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| The corporate puppeteer |
Well, it's been a crazy week for the street arts gang and I. It's the last week of uni before the festive season and we have been cracking out street performances like ITV cracks out manufactured pop acts!
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| Inspector and driver of the very funny 'Tour Bus' |
On Monday we managed to distract a few christmas shoppers from the hustle and bustle of lunch hour in a local shopping centre with two twenty minute performances. My group's work was based on a political intervention regarding capitalist society and the great corporate machine whilst the other group based their piece on authority and power...(I know, bit heavy for yuletide shows huh?). As my first taste of perfoming on the street, I must say that I was less than relaxed when we were making our way to the site. I was worried that I would be the somewhat weaker member of the group as everyone else has had previous street performing experience whereas I have only ever done black box style performances. That said, I absolutely loved it! It feels far more rewarding to earn your audiences attention and far more like they are taking notice of what you have to say than if they were nodding off in a theatre seat, nose well immersed in their expensive glass of Pinot Grigio. Although it was only my first stab and I obviously have alot to learn, the fact that we gathered and subsequently maintained an audience reception was simply wonderful especially at this time of year and not within the safety of an advertised street arts festival.
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| Authority figure gets a good dusting off from Boris! |
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| Doll face happily leaves ransom notes with 'power' quotes around the centre for passers by. |
The university campus performances that took place today were equally as fun and I feel we managed to break the boundaries a bit more than Monday. The girls and I had great fun dressing as grotesque yet vein, 'popular girl' types whilst we wore controversial signs and created grotesque poses and sounds in our walkabout / installation piece. Sadly I couldn't take a photo of this but I can confirm that my monobrow was divine and that peanut butter makes for an excellent vomit looky-likey!! Yum.
The boys on the other hand gave a sterling comic walkabout with their tour bus which I thoroughly enjoyed and was an excellent example of the high quality work we are trying to create on the course. As we pottered about in their little cardboard bus and waved at lecturers and students enjoying their Wednesday morning powerpoint presentations, I had an overwhelming sense of feeling very lucky. Today marked the end of my first semester on the course and I couldn't be more thrilled with the work we are encouraged to produce, the way we are taught to make our practice a success and the opportunity to be educated about our busioness too.
Last week a friend asked me what course I was doing and he looked confused as he said 'So, what are you planning to do with that afterwards then? Because you wouldn't want to work on the street, would you..'.
At the time I just smiled and muttered something under my breath about probably working in the theatre again. Regrettably, and I am not sure why, but I felt almost embarrased to say that was exactly what I was intending on doing. I think people often associate street arts with grime, poverty and scratch performance that has little or no quality.
Well, this week has just confirmed to me that this is certainly not the case and if he asked me again I would have no problem in telling him otherwise! Yes, that is exactly the plan actually. Nothing could be closer to the plan in fact. And I firmly believe that street performing is the way forward and it just might be all thats left when the arts funding fecal matter really hits the fan, a lesson this week that (on a personal level) has rung only too true. So yes, yes I am going to perform on the street so you can put that in your buskers hat and smoke it! Maybe I'll tell him when I see him next...and then follow it with a cheery Merry Christmas.
Right, *gets off high horse* I'm off to write some comedy for a set at The Railway tommorrow night. Rest assured, it will be much more cheery than this although I cant promise it will be funny ;)
Adieu for now my lovelies x x x
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