| ARTS 445: Special Topics in New Media: Performance UIUC School of Art + Design Room 334 Flagg Hall Mondays + Wednesdays, 1-3:40p Fall 2022 |
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| Assignment 02: ROUTINE, MYTH, and BREAK - due MONDAY SEPT 19 (Group B) and WEDNESDAY SEPT 21 (Group A) Take a typical day in your work-week and carefully observe the specific routines that make up your day: waking up, eating breakfast, shower, toilet, walking/riding to work/school, class, lunch, etc., all the way to getting into bed and falling asleep. Take notes on your routines and rituals. Be painstakingly specific in your note-taking. With a partner or two (or no partner at all) create a 2-5 minute performance/presentation/prayer/event based on the notes and observations of your daily rituals. But don’t stop there. This performance should include four things: 01: Routine and/or ritual. 02: Myth. 03: The breaking of the routine. 04: A fucked-up mask that you make with your own hot little hands. Start with the routine/ritual from your life... and then incorporate the idea/story/metaphor/archetype of a myth into the performance. And then, find a way to BREAK the routine. This is often what a good story thrives on: surprise. When creating and shaping your performance consider different approaches to exaggerate routine: repetition, rhythm and speed change, body movement, inappropriate/ridiculous emotion, props, sound, language, audience... Try using the absurd. Try using a non-sequitor. Don't forget the mask: at some point in your performance use the mask that you have made - the most (choose one or more of the following adjectives to describe your mask) fucked-up, weird, hilarious, creepy mask you can think of. As in our first assignment - flights of fancy, gross exaggerations, complete fabrications, beautiful images, stark confessions, brilliantly told truths and blatant lies are encouraged. And, again, be brave. Try being uncomfortable. You will have 5 minutes to set up, 5 minutes to break-down (while the next person sets up). If you have endurance based ideas that will require different “time parameters” talk with me. |
| QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER Is there power in the mundane? How does a private ritual (as simple as brushing your teeth) change when enacted in a public space (brushing your teeth on the bus)? Is there power in fairy tales? Can you find connections (subtle? not-so-subtle?) between your everyday-life and the larger-than-life world of myth? What happens to break the routine in your performance? What surprising, unexpected, alarming, disturbing, softly poetic, shocking, sweetly transforming, metamorphosing, lovely EVENT - as big as a planet, as small as a breath - will break the routine that you’ve established? How does the person immersed in routine react to the break in routine... what are the results? aftermath? outcome? |
| STRUCTURAL POSSIBILITIES A-B-A. One of my teachers told me that if a story ends where it started everybody thinks it's brilliant. She’s right. It’s an old, cyclic story structure called A-B-A. How many movies and plays have you seen like this? The story starts in A... let’s say A is Chicago (metaphorically speaking of course). Then we travel all over the planet, into the Milky Way, under the ocean, to Hell and back... let’s say all of those travels are B. And, finally, we wind up in the same chair, at dinner talking with mom, in Chicago. We’re back in A, but now, because of our travels, we have transformed/evolved and, somehow, A just isn’t the same as it was at the beginning of the story. A-B-A is simple and satisfying. Like fresh baked bread. You can think of a lot of pop-music as using a version of A-B-A structure... verse, chorus, verse, chorus. The verse changes. The chorus is always the same. Every time you come back to the repetitive chorus, the lyrics from the ‘verse’ section has changed your relationship to the chorus - transforming, enriching, entangling, complicating, illuminating your understanding of the story being told. |
| PITHY QUOTES "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage." Anais Nin “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |