Performing the Self: Thursday is like Paradise

The creation of my solo performance stemmed from my research project on poetry. I knew from this that I wanted to perform poetry onstage in some manner, however this was a very broad starting point. Additionally, I knew I wanted to make it more theatrical than simply reciting a piece of poetry. I wanted to play with how poetry is formed and performed onstage, and how written and spoken poetry interact with each other, as I had researched quite a lot about this in my research project. Novak argued that spoken poetry is not “a mere oral presentation of a printed work”, and I aimed to demonstrate the differences by performing the same poem both orally and visually (12).

I wanted to represent written poetry onstage, so I played around with a variety of ideas such as writing poetry on the ground in chalk, instructing the audience to lie on their backs and close their eyes while I performed the poetry, or getting large pieces of paper, hanging them on the walls and painting them with the words I would then perform. When I was informed that we could use the overhead projector I immediately formed the idea of creating a piece of blackout poetry live onstage, which I would then perform. In this, I saw the benefits of devising that had been discussed in lectures in practice, that is, I saw how having the ability to choose my lighting/prop early in the process enabled me to build a performance around it. Furthermore, in blacking out someone else’s work to create my own, I was quite literally “let[ting] dead poets make way for the living,” reinforcing the idea that devising and theatre are distinctive for their impermanence, and that leaning into the transitory nature of theatre can make for better performance (Artaud 56). 

Once I had this idea I spent around a week trying to decide what I then wanted the content of my piece to be, that is, what I wanted the poem to be about. I struggled and considered the topics of children or feminism, feminism intriguing me especially with the historical associations between it and devising, and discussed my ideas with a wide range of people before I alighted on my final idea.

In my collection was a piece of writing that caught my imagination, and it became the last few lines of my finished performance.

            “it’s a happily ever after

like always but

it’s self-aware so

it’s cool.

Thursday is like paradise.”

The phrase ‘self-aware’ stood out to me, and from there I decided to make the performance about making the performance. Each part of my performance was both something I had done before in the creation of the performance, and also was actually happening onstage. The culmination of this was the final line “Thursday is like paradise,” which was both a part of the poem, and also a reference to the performance being on a Wednesday, making Thursday, with the performance complete, like paradise.

I then had the form of my piece from my research project and the content of my piece from my collection. What I learnt in the lectures and workshops about the process of devising, particularly the importance of doing rather than talking, enabled me to refine, edit and develop my performance. For example, in the workshops I learnt to be comfortable onstage through exercises such as performing in a group for 2 minutes inspired by our collections, where we performed getting high and believing we were on a rollercoaster. I was able to become comfortable in improvising around a certain idea, which helped when I did this in rehearsal with Paul (from directing) to make my piece clearer. 

The devising process for my solo performance demonstrated the importance of research, as both my research project and my collection were vital to the creation of my performance. My collection was especially beneficial, and was something that I overlooked at first, when I simply needed to further analyse the research in my collection. Finally, I learnt that I prefer group devising to solo devising, as I struggled to form ideas without input from others. 

Referenced:

Artaud, Antonin. "No More Masterpieces." Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. Richmond: Alma Books, 2018. 53-59.

Novak, Julia. Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011.