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.

After all of this talk about autobiographical performance and needing to include yourself in your performance, I began to misunderstand the concept. I believed that I needed to talk about deep emotional issues to be able to pull off a solo performance and I started thinking of different ways that i could represent my own psychological flaws. I was thinking of ideas based around performance art and thinking of representing the lack of social identity that I feel and the anxiety that has grown in me through the years. My idea was if it is true and emotional then it will effect the audience and therefore be a compelling performance.

However as I started looking at more and more solo performances I realised that the ones I enjoyed the most were the more implicit performances that incorporated story and metaphor to convey reason. Then thinking back to my ideas of opening up to an audience in a way that is very unlike me, I decided that it was the wrong thing to do. I do not talk about my deeper feelings so it would make no sense to speak of them now as this is not autobiographical in my opinion. That would be playing a character that speaks about my issues which would overwhelm audiences and could make them feel more uncomfortable that entertained or emotionally affected.

I need to stop thinking about deep emotional issues residing within me and start thinking about who I am and what a performance means to me.

STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT WILL GET GOOD GRADES AND START THINKING BACK TO WHY YOU LOVE PERFORMING!!!!!

Watching solo performers from the detailed story telling of Spalding Gray to the performance art of Marina Abramovich it is clear that control is an important aspect.

Spalding Gray is a solo performer who is extremely good at controlling the atmosphere, tone and pace of his performances. One of the ways he achieves this is through the way he controls his voice and dialogue. He controls his own styles and switches them according to the effect that he is trying to achieve. For example he could be telling a faced paced story and telling it as if he was in a panic himself. Then he would come to a climax and slow down, deepening his voice slightly to create a release of tension in the story and within the mood of the audience. This creates a more interesting performance for the audience as the story heightens at points and then drops creating new atmospheres for the audience to consume.

I have taken influence from this style of story telling and have planned some key points within my stories that I am going to heighten and drop at specific moments to create a captivating performance for my audience.

Another feature of Spalding Gray’s style that I plan on incorporating within my performance is when he becomes extremely informative and seams to lift factual information about a specific subject which then comes into the rest of the performance. I plan to use a similar device in my performance except instead of listing off fact and figures in the style of a lecture, using maps and diagrams, i am going to be incorporating media within my performance. To truly give the audience a sense of setting for my stories I have taken pictures and filmed videos of the places my stories took place. I plan on projecting these pictures and videos on a wall behind me and acknowledging them, by coming out of a character to explain the situation, then going back into a character to tell the story.