Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance (Bim Mason, 1992)

Ch. 16 The Live Event P.181 - 200

Performing - Contact with the audience

• P.181 Although not every outdoor performer uses audience participation they all need to have greater awareness of its mood and composition than is the case in indoor theatre. They are able to do this because they can see the audience much better than of they had lights shining in their eyes and the audience hidden in darkness.
• P.183 The performer will be able to see them as individuals with whom eye contact is possible rather than as an amorphous mass and therefore less threatening. Coming from this point of view the performer sees in the audience and the rest of the environment a rich potential of exciting possibilities to explore and develop. The relationship is one neither of inferiority, nor superiority, but of equality.

Improvisation

• P.184 Improvisation means not only being able to cope with problems but, more importantly, being open a more subtle possibilities offered by the environment.
  
• The ability to take risks depends on the personality of the performer...If they play safe and just rest on their materil then the situation will be much less exciting for them and the audience; they will deny themselves the opportunity to learn and develop.
  

Mason, B. (1992). Street Theatre and Other Outdoor Performance. New York: Routledge.

The Comeback of Sincerity: Jeff Koons 1995 - 2001 (Alison Gingeras, 2001) P.79 - 88

• P.82 "When I make an artwork, I try to use craft as a way, hopefully, to give the viewer a sense of trust. I never want anyone to look at a painting, or to look at a sculpture, and to lose trust in it somewhere." (David Sylvester, "Jeff Koons Interviewed." Easyfun - Ethereal (exh. cat.) Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (2000), pp. 23-24)
• P.86 Easyfun is an impenetrable (難以探測的) object that serves to unveil (揭露) the societal expectation of art. Our expectation for an underlying "meaning" of his work remains opaque (難理解的) - Koons acutely sets into motion a chain reaction of frustration. Humanise's expectation for soul, authenticity, and any other critical messages is denied. The opacity produced is a smokescreen, diverting our attention from the meaning of the object to the values and contradictions of the system in which it is produced.

Gingeras, A. (2001). "The Comeback of Sincerity: Jeff Koons 1995 - 2001" in Jeff Koons. Schneider, E., & Bregenz, K. (ed.). Bregenz: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Jeff Koons' 18 July - 16 September 2001.Limited edition of 7000 copies.

Jeff Koons (Eckhard Schneider, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2001)

Surface and Reflection (Echard Schneider, 2001) P.17-21

• P.17 Hardly another contemporary artist believes so strongly in the power of the surfaces as a reflection of the universal and of our world. This enthusiasm for the reflective power of materials and the play of light have from the very beginning been the ingredients in the seductive potion which makes up the aesthetic sensations of Koons's work.
• (Eastfun in November 1999, the Sonnabend Gallery in New York.) At that time, it consisted of eleven mirrors and three paintings. The mirrors showed flat forms of three-dimensional animal figures -for example, monkey, elephant, bear, kangaroo, and others. Each mirror figure is a different color, and their brilliant construction of crystal, mirror, coloured plastic, and stainless steel make them appear strangely artificial while they, at the same time, emanate (散發) optimism and the calming simplicity of children's toy.

Schneider, E. (2001). "Surface and Reflection" in Jeff Koons. Schneider, E., & Bregenz, K. (ed.). Bregenz: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Jeff Koons' 18 July - 16 September 2001.Limited edition of 7000 copies.

Conclusion: These Confessional Times (P.157 - 172)

• P. 157 The performance of personal narratives might bring hidden, denied or marginalised experiences into the spotlight, proposing other possible life paths. bearing witness and giving testimony to others' life-stories might serve to make more complex our historical knowledge or bring the past into the present as a means to inform our futures.
• Devising a performance out of the material of personal experience might enable new insights into the relationship between experience and structures of power, between identity and its formation (and reformation. Performing the personal in public might allow a connection between the performer and the spectator, encouraging the formation of a community or prompting discussion, dialogue and debate. [Potential of devising autobiographical performance]
• P.162 The work of autobiographical performance is to explore (question, reveal) the relationship between the personal and the political , engaging with and theorising the discursive construction of selves and experience. The personal has political purchase when its place in history and culture is examines, when is ontology is dissected rather than taken as a given, when the epistemology of experience is plotted.
• P.167 Throughout Autobiography and Performance I have made a great deal of the fact that performance enables a live encounter. Many mass mediated works often incorporate live elements, while developments in broadcast technology have meant the inclusion of moments of interactive involvement form the views, making the mediated event increasingly immediate. The face that a performance -any performance- is live is no guarantee of its political impact, and liveness by an audience at a live event and feel completely isolated and alienated from the performer and other spectators. On the other hand, one can be part of an audience at a recorded event and feel part of a community in those moments when there is shared recognition (spontaneous cheering and applause at the cinema comes to mind).
• The 'liveness' of performance that supposedly sets it apart from other forms is to be found in the shared time and space of performer and spectator. Admittedly, the potential for the performer to sense, in the moment, and respond to the spectators' responses is a unique feature of live performance. Again, though, this feature has to be actively pressed into service and made to work and it demands that the performer takes a certain risk by actually being in each unique moment of liveness and also in this shared space.
  

Heddon, D. (2008). Autobiography and Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Autobiography and Performance (Deirdre Heddon, 2008)

Introduction P.1 - 19

• P.1 [Example of work, Drawing on a Mother's Experience, Bobby Baker; verfremdungseffekt, Bertolt Brecht]
• P.2 If pressed to think of the best-known performers in the USA who consistently use autobiographical material in their performances, names most likely to spring to mind might include Rachel Rosenthal, Laurie Anderson, Deb Margolin, Annie Sprinkle, Holly Hughes, Lisa Kron, Robbie McCauley, Alina Troyano, Kate Bornstein, Tim Miller, Ron Athey, Lenora Champagne, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Luis Alfaro, Marga Gomez and Spalding Gray...From this list we might deduce that the majority of artists who use autobiography in their work are marginalised subjects.
• Solo Autobiographical performance in the UK is also well-recognized as a mode, and performers here include Bobby Baker, Ursula Martinez, SuAndi, Mem Morrison, Donna Rutherford, Joey Hateley, Adrian Howells, Marisa Carnesky, Leslie hill and Helen Paris. Many of these performers are lesbian, gay and/or blank and/or transgender, and their work also addresses explicitly their particular location(s) and the experiences that are inscribed there.
• P.3 In this Park-Fuller shares insights with Tami Spry, who similarly claims that performative autobiography is 'a site of narrative authority, offering me the power to reclaim and rename my voice and body privately and in rehearsal, and then publicly in performance. The process enables me to speak the personally political in public, which has been liberating and excruciating, but always in some way enabling. (2003, p.169) [Spry, T. (2003) Illustrated Woman: Autoperformance in 'skins: A daughter's (Re)construction of Cancer' and 'Tattoo Stories: A postscript to 'Skins'. In L.C. Miller, J. Taylor & M.H. Carver, eds. Voices Made Flesh: Performing Women's Autobiography. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 167-91]
• P.5 As I hope to show, although autobiographical performances look, in form, monologic, the public context of their work and the performer's aspirations to communicate with their spectators transform those works into dialogues. Live autobiographical performance takes place not only in shared time, but also in shared space. These performances are made with a spectator in mind.
  

Heddon, D. (2008). Autobiography and Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Six Axioms for Environmental Theatre (Richard Schechner, 1987)

1. The theatrical event is a set of related transactions

2. All the space is used for the performance

3. The theatrical event can take place either in a totally transformed space or in "found space"

4. Focus is flexible and variable

5. All production elements speak their own language

6. The text need be neither the starting point nor the goal of a production. There may be no verbal text at all.

Schechner, R. (1994). Environmental Theater. New York: Applause Books.

Environmental Theatre (Richard Schechner, 1994)

Introduction

• P.X In terms of performance, an environment is where the action takes place. But theorists recognize that this action is not localized to the "stage" nor limited to what happens to the actors. The action is also where the audience is, where the actors dress and makeup, where the theatre does its business (lobby, box office, administrative offices). Even the toilets and the transportation systems conveying people to and from the theatre are part of the "performance environment".
• A performance environment is a "position" in the political sense, a "body of knowledge" in the scholarly sense, a "real place" in the theatrical sense. Thus, to stage a performance "environmentally" means more than simply to move it off of the proscenium or out of the arena. An environment performance is one in which all the elements or parts making up the performance are recognized as alive. To "be alive" is to change, develop, transform; to have needs and desires; even, potentially, to acquire, express, and use consciousness.
• P. xii But Environmental Theatre is about more than performer training. It is also about directing, composing performances, designing spaces, site specific performances, and the formation (and destruction) of groups.
• P. xiv I remind readers that performance consists of four great realms: entertainment, ritual, healing, and education.

Schechner, R. (1994). Environmental Theater. New York: Applause Books.