Performing Community: Countdown to Nothing

Educational institutions such as the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) are founded on the idea that the process of devising is just as, if not more, important than the finished product. It is with this view that I am tracing the seed of an idea that was not integrated into our final group performance.

In the collection stage of the devising process, I brought a clock. After we formed the basic idea for our performance from the VR headset, we returned to our collection to see if there were any more ideas that we could use in our piece. We obtained the ideas of play, childhood and bright colour from the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the idea of a countdown from the clock. 

Initially we discussed having a visual countdown on the wall behind Scott, where he waited for Emily at the end of our traverse staging. We realised that we had no way of creating a digital display like this, and so we then discussed a verbal countdown over the speakers. This idea enhanced the game-like atmosphere we wanted to achieve, and also contributed to the breaking of the virtual reality at the end of the piece, with the countdown finishing in the sound of an alarm clock. We also discussed how if we put less than a minute between the purported ‘x minutes remaining’ announcements, it would distort the audience’s perception of time, thus augmenting the virtual reality. Unfortunately this also became impractical, as our piece was not well-timed enough to have the countdown on a soundtrack, nor could we do it live, as there was no one person who would be offstage for the entirety of the countdown.

Ultimately, there simply was not enough enthusiasm for this idea, and in a group situation it is necessary that enough people in the group are invested in an idea for it to become part of the final performance.