Working with Collaborators - First Day

 

Public workshop 1

 

Six participants with a variety of performance skills and experiences attended the workshop.

 

Introduction

We briefly explained our project, how we were funded and the themes and ideas we had explored in the 5 preceding days:

·       our clown lineages, and how these were very euro-centric and similar to each other

·       our desires to interrupt normative patterns of behaviour in public spaces

·       experiments in inviting passers-by, the general public to participate in our creations - egg games and (sort of) meaningless non-competitive competitions

·       our desires to create work that provokes through entertainment, addressing political and social justice issues

 

Performance preparation

We then invited participants to go out onto the streets with us in a short, improvised performance around a central theme of a clown ritual involving eggs. The emphasis was to come up with costumes and a basic choreography within 20 minutes. It was impressive how quickly and effectively everyone managed to create a costume made of paper, sacking, and/or cardboard secured with string, thread, staples and upholstery webbing. The choreography was less clear, and we agreed upon only a few moments and points where we would work together and in unison.

 

We headed to Monastiraki Square where we knew there would be people who might engage with the work. We formed a very loose procession and one of the clowns began a chant 'Ayga' (Egg) which all the clowns joined in with. This became, at points, a strong and layered chorus and attracted attention from the people in cafes and passers-by. The same clown started an improvisation of laying an egg and the procession halted briefly to highlight this.

 

What happened?

As we moved along the streets from Iroon Square we lost formation, some of us interacted alone with audience, we got distracted by 'over-engagement' with some young audiences, some felt disconnected to the group and audience.

 

There were two clear and obvious kinds of public interaction with us: one was from people taking photos with their phones  - some of these people spent time watching our actions but for many the idea seemed to be  to capture an image and then move on. The most actively engaged onlookers were a number of young Roma, some accompanying adults who might have been working/selling in the square. They stopped to watch and immediately engaged with the egg ritual by reaching out to touch the eggs, tentatively, and with care. In my case, I offered my egg to one, in exchange for a clementine of his. After some time I indicated (my face was mostly covered with a hat and a mask with nose on it) I wanted the egg back and he gave it back to me. I tried to hand back the clementine in exchange but he refused it, indicating with a flick of his hand that I should keep it. So I gave him back the egg and kept the clementine, which then became my ritualised object. He seemed pleased to have the egg and I was pleased to have had this exchange. Overall, their interest in us and our actions was high and involved.

 

Some of the boys started a game of tugging the webbing that one of the clowns had wrapped around himself as a costume.

 

Gendered play?

Other boys joined in and turned the play in a kind of 'rough-housing' or 'horse-play' which ended in the clown giving up complete control to the game of being pulled around the square by their webbing. I wondered whether the boys intentionally chose or felt allowed to choose to 'mess' with a male clown. During the rougher part of the 'play' one of the other male clowns chose to intervene and it became more of a tug of war between two sides. With the intervention of more clowns the play was turned around and at one point one of the boys fell down and played 'dead' whereupon the clowns cried loudly and created a brief funeral ceremony until the boy got up and ran to his friends. The boys engaged actively with us, playing, fighting, laughing, commenting, ganging up on the male clowns. There were very few girls and none actively engaged with us physically.

 

At some point we decided collectively to head back to the studio. I was feeling a little disconnected from our potential audiences and decided to use crossing the road as an opportunity to engage further with people, by stopping traffic and helping people across the road, whether they needed it or not. As a way of 'making special'  (in this case, pedestrians in the everyday act of walking and crossing a road, of taking away priority from motorised traffic and giving it clearly to foot traffic) I find this an interesting proposition to work with: some people were happy to engage, some people giggled and look embarassed, others looked the other way and refused to accompany me. I only spent a short time on this and then caught up with the rest of the group.

 

The return to the studio was relatively quick but when we arrived in Iroon Square we 'performed' a little more to the seated cafe customers.

 

Participant reflections

Reflections on the action included enjoyment from:

·       being able to vocalise and express through chanting without having meaning attached to this

·       making non-sense rather than working with the stress of complexity

·       group choreography

·       the chicken/egg narrative

·       new ways of moving, shaking, liberating the body.

·       being together, moving apart, coming together again

 

 

Workshop 2

On the Monday morning following the workshop and street showing the three of us felt that in the afternoon workshop we wanted to try a more choreographed outing. So we created a format that allowed for individual improvisation within more strongly directed parameters: we decided on a performance 'ritual'

which featured a chorus with a kind of MC or 'high priestess' (reminiscent of the bouffon parody) and a central 'sacrificial stooge' (clown) figure. We wanted to encourage more audience participation, more in the form of questioning and critique, rather than applause and approval. For this we decided we needed 3 'interlocuters' or go-betweens who would side with the audience, provoking, as clowns, questions, observations and critique. They might parody the performers, they might encourage audience members to join the performance...we wanted to leave their brief quite open.

 

Performance preparation

Nine (?) participants attended this workshop.

Although I was worried that our advertised invitation to 'experiment' might now be deemed too directed and formed to participants, in fact it was the opposite: participants were happy and relieved to be given a clear format and a choice of roles. We gave ourselves 15 minutes to come up with more costumes, masks/hats and choreography. It was astonishing the speed and energy with which everyone set about the tasks and we were out on the street in twenty minutes. 

Hilary Ramsden