| 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 03: IDENTITY+CHARACTER, TEXT+STORY - Due MONDAY OCT 10 (Group A) and WEDNESDAY OCT 12 (Group B) SELF IDENTIFICATION We construct our identities. Queer communities are especially aware of the construction of Self, the theatricality of who we are. What you wear, how you carry yourself - business suit, ballroom gown, construction worker, drag, costume, mask - all of this contributes to how you identify yourself and how you place yourself within particular communities. Try looking at yourself. How do you put yourself together? What do your shoes mean? What does your hair signify? Who are you trying to impress? Who are you trying to piss off? Go to a cafe or some public place and pick out an interesting human being. Without any judgement, observe them. What kind of clothes do they wear? Where do they carry their weight? How do they hold their hands? Any facial ticks? Calm? Nervous? Make some notes if you like. Go home and, in a safe, undisturbed place where you won’t feel self-conscious, try imitating the people you were just watching at the cafe. Walk around like them. Sit like them. Make noises like them. Screw up your face like them. Watch yourself in the mirror (sometimes if you feel like you're a different character... you might not seem it to other people... lot of times you have to REALLY exaggerate movement/expression for it to come across to other folks). If you’re feeling very brave - dress like them and go back to the cafe like them. Order coffee like them. Be them. IT BUILDS CHARACTER Using information from our readings, screenings and your observational travels, build a character. Create a 2-5 minute performance based on a life-changing event... an event that changed the character’s life. This performance should be presented as this character. You will have 5 minutes to set up, 5 minutes to break-down (while the next group sets up). |
| STORY STARTERS Remember the A-B-A structure note and the ideas about routine/break-the-routine from Assignment 2? - it could be very helpful here. Or chuck it out the window. “I simply imagined a group of people and subjected them to the simple universal natural catastrophes, which are flood and fire, with a simple natural motive to give direction to their progress.” William Faulkner talking about As I Lay Dying “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces “Forward motion, clarity and surprise, these three principles are at the heart of all great stories.” Tibor Kalman |
| TEXT GENERATION If writing off the top of your head doesn’t suit you, try being an editor: dip into the public domain, intercut news articles, blogs, interviews, advertisements, court transcripts, letters - this is not plagiarism, it is interpretation. What can you make (brutal arguments? passionate pleas? insightful critiques?) by skimming the scum off our cultural pond? Poets, theater directors, experimental companies and plays who work like this: William Burroughs and his "cut-ups", Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde), Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Simon McBurney and Complicité, The Civilians, Anna Deveare Smith, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s The Exonerated, Eve Ensler and The Vagina Monologues. One More Thing: You don’t necessarily need to speak to tell a story... and for you mime-o-phobes, you don’t need to speak AND you don’t need to be a mime to tell a story. |
| PITHY QUOTE “The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer - they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." Ken Kesey |