a very small writers' group) it was quite clear that the thing had a sexual element to it. Then I discovered an article about women who experience orgasm during childbirth - as if now I had validation for writing such an ambiguous string of sounds.
The structure of the piece is centered around the most open vowel sound, a:, which I wanted to exlore as something primal and instinctive, a return to the first utterance, the adult equivalent of smacking your lungs into place as an infant. The first half, therefore, has no a: sounds and is full of short, sharp gutturals, closed vowels and consonants. Then, once I reach the word 'open', the script is overwhelmed by 'a:' words like 'part' 'pass' 'laugh' etc. Within it there are other gradations of the letter A, but I think the effect is bombadeering.
The first performance I made out of it was part of my course at RADA. I used two willing female vessels (Helena Bytnar and Stefanie David) to emit sounds and limbs from under a concealed table with slits cut into the front. As the speech was delivered by me, reading from a scroll pulled from the top of the table, they would produce grunting, wheezing, gargling noises until I got to the a: sound. The piece finished with a collective chanting of the vowel a: which I had coerced some of the audience members to join in with.
I decided to present my part as a sham priest/healer so I put a CD on my head and a bit of white tape on my collar - the birth of Dr.Shaboo. Part of the reason for this had to do with the vicinity of the Church of Scientology which we all had to pass every time we went to Rada on Chenies Street. I had found some a fantastic schizoid, poetic lecture given by L. Ron Hubbard on YouTube and used it as part of the sound recording, being a loose allusion to religious manipulation, whether cynical like the Scientologists or bodily, as with the Glossolalia of many Pentecostal Christians.
One bit that went down quite well was at the beginning when Dr.Shaboo breathes into the top of the table and the sheet is lifted up by the two bodies under the table so it looks like a giant, breathing lung.
Miscellaneous Festival (English Faculty Studio, Cambridge, 12.3.09)
This was a bit of a rushed affair. I didn't have any time to rehearse it with my two accomplices, Jeremy Hardingham and Ian Burrows, and I hadn't quite thought out what I intended to do. Infact, I was also using an entirely different text. I wanted to try out 'Stomunculus the Homunculus', a Finnegans Wake induced tale about a Homunculus who lives inside a stomach. I was inspired whilst reading Steven Conners' book about Ventriloquism (Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism; Oxford, 2006) and eating a sandwich in a Cafe near Russell Square.
Now that I think of it, I did use the birth scroll and then got Jeremy and Ian to read bits of Stomunculus. During Stomunculus I used some clay and eggs to accompany the text, in the hope that it would provide a visual and aural parrallel to the viscous sibilants in the words. But because I had not planned what I was actually going to do with the materials, they lost their effect fairly early on so that rather than providing a gut churning excitement within the audience, all I got was some baffled stares, probably a bit regretful about the rampant waste of food and modelling clay.
The first half however, was not a complete disaster. (Not that I'd call anything in performance a disaster). I delivered the text through the table again, with J and Ian doing what Helena and Stef had done, but because it was unrehearsed, and hadn't taken into account the masculine grains of their voices, it became quite shambolic. What had previously been a near mystical presentation became a noisy mess.
Nonetheless, a valuable lesson in the value of rehearsal. Even if you want to leave things to chance and indeterminacy.
The Birth Booth of Stomunculus (Pangea Project, Stoke-Newington, 20.4.09)
This was a 20+ minute piece made especially for Stomunculus. The Birth Scroll wasn't used this time. Most of the work was spent in recording it (you can find the draft here) and making the little cardboard booth. I'm thinking of producing Stomunculus as a radio piece because there is so much emphasis on sound and it has more to do with its musicality than with theatrical representation. But here was an opportunity to work more with materials that assist the story rather than tell it.
Overall, the performance was too long. The elements that did work were:
Porridge - a curiously revolted reaction from the audience. Within the porridge is the character 'Jonash the Hebroth' (Jonah and the Whale fame), who was made from white tac covering an egg. He also had a disgusting beard made from a girls' hair extension I bought from ASDA. (Actually I seem to buy most of my performance tools from ASDA these days). I look forward to working more with gooey, gloopey substances in the future.
Jasper - Warren Drew suggested that when Jasper appeared at the end, crawling through the stomachal box, creeping through the top, lighting a match and flying away, the piece took on a 'Promethean' twist. Unfortunately Jasper suffered in this performance and along with burning his fingers, two of them fell off!
Shadow Puppetry - Towards the end, Kham of Canaan tells a story about the magical beasts that God put into the Ark in order to save humanity after the flood (ofcourse, Noah and his family ate them all because they were hungry). At this point I stopped bothering with bits of miscellaneous objects to put behind the little shadow screen (made from card and greaseproof paper) and used my upturned hand to lip sync his speech. Afterwards I was told that this was a highlight. Kirsten Smith was quite moved by the speech and the simplicity of the hand. Plus I think putting a glass of apple juice between the light and the screen created a nice effect aswell. One to consider.
The next thing to do is to cut it down from 20 minutes to around 5-8 minutes, so I can splice it into the birth sequence.
No comments:
Post a Comment