Month: March 2018

In one of our recent classes we discussed our first ideas for our pieces. Perhaps I didn’t explain what I wanted to do very well, which is highly likely given my disability means that I can’t always put across idea very well especially under pressure, as the feedback I received did not exactly match what I was trying to explain. The class seemed to think that want to tell some kind of sob story about how I became disabled, when that’s never what I’ve wanted to do…simply because it’s not a sob story. I realised that the class had very ablest ideas about what having a disability must be like and it was that, rather than their actual feedback, that started to give me some structuring and script ideas for my piece. Some things that the class said actually, to be perfectly honest, annoyed me and at times were offensive, though this was unintentional on their part.

I was referred to as “less-abled”.

This is not a word you use to describe disabled people! It implies that I am less than an abled person and that is not the case. I am not “less-abled”. I am DISABLED. Being disabled is an identity. It’s something that a lot of disabled people are proud of. Disabled is also the correct term to use.

Another thing that was said was that “what happen was a really horrible thing to happen to you…”

This is a very ablest point of view. I do not see my disability as something horrible because very simply it’s not. Yeah it obviously changed my life and changed the way I live but that does not make it a bad thing. Another word that got thrown around was the word “inspiring” which is a word that is not as kindly looked upon by the disabled community as abled-bodied people seem to think it is. I’m not inspiring. I’m a student. The same as everyone else in the room. I have not done anything inspiring so I do not want to be called that just because I am in a wheelchair…that does not sit well with me.

I never wanted to do a piece that was some sob story about how I went from abled-bodied to disabled, I wanted to do a piece in which I use my own story to discuss this idea of being disabled. The disabled identity. You do not become disabled the moment you gain your condition, you become disabled over time. This made me think of videos that BBC Three have been doing recently which things not to say to certain people and there’s quite a few disability related ones. These videos have helped me come up with an idea for the structure of my piece. I plan to do on the idea of things not to say to disabled people. I still want to use physical theatre so what I plan to do is to answer certain questions, like “what’s wrong with you”, using movement sequences.

Now that I’ve got this idea I now plan to work out what questions I want to answer and work out a draft script to work from.

Robert Wilson: 

„Visual artist. Known for his use of light, his investigations into the structure of a simple movement, and the classical rigor of his scenic and furniture design. His work focuses on movement and lighting to create very visual performances. While I find that his work is very interesting to watch and look at I don’t think that I’m likely to use it within my own performance.

Presentation on Wilson’s work below:

Robert Wilson

Whoopi Goldberg:

I really liked Whoopi Goldberg’s performance style. The way she tells the story and discusses serious topics in a way that is also very funny is brilliant. She keeps the story flowing and even when she changes the subject it all links together. Unlike Swimming to Cambodia, the changes in topic are not sudden or dramatic rather the topics over lap and naturally flow together. She manages to grab the audiences attention with the way she tells the story, by changing the way in which she speaks the lines. The story goes from being funny to discussing a serious topic to going back to funny. The character Fontaine also changes up stereotypes. She is a drug addict but she also very clever and in the video below there are moments when the audience laugh at the idea of a clever drug addict. When this happens Goldberg improvises brilliantly and questions why the audience find this idea hard to believe.

I really liked the way in which Goldberg can discuss a serious topic in a manner that is funny and I feel like I want to try to use this idea within my own performance if possible. I feel like the way in Goldberg does add humour within a serious topic makes the serious parts stand out more. They have more effect. When Goldberg pauses and the audience have a less than a minute experience of silence, for example, makes you think about what Fontaine is actually saying. Another example is when Fontaine talks about the quote by Anne Frank and the idea that this child did, despite everything, thing that there was more good in people than bad, that moment does hit home. It makes you think and then Goldberg adds humour as to lighten the mood. I found Goldberg’s work the most engaging out of all the artist we’ve looked at so far.

Tim Miller:

Miller is a performance artist whose work explores his identity as a gay man. The thing I actually really liked about Miller’s work is that he uses his own story to talk about a bigger social issue. This is something I want to do with my own work. He has a very dramatic story telling style and he is also very physical in some of his pieces. He’s also political and talks about the issues that effect him and his community. Even though he is telling his own story, he is also telling the story of his community and I think that that is very effective and makes the performance much more interesting.  It very much starts as his story but then evolves into a much bigger topic area as he introduces his community’s struggles into the story.