Above is a very rough sketch of my set idea. I came up with the idea in the break during our most recent session with martin. Hence why it is just a quick sketch. At the moment I’m not convinced that this will stay the same for my final performance, however it is a starting point.
My basic idea is to have an old sofa, a wheelie bin and a car tire on stage in an attempt to create the negative view that society and the media can have on working class Britain.
After sampling some stories with friends. I realised just how abnormal the stories are for the majority of audiences. People from different social classes and different cities and locations have different experiences and different understandings of particular situations. Although story telling is a way of bringing people together by inserting shared information to create a temporary bond between the teller and the rest of the audience it seemed to make me feel different. Although I did get a sense of togetherness as I told these stories, I also felt a sense of distinct separation. The nature of my stories creates an opportunity for audience members to see through the performer and look to me as a resource in the understanding of a social standing unfamiliar to themselves.
As the first member of my family to go to university I do expect this feeling and I understand why it comes over me. However this does not mean that I find this feeling uncomfortable. I find it more interesting; how nature vs nurture creates different people with different thoughts. Yet no matter how different people are there is almost always a common ground of some sort. For me and my performance I need to find stories that everyone can relate to. OR at least as many people as possible. Something that I find amusing may actually be quite tragic or disturbing for someone else.
Unfinished
Billy Connolly is most commonly known for his stand-up comedy or his acting work in films. He is a comedian that both me and my dad enjoy greatly. He is an excellent storyteller and he tells stories in a way that make them all seem personal to himself. He is very good at setting to scene just with the way he presents his stories. He is a great influence for me, as I too am going to be telling stories in my performance in a comical way. Although my performance is not strictly stand-up comedy, it is going to be filled with humour.
This is a short clip of Connolly talking about his past as a shipyard worker. In this short story he brings the ‘crudeness’ that working class humour can hold, and he presents it in a way that is quite whimsical and innocent. This takes away the political grind of the struggles of working class life and strips the story down to pure comedy.
Looking into Billy Connolly has helped me to decide to keep my performance light. Before this I was planning to have a serious juxtaposition against the humorous stories. If I were to have a serious edge to my performance, talking about social class, then I would have created a piece of political theatre. In my solo performance I want to be as honest and truthful with the audience as i possibly can and I am not a political person. To create a piece of political theatre would be a great thing to do, i always enjoy political theatre, but being true to myself I am going to take a step back from politics.
During one of the sessions with Martin we read through Chris Goode’s The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley. During this read through i decided that I was going to use true stories from my past as the foundation for my own solo performance. Story telling is one of the oldest forms of performance and one of the oldest forms of documentations dating back to caveman drawings. When a story is told well it is one of the most effect ways to grasp an audience. A lot of solo performance use story telling as a format for performances or as a device during performance.
Back in 2012 I saw Mark Thomas at the Tricycle Theatre performing a solo piece called Bravo Figaro. This entire performance was taking about his father and his love of opera even though he was a working class builder in south London. He also talks about his relationship with his father and made jokes about how he decided to do drama in school and university and how he wasn’t quite the manly son that would match his father. The performance was excellent and I remember thoroughly enjoying the show. Thinking about this show, I realise that the reason I enjoyed Bravo Figaro so much is because I could relate to the issues being tackled. Now I realise that this is how I want to create my performance.
This is a an intverview with Mark Thomas in which he talks about his show and what it means to him. This is a very helpful insight into the mind of a professional solo performer tackling a similar show to myself.
Thinking back through all of my experiences that I was only thrown into because I was in a working class environment in south London, I have an infinite number of stories that entertain the people around me. Why not transform them into a performance and create an indulgent show based around these stories, allowing the audience to enjoy the stories for the worth that they hold as entertainment, whilst obtaining an appreciation for the different lives that people in different social standings live.