As a performer it feels the best, "right" to ignore the audience, to drop in completely to my own world. The audience is there as a witness. I am being seen but not seeing their presence. In not seeing, I feel empowered to be committed to the experience. I am not enacting, not displaying; I am completely focused on the task at hand, living through performance. But what does it mean to see the audience, to have a visual exchange? How does that shift the temporal and spacial distance?
In my work I utilize distance. Performance is stepping into another world, a sacred space, a space that is separate from the rest. Regardless of actual physical space, there is a performative distance.
When I become aware of the presence of the audience are they in this world with me or are they looking in on my world? This matters immensely with focus and direction. If they are here in this world with me, I can't ignore them. But if they are not, then how does/should one engage the vision?
What is the role of suspending belief in performance? As an audience member I have a hard time doing this. Why?
I was once told that I was a good actress on stage. My eyes were expressive. Acting to me has always meant a putting on, a playing, a pretend, make-believe, a character, that you are somehow being someone you are not. Acting was stepping outside of oneself and becoming someone else. This compliment offend me, it asserted that somehow what I did on stage was not real, that what I had experienced on stage was make-believe. That the intimacy, empathy was with and for a character and not me as the performer. I don't work that way. I can't separate myself from the work. I am living. I am negotiating. I am entering a feeling stage. I go somewhere else but that place is still inside of me. It is still somewhere within the realm of my reality.
Performers who inhabit roles, who become and in doing so transform produce/create new knowledge. This is so important to me.
There is something so vulnerable in posting these unfinished, unorganized thoughts....
In my work I utilize distance. Performance is stepping into another world, a sacred space, a space that is separate from the rest. Regardless of actual physical space, there is a performative distance.
When I become aware of the presence of the audience are they in this world with me or are they looking in on my world? This matters immensely with focus and direction. If they are here in this world with me, I can't ignore them. But if they are not, then how does/should one engage the vision?
What is the role of suspending belief in performance? As an audience member I have a hard time doing this. Why?
I was once told that I was a good actress on stage. My eyes were expressive. Acting to me has always meant a putting on, a playing, a pretend, make-believe, a character, that you are somehow being someone you are not. Acting was stepping outside of oneself and becoming someone else. This compliment offend me, it asserted that somehow what I did on stage was not real, that what I had experienced on stage was make-believe. That the intimacy, empathy was with and for a character and not me as the performer. I don't work that way. I can't separate myself from the work. I am living. I am negotiating. I am entering a feeling stage. I go somewhere else but that place is still inside of me. It is still somewhere within the realm of my reality.
Performers who inhabit roles, who become and in doing so transform produce/create new knowledge. This is so important to me.
There is something so vulnerable in posting these unfinished, unorganized thoughts....