Final Thoughts on Lovefool

And thats a wrap. The final thoughts of my piece are below in the video. Please excuse the poor grammar choices, the “urm’s”, the fashion choice, my accent, the overuse of the word “like” and the very awkward face I pull at the end. That’s all that I’m apologising for this part. I have learnt to not say sorry for every little mistake that happens.

Overall I am really happy with the outcome of my performance and wouldn’t change it. Granted I would have made minor tweaks here and there but I’m content. A level of doing this performance piece was that it was such a brilliant way of getting everything out there and managing my emotions and feelings. I think I managed to avoid any cliché about heartbreak and actually flipped it around to make fun of it. Love is a fickle thing that is able to tear us apart on the inside and I believe the message of Lovefool is that it’s ok to fall in love, and also to fall out of it. But when you do fall out of it it is important to make no mind of it and to progress yourself further into whatever makes you happy. I fell in love, then fell out of it but managed to regain myself by putting every bad mood swing and stage of sadness into the creative process of making this piece. I’m thrilled that this was my last show at university and a massive thank you to everyone who has helped bring out my inner artistic potential and who helped me build up this performance.

The Set

 

 

The Set

(Davies .K, 2015, The Set)

And here it is. The subject of weeks of self reflection, discovery, tears, blood, sweat and sore vocal chords. The set of Lovefool is one that is minimal at best. One mannequin is sat the right, another one that is more underdeveloped is at front watching, a more feminine stature is on the left sat at the back, and on the far right another masculine torso watch from behind. The seating is small, 3 rows on 3 different angles to seat every 25 humans present. A microphone is in the exact middle, so the struggling male singer can be scrutinised from every angle of the hungry audience. There he will stand to perform a song, then after he will confess, profess and preach to the audience. Adorned on the floor are torn flower petals, both pink and red, almost like confetti. The petals are reminiscent of a very cheesy romantic scene where the prominent lover lures his “prey” to the boudoir.

The lighting also appealed to me, on a personal level, purely due to how there is such a element of cringe to it. The two red lights resemble a heart and when it was just the red there was a strong undertone of a cabaret lighting, dark, moody and intense. The pink brings this element of camp too it, and also a sense of humanity as well. When I step onto the pink and that is the only colour there I am allowed to perform a monologue where I am allowed to step out from the Singer character and be me and talk to the audience. No illusions, no pretentiousness and no cliché. No other colours apart from pink and red were allowed purely because I didn’t see the need to include them.

Overall the set appeals to me. It gives me this impression of a delapitated bar/club where you still have this Singer who refuses to go. He will stay there and perform about love, he will talk about his heartbreak, he will sing for you and he will then make fun of the trauma he carries. And at the end he will walk off the stage and close the curtain behind him. This was his “last hurrah” in a sense and in closing the curtain he symbolises the departure of his old love, and now leaves for a new one.

Death Of Love

The mannequins have appeared to taken a life of their own and now my own personal sanity seems to have been restored. This talk of me trying to be in love and become a mannequin is something that Tadeusz Kantor, a polish painter, theatre director and set designer. Kantor spoke about how the mannequin in his theatre must become a model which passes a strong sense of death and the conditions of the dead (Romanska, 2012, P.265) The mannequins used in Lovefool are objects, yet they are resembling human bodies. The mannequins are a non-being yet they have the appearance as the audience and actor. By me dressing up the main mannequins this me then actually giving it a life and an actual identity? By covering the bare body of the mannequin have I turn given it essence?

The Lover

(Davies .K, 2015, The Lover)

There the mannequin sits, as he is dressed and watching me perform. The mannequin has embodied the image of man, and is playing the part of a audience member, as well as a effigy of the embodiment of every bad relationship I have ever had. I find myself questioning what the audience will thing of a head and torso connected adorned with a blazer, trousers, washing up gloves, glasses and a bandana all bound together with sellotape and the hope that none of it will fall off mid performance. If the mannequins has been given an identity then surely this aspect of “solo” has been diminished but this new actor?

This “death” that is brought on by the mannequins is relatable to almost celebrate the death of love. And here my relationship. And now with the mannequin dress it becomes a symbol of both life and death, the life being shown on the outside but the hollow shell inside void with anything inside.

 

WORKS CITED:

Romanska, M. (2012). The post-traumatic theatre of Grotowski and Kantor. London: Anthem Press, P.265

Lovelorn

Love is not always a cycle of shared, escalating bliss. When love is not mutual – when the pattern of attraction, desire and need is felt by one person and not the other – than the outcome is far from satisfactory. (Baumeister and Wotman, 1992, P.2)

Unrequited love is something that is labelled as “one sided love” that is not accepted or tolerated by the other party. You have stories, songs and entire collections of art made about one sided love. During the process of developing “Lovefool” I looked more into different branches of love. Of course we have the standard idea of what love is, and should be, but there are so many sub levels of this intense feeling of love. In the development I thought it would be wise to delve deeper into on of the more harmful stages of love. We as a society seem to glamourise this idea of how this type of love can be a beautiful thing, how it can be seen as cute or romantic? Or even tragic?

One such instance would be in Goethe’s book The Sorrows of Young Werther a story of young man who falls in love with a woman who is ‘as good to be’ engaged to another man, who happens to be out of town. Werther’s love begins to bloom rapidly and he is beginning to think that Charlotte loves him too when the other man, Albert, returns to claim his bride. Werther finds his world turned upside down. Nothing brings him pleasure of consoles him. He struggles futility to recover by going away, but he soon returns. Charlotte’s husband begins to suggest that Werther is spending to much time with her. She tells Werther to stay away for a few days, and he becomes extremely agitated. He returns to her that same night her husband is away. They converse and read poetry together, gradually becoming more and more intimate. Finally Werther seizes her and kisses her passionately. She responds at first but then pushes him away and, filled with guilt and uncertainty, tells him to never see her again. He leaves and commits suicide, leaving her a letter declaring his love for her. (Baumeister and Wotman, 1992, P.2-3)

While yes the idea of having a willingly passionate man read you poetry and then become spurred and kill himself over you is oh so very romantic of him, you can’t help but feel sorry for Charlotte, the bride. Here she is trying to adapt to her new life of being a wife but here she has this obviously nice gentleman come along and try to woo her, but the desperate tone of his advances is strong. I feel more for the woman who has to now deal with the thought of a man who couldn’t just take the hint. It probably didn’t help that Charlotte possibly did lead him along a little but the fact is Werther should have known in the first place to have not even tried to get with a married woman. This sounds like a soap opera in some cases but this does seem familiar to a plot line on Eastenders. I digress.

But in some cases what if the jealousy and frustration of being ignored takes over? The modern day equivalent to Goethe’s tale could be so much worse than just the one lonely suicide of a man who got rejected.

It’s always been that tale of how the frustrated male gets tired of his advances being spurred by the female and he takes it into his own hands by aggressive means.

If you were to type in the words “jealous killing” on any search engine on the internet, or even if you pick up a copy of a newspaper there is bound to a article on how men and woman have killed or devoted another parties life simply because of a consistent string of them trying to woo or be intimate with another who has rejected them. That doesn’t sound too romantic.

WORKS CITED:

Baumeister, R. and Wotman, S. (1992). Breaking hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love New York: Guilford Press, P.2,3

Loss Of Self

 

As the weeks go by in this process I find myself at a emotional and mental standstill. The piece is driving me insane. Reliving why a relationship failed over and over again is not fun. It’s like this continuous cycle of researching, looking into, and reflecting on the idea of love and, as the artist, I realised I had caused this predicament for myself. I have such a lack of experience of love and the ones I did have where far from blissful. Here I had created a show which almost celebrated this failure of the first true love I had. Just like a recurring night terror I would relive this until the performance and perhaps even then. It sounds insane, but I actually seem to rely on the mannequins. I can project any negative emotion onto them and they won’t say anything. They will just be there.

It does sound completely irrational and ridiculous but as the runs of the show go on and the emotions become more real I find that the mannequins that are watching me are acting as much as a suit of armour for me as the character of the Singer are. They are empty lifeless beings, vessels if you would, that I can create backstories for and give them a identity.

The main mannequin currently is the one I seem to identify with more. He is lifeless. He lacks any limbs and doesn’t speak but thats fine. As the Singer I will make him accept me as one of his own, a mannequin a statue if you would. As the Singer, I have decided to dress him in my own clothes and give him his own identity. If I give him all of my most treasured items will he then in turn love me? This is the questions I must ask myself to make this real as the performer. Below is the prototype for the base head and body of the main mannequin:

Mannequin

(Davies. K, 2015, Mannequin)

Before the show starts I will stand at the microphone, still and tense with no movement whatsoever. This is my tribute to the mannequins here, as I try and change everything about my being to become one. The character of the Singer has this dichotomy almost in which he knows what he is doing is ridiculous, brazen and plain stupid yet he still does it. This search for love from anything has poisoned him and in turn I feel like it is poisoning me as the artist and performer. As the performer I have just come fresh of a break up and now I must become this entity who wants to replicate himself as a lifeless vessel because he is in love with it. It sound’s so terribly pretentious and difficult but the idea of Solo Performance, to me, is that anything produced has to be real and honest. If you are lying then I don’t think, personally, that the audience will get behind you and support your work. Solo requires you to delve deep into your soul and your mind and dig furiously to figure yourself out. It’s therapy, a brutal one at that, but it’s probably the best form of therapy I’ve ever had.

I must be going mad, talking about loving mannequins and how I seem to have this bi-polar with the character of the singer, but I know that the end result will be a remedy for me to move on and be happy again. As cheesy as it sounds.