'Cardboard Box' Theatre by ONIZ

We have had to recently become very versitile with the performances we make, moving from different location to location and inhabiting unusual and interesting spaces. We present suitcase theatre.

Horseplay 14/9/10 Save Our Relatives

We had our first performance last night at Horseplay Arts Club for a while. We are working towards developing the flood piece that we began to work on in February. We have decided to build the piece through performances at Horseplay monthly that will gradually build to form the finished piece. Each performance at Horseplay will look at a particular element of the idea and simply explore it through performance.

Last night we were looking at how people deal with natural disasters and we were exploring the idea that people feel more comfortable helping other countries and animals before helping people in their own country. However, we didn't want to make a statement about this, we simply wanted to explore the idea in a performative way.

Liz and I both have the same Gorilla T shirt and it was this that really began our process. We decided to set up an event/performance where the audience could adopt a fictional Gorilla from Save Our Relatives, a fictional organisation set up to save Gorilla's. The audience were led into the stall and given information about Gorillas. They were then asked if they wanted to partake in an auction for a Gorilla. They were informed that it wasn't a proper auction and all they had to do was give their love and belief in the animal and organisation.

The audience were shown some pictures of Gorillas and told a little fictional story about them. They were told that afterwards they could write down the name of the Gorilla they wanted to adopt on a bit of paper and put it in the adoption box. However after they were shown the Gorillas they were also shown pictures of flooded towns in Pakistan and flooded streets in Cumbria and told they could also adopt people from there. We wanted to question if people felt more for animals and other places rather than something in their own country. Obviously it is a problematic subject as the floods in Pakistan were on a larger scale and many people lost their lives, which was not the case in Cumbria. Pakistan is also still in the news whereas the Cumbria floods were a year ago and have long since gone from the headlines.

The piece was really an experiment to gage how an audience would perhaps feel about this subject. Our piece will mainly use the floods in Cumbria in 2009 as an influence for the piece. Although we feel the piece will mainly be about water and the effect it has on us.

I noticed that the piece was quite playful and relaxed, which is good when dealing with serious issues. The Gorillas did get the largest adoption votes and many people were confused about why we used Cumbria and its relevance to the subject. I don't think this makes any kind of statement about the subject and the idea we were exploring, however as practitioners it did give us insight into how you can take an idea or argument and turn it into something performative. I feel this will be a large part of our process in the coming months.

Oniz have performed 2 small shows at the Horseplay Arts Club at Proud Galleries in Camden recently. Their first piece was in March and was called 'The Greatest Love Story Ever Told....Probably.' It involved Oniz taking the audience to the city of love...Paris and telling them the world's greatest love story..however there was something preventing the terrible twosome...mmmm what was it again?

The second show was in Horseplay's April event and saw Oniz take their audience on 'The Greatest Night Ever'. However one bottle of rum later things descended into madness with spilt drinks and dodgy pole dancing. With heels in hand, make up smudged and beer goggles, the audience are immersed into drinks, drinks and erm oh yeah more drinks.

Oniz were involved in a puppetry piece at the Market Estate project in Islington in March. Mauren Pereira curated one of the flats at the event, she hosted an all day tea party where Oniz and friends were the hosts for a few hours. The piece was conceived by Elizabeth Dapo as a Mad Hatter tea party. She made some incredible puppets that we helped to puppeteer. The party was a success with lots of flying biscuits, spilt tea and pink balloons.

'Am I Alone'

Photgraphs by Patrick Baldwin

Re-branding becomes- 'Am I Alone'

Photographs by Patrick Baldwin & Mafalda Cruz

Re-Branding CSSD

Central School of Speech and Drama hosted a 'Re-branding' event at the school, in which I was able to create a performance that reveal alternate collaborations and strengths that the school also produce, apart from classical and musical students. Proving that there are talented lighting/sound and visual designers emerging in Central.

Starting inspirations originally came from seeing Willi Dorner's 'Bodies in Urban Spaces'. The idea of the spectator discovering bodies/ performances from different spaces that wouldn't typically be classed as a theatre space, became really interesting to me.

Unfortunately having to adapt and change my ideas quite dramatically because of the politics of the event and the spaces allocated to myself, the end product came away from the site specific ideas of Dorner.

Collaborating with other peers from my course we evolved this idea into a live performance installation. Which is a personal ongoing research question/ area for myself.
We decided to use the whole space we had to set up a giant web like structure out of rope. Which we would have the audience move around the space from the outsides peering in through gaps in the corridors of performance black curtains. Which gave the sense of the spectator not only seeing the performance action, but observing the other audience members watching from opposite the space.

We decided to place the sound and lighting designer in the middle of the installation, so it was visible to the spectator throughout the performance, the concept of the performance being changeable and live throughout.

Being a durational (if you can call it that? another question of mine) of over two hours, the piece developed to become more entangled within the space. The performers adding more twine, rope to the structure to develop a bigger web of connections.

The performers were restricted in their own spaces, cut off by the rope structure. Though the spectator were able to communicate to each performer by filling out a questionnaire supplied on the evening, and personally handing it to the performer.

The idea and concept revolved around the idea of connections between societies/ people. As we found especially on the MA ATP course, that we have all arrived here from very diverse and different backgrounds. Yet separate, collecting together to create a 'new' connection as it were.

Text deriving from personal experiences of coming to London, childhood stories, fears of living alone, worries of moving to a city etc etc.

After the performance, it became clear that this felt the middle of a research performance, that there is something more behind the idea of fealing alone in a big, busy city. The truth is, as I found from the spectator's answers, that we all feel alone in London.

'Re-Branding' CSSD

These are pictures from the process of the 'Re-Branding' durational performance installation at Central.

Photographs by Liz Wilks

The 'Pain' process

Photographs by Riki Kim, Titi Dimak, Mafalda Cruz & Liz Wilks

'Pain' Video work created by Riki Kim

Photographs from the video process by Riki Kim.

Inspired by the idea of expressing pain through no verbal means. Body language, eyes, internal emotions and forces. For this video Jon and myself had our faces painted white in a traditional 'Noh' style. Then our faces, and bodies were wrapped in bandages, rope and cloth, which restricted our vocals and limited our movements.
During the process Jon and myself were tied/connected to each other, and also individually had our arms tied together.
Giving a real restriction pf being in pain and unable to move. There were times when I was stuck facing the floor with my hands tied behind my back, physically unable to move or pick myself up. Which in return inflicted an inner pain and emotion that was real, and exhausting! ha

Images to see!

Images that have I have found that support the performance ideas and development. These images I have found interesting and intriguing to open up further comment and disscussion.

Liz

A short poem that I wrote a while ago seemed to resonate with some of the ideas we discussed. Liz wrote a response to it and we linked it to a text I had written to create a small scene. The text I wrote was a character imagining a relationship with his neighbour who he meets when they are forced to leave their house. Liz wrote two poetic texts that looked at intimacy and despair. The three texts slotted together creating a dream like scene in which two characters are connected but are also separate.

If the World ends….

Death

Forgets life,

Beautiful and exciting with

Accelerating speed,

Carrying hearts full of love

And glory of dreams.

These reasons for living

Give us help to survive,

If the World ends

Survive! To help us give

Living for reasons these

Dreams of glory and

Love of full hearts.

Carrying speed accelerating

With exciting and beautiful

Life, forgets

Death

by Jon Gavaghan

We are concerned with what happens to people when their situations are altered by a natural disaster. We were mainly influenced by the floods in Cumbria in November 09, however the recent earthquake in Haiti has turned this subject on it's head. The tragedy being portrayed in the media at the moment has prompted us to rethink ideas and to really look at how a natural disaster affects people. The main problem with this piece is how to make a work that doesn't patronise the audience or try to recreate actual events or people? What is evident is that natural disasters remind us that we are not alone and that nature is a force that can't be tamed or contained. How can we create a piece that highlights the the power of nature and it's affect on a fragile species?

Electric Arts Club! January scratch

19th January, 2009. The Electric Arts Club scratch night, Brixton.

Photographs by Mafalda Cruz.

January DogStar!

Rehearsal for Dogstar;
So what to do?

Our initial idea began looking at flood and disasters within our society and to what impact that could have on us.
Using performance ideas like; drinking water, holding our breath, re-telling stories of our experiences of water etc. to be the scratch basis to realising this topic.

Though is it too political to say we are doing a performance on disasters?

What is a disaster?

Does it have to be World War III for me to be effected, or can having a powercut in my home shock and make me fear more? Whats going on in our lives... right now?

After talking through ideas of how we could create a performance around this interest, led us quite broadly into researching natural disasters, man made disasters etc. Of every possible event that has taken place, and could still happen. from; 911, Cumbria Floods, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, Titanic sinking, suicide bombings, tornado's, polar ice caps melting, burning from sunrays, etc.

But what became interesting, was the people that were centre in the middle of these events. Questioning; who are they? What's their story?

What if you were to meet someone you see, but have never spoken to, for the first time because of a disastrous event. What would be your relationship?

Taking this idea of creating relationships within events, exploring how can they last, or are they inevitably to be destroyed as well?

Keeping it simple...


"We are two people,

lost? abandoned? alone?

but we are two people...

So what happens now..."

Dog Star at Brixton!

'Lovely Weather!'

Images from first scratch performance 'Lovely Weather!' at Dog Star venue in Brixton, organised and compared by Steve Laughton, photo's by Geraldine Timmins.

Helloooooooo

Hello well I'm Jon and I am excited to be writing my first blog for ONIZ Performance. I graduated from Bangor University last year with a First in English with Theatre Studies and I am currently undertaking an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice at the Central School of Speech and Drama. As a performer I have mostly been in text based work, however after having some lessons in Corporeal Mime I have gained a new interest in the body and it's capabilities.

As a Practitioner I am interested in creating work that uses words, music, media and movement to create innovative and exciting performances that will leave an audience breathless. Liz and I are currently working on a project that was inspired by the flooding in Cumbria in November of last year. Through research and rehearsals we have devised a short piece that we tried out at the Electric Arts Club based at The Dogstar in Brixton. We are hoping to continue to work on this project and develop it into a scratch performance for late January/early February 2010. Although Liz and I have been working on the initial ideas together we are very open for other Practitioners, Designers, Writers, Directors etc to come onboard.

We will be updating our progress and developments on this blog as both a way of documenting our work and sharing it with others. ONIZ seeks to make work that has been made with blood sweat and tears in order for it to be comic, powerful, honest and inspiring. I am excited at what the future will hold and how our ideas will be put into practice and most of all to reaching an audience that we can connect with and captivate with our work.

Liz Wilks Bio blah!

Hey im Liz Wilks,

I graduated from De Montfort Univeristy with a first in performing arts. Im currently studying Advanced Theatre Practice at Central School of Speech and Drama.

The work I have made previously has been influenced by European Theatre, practitioners such as Pina Bausch and companies Ultima Vez, and London based company Gecko. Their work inspires me to find a new way of exploring contemporary issues through dynamic performance, that mixes raw movement, poetic text and bilingual performers together to create a 'new'; juxtaposing ideas in order to create shocking work that provokes audiences.

This year I aim to use media technology as a medium for aiding and creating performance.... so fingers crossed for the experiments ahead!