The main inspiration for my show is from popular solo performer and writer Ursula Martinez. Martinez’s work “fuses theatrical concepts, personal experience and popular forms to create innovative challenging, experimental theatre that is highly entertaining and reflective of our contemporary, post-modern world. At the core of the work is a commitment to exploring humour and what is is to be human” (Martinez, 2016).
(Martinez, 2016)
Free Admissions:
Martinez’s latest venture sees her building a wall slowly in front of her audience whilst slowly revealing things about herself, “Free Admission, sees Martinez freely share a number of personal details, thoughts, feelings and opinions whilst flippantly constructing a brick wall. With a few breezeblocks and a trowel in hand, she undertakes a half conversation, half musing whilst cavalierly slapping cement onto the ever-growing construction” (Perks, 2016).
Martinez’s work creates “a neat visual summary of the contradictions of Ursula Martinez’s witty, introspective performance. As she literally walls herself in, the simple act of laying bricks is accompanied by unvarnished truths, both harsh and intimate” (Saville, 2016).
“It begins jokily with Martinez admitting some of her personal quirks and insecurities: how she has a bit of a thing about anal hygiene and how she sometimes gets jealous of Catherine Tate, with whom she once shared a stage. Almost every sentence begins with the words “Sometimes I …”, which gives her words a provisional quality and means they can hang in the air like inscrutable Chinese proverbs. Gradually things take an urgent and darker tone, the laughter still bubbles but more uneasily as the wall rises and Martinez’s words are lobbed over the top like unpinned grenades primed to explode” (Gardner, 2016).
(Martinez, 2016)
The Inspiration:
Ursula Martinez inspired me through the similar use of manual labour within performance. Martinez uses her wall as a metaphor for walling yourself in – a way of containing emotion – however, broke this metaphor by freely admitting to personal thoughts, feelings and experiences whilst building her wall.
I wanted to use my wall in a similar way, I wanted to use the labour aspect of my performance – building the wall – in order to further emphasise the feeling of loss and setting up barriers when explaining that I wanted to become an actor and be free from the traditional social conventions of Rotherham. I also wanted to utilise humour throughout my piece to contrast the performances content whilst also relaxing the audience in to my performance.
Works Cited:
Gardner, L. (2016) Free Admission review – Ursula Martinez bares body and soul. The Guardian, 10 February. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/10/ursula-martinez-free-admission-review-soho-theatre-london
Martinez, U. (2016) Ursula Martinez. [Online] geneclosuit. Available from http://www.ursulamartinez.com/
Perks, D. (2016) Review: Ursula Martinez: Free Admission, Soho Theatre. [Online] A Younger Theatre. Available from http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-ursula-martinez-free-admission-soho-theatre/
Saville, A. (2016) Ursula Martinez: Free Admission. Time Out, 10 February. Available from http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/ursula-martinez-free-admission
In the build up to my show, I needed to ensure that my show had the look and feel that I wanted it to. I wanted to create a show that was stripped back whilst also having a strong visual aid to help the narrative. This is why I created the above images in order to give off this feel, before people saw my show whilst also setting them up for the feel it should have.
As the images above demonstrate, I wanted to present my show from the confines of a brick wall – with a particular focus on the building of the wall as I performed. It was with this image I would create a focal point for the audience whilst also keeping my show minimalist so that the main focus of the performance becomes my stories rather than my actions.
(Wood, 2016)
I was inspired by Jamie Wood’s O NO! when thinking of these ideas as his set was striking and simple, visually that is. It allowed for moments of the performance to have a backdrop to the conversation Wood was having with the audience without allowing the distraction of extravagant set – which could take away from the performance Wood was trying to create.
(Wood, 2016)
“It’s messy and fractious, and it’s punctuated by the gunshots that rang out on a cold New York evening 35 years ago. It builds to a cacophonous re-enactment that knocks the final bars of A Day in the Life into a cocked hat. Wood’s hat is permanently cocked, like a readied gun. He breaks rules, smashes comfort zones, and all the while knocks out a cheeky, irreverent love letter to a much maligned artist of continued relevance and impudent profundity.” (Pringle, 2015)
It is without a doubt that Wood’s work has influenced my own to no end – from his laid back, humourous approach to performance all the way down to the relationship he has with the audience. In the end, I hope that my performance will be what Wood’s and so many other solo performer’s works will be: something that “cannot exist without an audience” (Gardner, 2015)
Works Cited:
Gardner, L. (2015) Going solo: how the one-person show is gazing beyond the navel. The Guardian, 2 September. [Online] Retried from http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2015/sep/02/solo-one-person-show-edinburgh
Pringle, S. (2015) Jamie Wood – O No! The Stage, 10 August. [Online] Retrieved from https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2015/jamie-wood-o-no/
Wood, J. (2016) O NO!. [Performance] Jamie Wood & Wendy Hubbard (Dir.) Lincoln: LPAC, 4 February.
Spalding Rockwell Gray was a monologist whose career spanned the better parts of the 1980s and 90s – his work was based upon his own experiences throughout his life. Spanning from his involvement in the film Killing Fields, the death of his mother all the way through to his deteriorating health and christian science. It is stated that “Mr. Gray was the ultimate stand-up solipsist. He made it clear that his work was less about using his personality as a prism to refract the world than using the world to refract his personality” (Brantley, 2007).
Notable Works:
Swimming to Cambodia.
Monster in a Box.
Terrors Of Pleasure
His Style:
Spalding Gray’s Note.
Gray’s methodology was dependent on his audience, gray used his audience in order to create a dialogue rather than a monologue. It is often easier to understand what someone is talking about when you feel at less of a distance to them.
He uses his autobiographical source information in order to make the topics he mentions more personal to an audience, he also uses his satirical views on life in order to create humour out of his material – however sad or disturbing it may be.
Spalding Gray’s material has taught me the powerful emotion that can be evoked from autobiographical content – Gray’s conversational style allows for the audience to empathise with Gray and his stories whilst also evoking humour from otherwise unhumourous situations.
I have decided that my work will use autobiography in a way that brings a light hearted touch to darker content – my work may not be as dark as Gray’s material – but I hope to use his style in order to bring humour and understanding to material that is not normally so. My work will try to tell the story of Rotherham and of my experiences with the theatre and acting whilst also being entertaining (hopefully) and informative.
Works Cited:
Brantley, B. (2007) A Master of Monologues, Living on in His Words. New York Times. June 26. [Online] available from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/theater/reviews/07gray.html?_r=0
Labels “tells an honest, open and intensely human story” (Beck, 2015)
The Show/Sellman-Leava’s Methodology
In 2015, Joe Sellman-Leava took his show Labels to the Edinburgh Fringe, which achieved critical acclaim. The show is primarily about Joe’s personal experiences with growing up in 90s Britain as a child of a “white-British mother and a British-Asian father” (Sellman-Leava, 2015) and the personal experiences he had with labels. As the son of an interracial couple, “Joe has found himself labelled – but then he, like all of us, has done his share of labelling, too.” (Stott, 2015). Labels offers an unhinged, humorous look into Joe’s life as well as the hypocrisy of the country we live in when regarding immigration. the show and it’s subject matter is delivered in “an endearing manner, a naturally mellow voice, a wry smile and a pensive hesitancy, but that doesn’t stop him getting angry and indignant when he relates tales of injustice, ignorance, bullying and discrimination. What we hear is challenging and captivating” (Beck, 2015).
What I learned
Sellman-Leava’s autobiographical work not only informs an audience about his own life but a personal look at “the history of race relations in Britain, the rhetoric of the immigration debate and the power of language” (Beck, 2015). Labels has taught me that one of the uses of autobiographical text and story is not just to tell an audience about your own life; autobiography can be utilised in order to educate people about society. Just like Sellman-Leava, I wish to use my own autobiographical content to inform the audience of what it was like growing up in working-class Rotherham and the difficulty of peeling yourself away from the societal mould that you’ve been plastered to. Labels has given me the inspiration to not only tell my own story – but to tell the story of Rotherham as well.
Joe Sellman-Leava. Labels.(Stott, 2015)
“‘Where are you from? No, where are you actually from?’ It’s a question that Joe Sellman-Leava has been asked throughout his life, and the answer is Cheltenham.” (Stott, 2015)
Works Cited:
Beck, R. (2015) Labels. Broadway Baby. 17 August. Available from http://www.broadwaybaby.com/shows/labels/707471 [Accessed 4th May 2016]
Sellman-Leava, J. (2015) Labels: Reading Fringe 2015. [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTKiTvES3HE [Accessed 4th May 2016]
Stott, S. (2015) THEATRE REVIEW: LABELS. Wow 24/7. 17 August. Available from http://www.wow247.co.uk/2015/08/17/theatre-review-labels/[Accessed 4th May 2016]
Running for your life.
(From Shia Labeouf.)
He’s brandishing a knife.
(It’s Shia Labeouf.)
Lurking in the shadows
Hollywood superstar Shia Labeouf.
Living in the woods,
(Shia Labeouf.)
Killing for sport,
(Shia Labeouf.)
Eating all the bodies
Actual, cannibal Shia Labeouf.
(Robcantor, 2014)
Shia Labeouf, performance artist or self indulgent idiot clinging to his last shreds of fame? At the premier of his new movie Nymphomaniac, Shia Labeouf arrived on the red carpet wearing a paper bag over his head; he was dressed in usual red carpet premier attire all with the addition of a paper bag that simply read “I am not famous any more”. Since that faithful day Labeouf has collaborated with two artists Luke Turner and Nastja Rönkkö creating unique (and some not so unique) pieces of performance art.
Methodology: MetaModernist Manifesto
Labeouf’s methodology is based on his and Turner’s own manifesto which has been labeled as the Metamodernist Manifesto. Through it the aim of the work is to “recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world” (Turner, 2011) to which the interpretation suggests a lateral movement forward and backward. The manifesto’s aim is to use it’s art in order to break away from the lateral movement that Labeouf and Turner see as the natural order. Their aim is to make art that is both exciting and ground breaking.
#IAMSORRY
#IAMSORRY
This performance was born out of criticisms about a short film which Labeouf produced called Howard Cantour.com. Viewers remarked that Labeoufs work held similarities to comic writer Daniel Clowe’s Ghost World. The performance played on this plagiaristic mentality, with Labeouf’s performance seemingly borrowing concepts from Marina Ambramović and Yoko Ono. The Performance consisted of a participant coming in to the gallery and choosing an object on the table and then taking the object and a bowl of 100 paper segments bearing writing. They then sat in front of Labeouf. The participant can do whatever they want, most would read the writings on the paper which consisted of tweets about the actor. Some of the tweets criticised Labeouf and others praised him.“a third-rate imitation of the works of Abramović or Yoko Ono” (Jones, 2014) it was said that “#IAMSORRY [was] reminiscent of a more recent tradition of performance art that started in the early 1970s and replaces the sadism of the surrealists with a masochism in which the performer is a victim” (Ibid.)
It is alleged that one participant raped him during the performance although this is under speculation.
#INTRODUCTIONS
A performance based upon submissions from students at Central Saint Martins University in London. Labeouf, Turner & Rönkkö “requested that the students send a piece of text to introduce each of their works, to be presented during a live stream broadcast during the degree show opening. They stated that this text could be “as poetic, abstract or literal as you like – with the emphasis on expressing the feeling and tone of the work being introduced.” (Jones, 2015)
#ALLMYMOVIES
Labeouf rented out the Angelika Film Center, New York for a movie marathon. It consisted of 29 films over 3 days – the films only had one real similarity. They all starred Labeouf (obviously) with the main focus of the performance to live stream of Labeouf’s face during the whole endeavour.
Throughout the performance there was a herd mentality of emotion when watching the films with audience members sharing the same feelings and expressions that Labeouf shared towards his own movies when re-watching. The reactions were likened to an “experience of emotional empathy or, as Rönkkö puts it, ‘synching of emotions’ to contagious yawning” (Stansfield, 2015).
On the significance of their work:
“LaBeouf and his collaborators discuss the elitism of the art world. However, as LaBeouf asserts, it’s an attitude prevalent in the film industry too. The movie world is just as elitist. I get emails from people in the movie world, people telling me, ‘You gotta maintain mystery.’…but truth will always find its way out there. Sincerity is the new punk rock.
On his emotions following the performance:
“I walked out loving myself,” he says. “Not in some grandiose, you’re fucking awesome way, but in like, you’re a part of a community. You’re a part of this human thing. You’re in this human thing. I’ve always felt as though, ‘I’m just an animal in this human thing. And I’ll play the human game. I’ll wear the human mask.’ But coming out of there, it’s the first time I’ve actually felt part of this — it was very humanizing for me. (Stansfield, 2015)
What I learned from Shia Labeouf
Whilst researching the merits of Labeouf’s solo work I came to figure out (quite early on) that Labeouf’s works included himself as the pure centre even though he collaborates with two other artists. Now, when discussing this with other’s I found that the general population decided that Labeouf’s work was more of that of self indulgence rather than of any real art. This made me think about what art truly was. When compared to other performance artists and solo performers is Labeouf the lesser? or is he merely stigmatised because he was already famous before he began this endeavour? In accordance with most Solo performers autobiography can naturally come to the forefront of performance – Abramovic’s work explores the limitations of the body but at the same time it only explores the limitations of her own body as she cannot not possibly be a model for all human life.
In conclusion, Labeouf’s work has taught me that self indulgent performance art is no more damaging and no less educational that performance art that tries to steer itself away from an indulgent nature. I will be bearing this in mind when I go on to write the script for my performance and shone away any feelings of making my performance overly personal because when it is just you and the audience… it’s personal.
Works Cited:
Jones, C R. (2015) Shia LaBeouf is about to introduce your grad show. Dazed Digital. 26 May. Available from http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24842/1/labeouf-ronkko-and-turner-are-introducing-the-csm-grad-show
Jones, J. (2014) Shia LaBeouf’s #IAM SORRY: art is often violent, but nothing can excuse rape. The Guardian. 1 December. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/01/alleged-rape-of-shia-labeouf-is-inexcusable-but-so-is-bad-art
Labeouf, S. (2015) #INTRODUCTIONS. [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHVMNjP0QA [Accessed March 1st 2016]
Labeouf, S. Rönkkö, N & Turner, L. (2016) The Campaign Book. [Online] Available from http://thecampaignbook.com/ [Accessed March 5th 2016]
Robcantor (2014) “Shia Labeouf” Live – Rob Cantor. [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u4M6vppCI [Accessed 23rd March 2016]
Turner, L. (2011) Metamodernist Manifesto. [Online] Available from http://www.metamodernism.org/ [Accessed March 5th 2016]
Stansfield, T. (2015) Shia LaBeouf speaks out about #ALLMYMOVIES. Dazed Digital. 17 November. Available from http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28444/1/shia-labeouf-speaks-out-about-allmymovies
