Tag: Chris Greenhall

Posted in Evaluation

Paint a Vulgar Picture

Posted on by Christopher Greenhall

Upon completion of our piece, it’s now time for us to evaluate what worked within the performance and what did not. The way in which we decorated and set our space was with the intention of making it ‘safe zone’; making the concept of giving these words acceptance viable. We constructed the set with a child’s ‘den’ in mind; bed sheets draping across and down as a roof and walls. We also filled the space with cuddly toys and seemingly harmless and child-like objects. This was so that once audience members entered the space, they feel welcome and secure. However, if a participant was to delve deeper into the space they would discover subtle hints of a darker agenda. Slightly hidden in the organised mess of children’s toys and cushions was a number of sex toys and sexual paraphernalia, hidden because we appreciated the idea of participants getting the ‘secure’ sense first and then after visual investigation, begin to see what the content could possibly involve.

The segment of our performance which involved offering audience members a big bowl full of bits of paper which each contained a question seemed to work. As the questions were topical about taboo words and subjects, they generated a good amount of discussion and contemplation. We were concerned that people would feel as though they could not speak their mind about these subjects; on the contrary, we were finding it difficult to move from one question to the other. It’s apparent that the way in which we set our space made participants feel more open and accepted to discuss their thoughts. Overall we feel our performance went very well and we had masses of fun in the process. We feel it ran smoothly and the audience involved themselves when appropriate.

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Posted in Concept, Rehearsal Process

Did you know that…means…?

Posted on by Christopher Greenhall

Understanding these ‘taboo’ words is imperative to our performance so it was a necessity to delve deeper into origin, meaning and usage. All definitions and origins supplied by Oxford Dictionaries. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

 

Word: Spastic

Origin: Mid-18th century: via Latin from Greek spastikos ‘pulling’, from span ‘pull’

Definition:

Adjective:

1 relating to or affected by muscle spasm.

relating to or denoting a form of muscular weakness ( spastic paralysis) typical of cerebral palsy, caused by damage to the brain or spinal cord and involving reflex resistance to passive movement of the limbs and difficulty in initiating and controlling muscular movement. (of a person) having cerebral palsy.

2 informal, offensive, incompetent or uncoordinated.

Noun:

1 a person with cerebral palsy.

2 informal, offensive; an incompetent or uncoordinated person.

Own Interpretation: Personally I feel this word is used by the younger generation. Late 90s, early 00s was when I heard this ‘insult’ thrown around the playground but not so much anymore. That may be because of other now derogatory words replacing it such as retard. It’s relation to cerebral palsy is widely unknown. It’s interesting how a word associated with muscle weakness is also used  to describe and informal person. My last noteworthy finding is that this website hasn’t defined this word as being used as an insult or in a malicious way; furthermore if a child was to search the web to unearth a definition, it seems apparent that spastic is appropriate for everyday use.

 

Word: Coon

Phrases/Context: for (or in) a coon’s age

North American informal, dated for a very long time: ‘I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!’

Definition:

Noun:

1 North American; short for raccoon.

2 informal, offensive; a black person.

Own Interpretation: Discovering the actual use and definition for coon was particularly interesting. I think its American descent is known by some but in terms of how it’s used over the pond was certainly news to myself. I was unaware of its relation to the racoon but it seems logical enough. I find it compelling to learn that words such as these are used in entirely unrelated circumstances; for example to use coon as a measure of time is baffling. Through trolling forums I have come across attempted decipherings of the phrase and the most common is that the phrase is linked to the life span of a racoon; in the same way that ‘crow’s age’ is used here in Britain. To conclude, coon is one of the more rarer words associated in Britain but is still used nonetheless.

 

Word: Chink

Origin: late 19th century: irregular formation from China

Definition:

Noun

Informal, offensive; a Chinese person.

Own Interpretation: Chink is a word I don’t come across to often, even with the increase of people with a Chinese descent in Britain. I’ve heard friends and family describe a Chinese takeaway as a Chinky more than I have heard a Chinese person being described as a Chink. It’s interesting also to consider the alternative meaning for Chink which, spelt without the capital C, means a small, narrow opening in a wall or upright surface. We could analyse this further but arguing that chink is underused because of its offensive alternative meaning.

 

Word: Mongoloid

Origin: The terms Mongoloid, Negroid, Caucasoid, and Australoid were introduced by 19th-century anthropologists such as Blumenbach attempting to classify human racial types, but today they are recognized as having very limited validity as scientific categories. Although occasionally used when making broad generalizations about the world’s populations, in most modern contexts they are potentially offensive.

Definition:

Adjective:

1 relating to the broad division of humankind including the indigenous peoples of East Asia, SE Asia, and the Arctic region of North America.

2 (mongoloid) offensive; having Down’s syndrome.

Noun:

1 a person of a Mongoloid physical type.

2 offensive; a person with Down’s syndrome.

Own Interpretation: It was fascinating to discover the origin and definitions of Mongoloid. Personally I have never used this word as I didn’t comprehend it. I had not even heard it used in conversation but clearly it is known by some. As to whether that ‘some’ know of its original uses to describe indigenous inhabitants of Asia and North America is very unlikely. I feel that mongoloid’s relation to those suffering from Down’s syndrome is known by those who use it. My reasoning for this is because it’s an underused word so when people do hear it, they are inquisitive as to its meaning.

 

Works Cited:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Posted in Concept, Rehearsal Process

So it goes a little something like this

Posted on by Christopher Greenhall

The angle that we have decided to take with our performance will involve taboos in society. How they are received in society and we plan to present them on stage in such a way by decontextualizing them which will result in them losing their meaning for the duration of our performance and making them appear as just words. The ways we plan to do this is by presenting them in speech as nothing but words by elongating the vowels in certain taboo words giving them a somewhat surrealist sound. We also wish to jumble the letters around to show that they are just 4 letters. An example of one of the words is ‘paki’; in the Surrealist part of this section, the word ‘paki’ would be presented in speech as ‘paaaaaaakkkkiiiiiiiii’ with pitch and volume being altered within saying the word. This way we’re still saying the word but by saying it in such a way as we plan to, it will show that they are just words. Often with words such as ‘cunt’, ‘nigger’ and ‘fuck’ for example, 99% of the time, it’s the context and the way in which they are said that denotes them their derogatory reputation.

In the word-jumble section, offering a word like ’cunt’ to the audience but then rearranging the words to then offer ‘unct’, ‘tunc’ or ‘ctun’ gets their minds thinking about how the meaning behind the word is all reliant on the order these letters are in. However, the flaw in this section is that no matter how much you attempt to alter the meaning of the word or make the word seem no longer derogatory by this technique, you still will not succeed in essentially changing the actual meaning.

Another section we have planned is to install the taboo words into numerous mainstream songs from the 80s and 90s. We are plotting to keep very few of the song’s original lyrics; we’re doing this to decontextualize these words even further and to make them appear as just sounds. For example, in a parody of ‘Don’t stop me now’ by the iconic band Queen, we will be replacing the words don’t stop me now with ‘cum’, ‘fuck’ and ‘dildo’. Singing this in a cheesy, over the top manner will hopefully detract the audience’s attention away from what the meaning is behind the word. It will also help just making the word sound like a sound. So in this section of our performance, the main plan is to decontextualize these taboo words and to make them appear as just sounds. Obviously the issue with this is that we’re not actually dealing with meaning behind the word which is what gives them their derogatory usage.

We’re currently arranging a section which will involve questions being asked within the performance space about certain taboo words and topics within the society so that fellow audience members and ourselves can hear opinions on these sore subjects. This will hopefully generate some additional thoughts by the audience as well as some influential discussion; it could also bring to audience’s minds subjects in society that they never usually even dream to think.

We originally thought of performing a durational piece which would involve us running in a set space till our bodies could no longer operate at any kind of level; the point of exhaustion which professional athletes call ‘the wall’. We then considered the theatrical element of this idea and that essentially, there isn’t any and it’s more associated with the science and sport. On a search for a new angle, we stumbled upon Forced Entertainment and their performance of Filthy Words & Phrases (1998). We’re seizing the concept but rather than showing the hard work of language which was their intended outcome, we choosing to look into the origin of these words and presenting them in a space where they’re acceptable.

Sources

http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/3073/Filthy-Words-and-Phrases/91rces

Posted in Concept

Mic Check 1, 2

Posted on by Christopher Greenhall

Intermediality is an imperative aspect of performance for many contemporary experimental companies. Its ability to punctuate and convey emotion is too powerful to disregard. Intermediality, transmediality and multimedia are all techniques of theatre performance, especially contemporary performance, which require media within performance but each term defines a different type of usage. When discussing an abstract from Chapple and Kattenbelt’s Intermediality in Theatre and performance, Hadjioannou and Rodosthenous make noteworthy statements in analysing the author’s attempt to explain intermediality by commenting that it’s “the process of merging diverse media in theatre as a power that triggers a reconfiguration of the relationship between performer and audience” (Hadjioannou, 2011, p3). I can only assume that the configuration they are referring to is one that was set by conventional theatre and is still associated with standard theatre today where the characters attempt to perform the story without the help of media. Many artists and theatre practitioners in the Avant Garde have tried to reconfigure this relationship such as Meyerhold and Piscator; Meyerhold “recognized the impact cinema had on drawing an audience away from theatre” (Sheldrake, 2007, p13) and to create spectacle theatre, he argued that theatres must be “cineficated” to meet the demands which have been made necessary by the technological advancements in cinema. Piscator’s use of multimedia, which was highly political and agenda-orientated, was evident in Rasputin (1927) as it involved powerful tactics such as staging “a discussion on the finer points of military strategy in front of a screen showing genuine film clips of a massacre of the Somme” (Mitter, 2005, p43).

 

Given the apparent omnipresence of intermediality in contemporary performance, we feel it’s necessary to have some aspect of our performance which is aided by the use of media. For that reason, in a section of our show which involves the distortion of taboo words by rearranging their letters and prolonging their vowels in speech, we plan to do the entire section speaking into microphones to impact the significance of our alteration of the words. There is a certain power given to speech once it is empowered by microphones and we feel that a section such as this deserves to wield that power as it’s one of the most important sections in our piece.

 

We also have a section in our performance which involves the use of music; we have parodied a number of iconic 80’s and 90’s songs by installing taboo words into them in an attempt to decontextualize them. We are going to have karaoke versions of all the songs playing through stereo speakers whilst singing the altered lyrics.

 

These are the only two characteristics of intermediality that we plan to have in our performance. I feel that with its omnipotent ability it would have been useful to be able to have more intermediality. For instance, it could be effective if we were to interview members of the public about their opinions on these taboo words and topics and have them playing on screens within the space; the audio would be playing through wireless headphones and the audience could have the choice of listening to several opinions on the topics.

Works Cited

Hadjioannou M, Rodosthenous G. In between stage and screen: The intermedial in Katie Mitchell’s… some trace of her. International Journal Of Performance Arts & Digital Media[serial online]. March 2011;7(1):43-59. Available from: International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, Ipswich, MA. Accessed December 10, 2013.

Mitter, Shomit and Maria Shevtsova (2005) Fifty key Theatre Directors, London and New York: Routledge.

Sheldrake, Pauline (2007) Weaving Worlds: Multimedia and Space in Contemporary Theatre, MA: Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16336/1/Pauline_Sheldrake_Thesis.pdf