Apocryphal Theatre Laboratory

We spent this lab as we usually do after a showing, discussing the previous performance. 

 

One of the biggest impacts on the performance was the fact that the usual divide between audience and performers was non-existent.  Most of our previous performances have occurred at paying venues where the audience is seated.  As we were in a gallery where the audience stood throughout the show, everything became or could be seen as a performance as everything was being watched.  This included all Apocryphal members, the visual artists and the audience themselves.  

 

In this setting, individual performers could be surrounded by audience, working on a very intimate level, as one of our performers Melina said, “the audience was touchable”.  So called “mini” performances sprung up as well as bigger moments of action amongst the audience, so rhythmically the show worked in a different way feeding off of more immediate energy.  Our showings usually rely on each audience member having their own experience of what or whom they choose to focus their attention on.  Melina suggested that in this case they became 360 degree spectators, as even if a spectator wasn’t looking at you, they may be standing behind you or leaning against you, which added a warmer relationship with them.

 

The big question hanging over our discussion was one of expectation.  The visual art world is very different from the theatre one and performance has an array of definitions in both realms.  We were aware of this and were excited by the prospective conflict when we became involved in the project, but we hadn’t necessarily accounted for the weight of our own expectations and reactions.  One of our missions as Apocryphal is to “undermine the reality grid of right now”.  This includes battling with our own individual reality grids as well as our performance personas and working where we may not know the outcome of what we are doing.  If the work wasn’t dangerous the experiments wouldn’t be as fruitful, and the question of rules of the room and permissions came up for everyone from “can I hug an audience member?” to “can I eat the orange that is a part of one of the art works?” 

 

Questions began to fly around our discussion, just as they were flying around the performance, as every decision the performers made in response to their own questions created a new set of choices for performer, artist and audience alike.  Theron suggested we play a game at the next lab where performers write down the answers they create to the questions they have about what they are allowed and not allowed to do whilst performing.  This sounded like a good idea to me, and another way to investigate that dialogue between performer and performing moment.

 

It also reminded me how the showings of the lab work are just as much experiments as our experiments in the lab rehearsals.   It is only by experimenting with a live audience that we can find those questions that haunt us about the work that we do, which in turn lead to the evolution of our next experiments and a lab showing.  I left the evening looking forward to our experiments next week and where we are taken next.

Well, I had a good time today, and I think the audience did too. 

It was so nice to perform in a white space as we rehearse in one.  It felt like a coming home -there were theatre people there and art people and in the white space everything was illuminated, magnified and, I felt, given time to grow which isn’t always the case in a black box (theatre) convention.  Instead of asking “what is this?” I found myself asking “what will it be?” or “what will it grow into?”.

At the end of the evening we went back into the gallery and the energy had really changed.  One of the art pieces has been taken off of the wall and is now placed on the floor, the animals have been given wall space and new pieces are included.  The texts I’d written and spoken during the event are framed and hung next to the performance score.  The whole room said: something occured here, something happened and it has transformed us and, more importantly, we are not afraid to show this and share it.

The exhibition will stay like this until it closes on the 28th November.  I’ve put some photographs of the text written in the performance which is now on sale in the gallery in my album.

I am the Assistant Director of Apocryphal Theatre and wanted to let you know about our one off intervention Cut Up Close Up at the exciting, new Lorem Ipsum Gallery on Vyner Street www.loremipsumgallery.com 18th November (tomorrow) at 3pm. 

We have been invited by the artists to respond to their work in performance; the artists will then respond by changing the exhibit, a process that is usually kept secret, so that Apocryphal’s aesthetic of putting the ‘off-stage’ on-stage will be enacted in a whole new context.  We are very excited to be part of this experiment playing with the boundaries of visual art and performance, but without sacrificing the uniqueness of both.  We hope you can join us for this event.