Our final performance took all that we wanted to include, we
were inspired by the use of memory in all of the practitioners work. From
the use of stripped back motions of Grotowski and the openness of Bausch
and the harsh reality of events of Kantor. We wanted to make a piece that
showed an aspect of each of these theatre directors.
First we did a Bausch inspired walk to an up tempo
"happy" song that would invite the audience into our world but as the
song would determinate so would our motions going from happy and individually
interpreted to becoming twisted and disjointed. as we fell to the
floor we took on inspiration of more of Bausch's work and had the audience be a
barricade for our blinded individual to work though, very similar to Bausch's
Café Müller, we wanted to express the genuine fear that the girl who was
blindfolded had, as the panic driven runs and breaths where her genuine
reaction to not being able to see, this was all inspired by her story of
how she partially blinded someone and this was a way for her to experience
what she has now put that individual through.
Than we had a more Grotowski feel to the next part of the
performance as we had one performer throw and roll across the floor,
remembering of his story of vandalism and hiding, all the performance was here
was just him running and hiding.
Then was me section of the performance which had as much
realism as I could put into it, it was a story of how I shot myself by mistake
and how I had to walk home with an injured leg to show this I had to drag
another performer across the stage, this part of the performance used both
Bausch and Grotowski methods to symbolise the path of the bullet to me, via
Bausch inspired ballet and my reaction to being shot based on actual reactions
for having my leg be weighed down.
After that we had our final section which also used the actual reactions of the performer involved, throughout the performance we had this individual moving the audience and us into position, this person was our Kantor, she would change things that needed to be done for the sake of the performance, her story was how she was lost as a child and when found she was dragged to home and then welcomed back with a warm embrace.
We found the idea of going through something traumatic and then finding solace in the embrace of another, this is how each part of the performance would end with us embracing and telling part of our story to the audience. our endgame was to leave the piece open for interpretation by the audience but in my own interpretation of the whole piece I believe that the finally embrace of all the actors and audience indicates that no matter what bad things that have happened in the past have all lead up to us all being there together, it is a piece that is very peaceful in that sense.
