Tuesday July 7: Autobiographical Performance

Readings:

1.	Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson, & Katie Normington. Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London: Routledge, 2007. [Pages 59-72]

INITIAL RESPONSE: Autobiographical Performance deals with the concepts and challenges of performing authentic material about oneself. This essay covers three main areas; exploring truth, the process of presenting self and the role of the audience. These are fascinating concepts to both the receiver of the material and the presenter because it gives an alternate view on how to approach the work, both as an audience and a performer. The first section covers the process of creating an autobiographical piece and the challenges one would face when balancing the truth of the material as a perceived memory. As explained in the first section that “the human memory acts as a filter and, as a consequence, what is remembered may not be truth but an embroidered vision of the real” (Govan 63). This is thought provoking because it puts into question the material of self presentation and authenticity of truth and lies of the performance. The second section of the article goes into more details on how and what is the underlying theory about what self performance is. “The self-conscious presentation of self draws attention to the exploration of identity which is often at the heart of autobiographical performance” (Govan 66). Although the performer is not performing a character, at the same time it is not fully presenting the authenticity of the performer in that it is a “heightened and self-conscious manner” (Govan 66) of the performer. The last section covers the role in which the audience becomes an important element of the performance by engaging with the performer’s intimate story, “rather than being passive spectators, members of the audience are acknowledged as active listeners and the authentic nature of the material often draws the audience into an active engagement with the performer” (Govan 66).

FIRST RESPONSE: Jessica Hoover The section of the article on Autobiographical performance that I found most fascinating was the section called, "Secrets and Lies". I don't think that the title of this chapter is very fitting, in fact I didn't think it discussed any secrets or lies in autobiographical performance, rather the memories that are recalled and the technique used to blur and bend the truth. Having studied and read up on may different playwrights (because of classes we have taken), most of us know that the majority of plays and characters written are autobiographical, the rooms, dates, places, times and people listed in several plays are taken from true events and I think that may be something that aides in me enjoying them even more. I want to feel like I am "in on something", yes, when I go to see a performance but I also don't want to leave thinking that I know too much about a given person or that the work was too personal. The work that Kelly did in "Class of '76" doubtfully harmed anyone who may have been involved or discussed and perhaps the audience felt like they were a part of an intimate evening with a young man recalling his past. I think the autobiographical performance may be one of the most entertaining because we don't know what is true. In Friday's class, I was paired with Nathan to play "Quizoola" and he apparently lied about nearly everything, finding this out after the fact, I wasn't less entertained and I still left feeling like I may know a thing or two about him; this is the positive and welcoming aspect of autobiographical work. There is this underlying feeling that the audience gets to leave with of thinking there was real, honest and sincere work happening and even though some of the dialogue may be untrue, it works, for both the actor and the audience. There is a partnership there.

The idea of presenting a traumatic experience on stage as a way to purge those feelings is a very interesting approach to making autobiographical performance. Through recounting the memories and feelings one once experienced, such as the example given with the holocaust, people who were never in that situation and find it difficult to fathom, can perhaps get a sense of what the autobiographical performer experienced. As mentioned earlier, it is completely subjective to that particular person's perspective, as people directly involved in the holocaust would have had extremely different point of views and experiences. As well, people's memories can block out certain portions of the 'story' to help mask the pain and suffering they went through or the pain and suffering they actually caused. From there, although the person may say they are telling the truth, it may be filled with omissions and frilly flowers to make it all seem better than it really was.

Response Carly McKee This article on Autobiographical Performance is really closely linked to our exercise in today’s (Monday’s) class. Obviously, what we did today was a primal stage of this kind of performance. The part of the article I think that relates quite a bit back to this exercise is, the “Performing Self” section, as that is exactly what we were all doing up there. We were performing *without acting* little pieces of ourselves for everyone to see, regardless of if they knew the context of the answer.

I am sure that if we continued working on a process like this one we’d be able to create a very personal autobiographical performance, presenting ourselves, or as the article says, versions of ourselves. This section also discusses the audience’s reaction to an autobiographical presentation, and how watching someone performing something very true would make you look into yourself, and think about your life, and how you would respond to certain circumstances (or in our specific case, questions) This is, essentially, another form of “writing live”, because the audience is trying to fill in the story as the performers go along, creating content that wasn’t there to begin with.

Response: Derek. The most interesting part of the article for me was the type of performance. Actors by nature are essentially professional liars. The actors in this performance can no longer be considered actors but performers now. This theatre is moving the performance away from lie to truth. The person we are seeing on stage is the real person and the stories we hear are truth. This makes it more personal and intimate for both the audience and performer.

Response: Nathan Hunt (Responding to Derek)

A small interesting point that I'd like to make, is that I don't think actors are professional liars instead I think they are professional bullshitters. This, although it may not be apparent, is quite the dramatic difference. An actor is in a position in which the audience knows he is artificial yet he continues anyhow, thus his acting is not intended to deceive but intended to bring about some sort of other response. Bullshitters bullshit out of the desire to rile up individuals, they adopt a role to bring about some sort of emotional response readily knowing the individuals they talk to know they are fictitious. Actors perform the same act I believe. A liar is one who attempts to deceive and thus maintain a reality that the listener does not realize is fictitious, surely actors do not do this. In reality it would seem that it would be more likely for performers to do this due to the nature of their roles involving the blurring of lines between reality and fiction as the article discussed. Although this difference seems minute it may be of importance due to individuals' desire to find the truth as exclaimed in the article by the audience of 'Class of 76'.

Response:

It is exciting to think like an autobiographical performer, their performances creates a strong tension between real self and characterized self. Through telling narratives that travel among truths, modified truths and lies, their performances articulated themselves and as well drew the audiences’ conscious minds into participation. Maybe just like the picture we had seen in class “this is not a pipe”, of course the autobiographical narratives the performers tell are truths, modified truths, biased truths, so they are lies, but they are telling the truth without entirely lying… This kind of performance to me is somewhat acting, I like how the article describes autobiographical performers as just pretending and acting to be themselves, and by acting themselves, they are actually not acting. This kind of view again exposed the tension autobiographical performances are trying to express.

One other thing I like about autobiographical performance is the method it applied to blur the boundary between art and life. This kind of technique reminds me of my favorite movie producer: Xu AnHua, or known to the English world as Ann Hui. I recently watched her newest movie, “They Way We Are” or “天水围的日与夜” (2008). The angles Ann Hui used in her movies is different from any other movies I have seen, by simply recreating the “everydayness” and “everyindividualness”, she always tells narratives through an unromantic and undecorated way. This movie does not even have a single bit of climax and concrete structure of plot. But yet, the tension created in this simpleness always moves me.

Response: Candice(Jingyi) Chen

Undoubtedly, autobiographical performance is a form of writing lives. But whose life is really being written? How much percentage is writer’s really life? I think there is no a specific answer and we do not necessarily need to find a “correct” answer. Autobiographical performance reminds me elements of Happenings. Based on elements of real life, it uses methods of act to perform. Movements of audiences are planned but not able to be controlled. It is no attractiveness to audiences if life is expressed like a daily life. Using autobiographical performance, we need fiction as a media. It is very hard to disconnect act and real life, as well as modernism and avant-garde. Modernism uses avant-garde as a tool to further develop, and if avant-garde lefts modernism, there is no what we call “avant-garde” existing anymore.

Response: Meng Shi

There is a new kind of performance from this article and it has some arguments about the boundary between real self and characterized self. In my opinion, I think it makes no difference if the autobiographical performance uses the technique to blur and bend the truth. Obviously, performers really show on their real mind when they on the stage, but memories could be changed even though the same source. Moreover, the autobiographical performance can involve the audiences, but a performance can not control which points the audiences felt. For example, we do a performance during today’s class. Each person chooses a question randomly and say the personal answer to audiences, it does matter if the answers are true or lie, audiences put their own mind on the performers because they do know the questions. Actually, I think the truths or lies could not influence the autobiographical performance if only they perform the real life.

Response:

Autobiography and Performance offers a comprehensive overview of the use of autobiography in performance. It includes many techniques and skills .However, everyone involves in the field of autobiographical performing. It also requires careful study of the art of storytelling, crafted writing skills, perceptive consideration of non-verbal communication, selective blocking of movement, attentive study of voice, and effective engagement of audiences. In addition, performances of autobiography over distance communication technologies facilitate open communication in what seems like a therapeutic atmosphere of anonymity. It provides an effective, succinct, comprehensive, and contemporary approach to the study of speech performance. I think people should learn to perform and communicate in an empathetic way to audiences at a distance over cameras. It is better to say that the Autobiography performers are trying to communicate with their audiences in a different way. What the Autobiography performer need to do is just making the audiences be impressed and find everything fresh feeling. Due to the history of human is continued in our real life, the performance art also needs to add some new blood, which should be as the new technology to create.

Response:Keitha Tetreault In this article the importance or the significance of the performer and audience are discussed in great detail. When a performer decides to give and autobiographical performance they automatically take down the fourth wall and involve the audience in to their piece. Making eye contact, asking questions or telling a personal story directly involves and allows the audience to relate to the performer. In any other art forms such as music dance or playwriting, artists tend to discover that their most passionate, creative and real work comes from their own life. When an artist uses memories, past experiences or self-expression to create a performance, the amount of material can be endless. I know that as a dancer and performer I am able to strongly perform my own original work more authentically then if I trained and performed someone else’s work. The idea of non-acting and deciding the difference between fact and fiction is something that is part of the process for the performer and the experience that audience gets to take part in.

Response:James Du Autobiographical performance discussed in this paper raised the question of truth to fiction, life to art. The first one seemed a philosophy proposition ‘ Is there true truth?’ No matter how sincere the author want to reflect the truth, the performers have already filtered out some and turned out to be selective. He or she might also invalidly include some imaginary materials and become kind of fictive. I think we can say only life itself is truth. Art comes from life, but highlights itself from life. It is the fictive elements which made art differentiate from life. In this meaning, autobiographical performances is not truly self-performing one when showing or telling the past event. In this autobiographical performances, because of the context, the audience can easily believe what they are told is real if the performers are good enough. Although Autobiographical performance raise the question on truth to fiction, life to art, all material or context of the performance comes from his real life. Performers explore these concepts of things in his life, then they put his thoughts or ideas into their performance. After they read or watch someone's stories, they have their own thoughts about the story. According their personality, they present their own ways to tell audience the story. Audience also explore their own thoughts about the story through the performance. Performers can tell a story directly through their words. They can also tell a story indirectly through their visible movements.

Response: Sijin Chen

In my opinion, because autobiographical performance is presenting authentic material about oneself, the performance become very distinguish from other kinds of performances. Thru the story telling method, audiences witnesses the presentation of these fascinating autobiographies that wrote by the original person. However, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer’s memory and it might not be the truth as the writer remembered. There are also many aspects of autobiographies, such as diary, critique, celebrity, fictional, or even fake autobiographies. I think the autobiographies are not as important as the way it presented in live performance because with certain rules and manners, the autobiographies can be attractive to audience even if it was presented in foreign languages. The wise use of technology can effectively increase the impact of the performance.