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.