The Irate Jubilation
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Transcript of The Irate Jubilation
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Irate Jubilation is a synthetic protest.
It’s not the real thing, it just looks like it.
’The piece aims to codify the overall
concept of protest through the
medium of visual representation.
Irate Jubilation reframes protest for
an audience who are numbed to the
raw injustice of the world because
of media and pop culture. Certain
aspects of this physical conveyance
are derived from images found in the
news and online; ones which perhaps
the public dismisses when scrolling
through a Facebook news feed.’
(Nine, 2014, Unpaginated)
Irate Jubilation immerses it’s audience
into a simulated experience of
protest, something that happens
both simultaneously online via a
Facebook feed, and also in real time,
so the audience can choose how to
experience it. They can watch what
happens in front of their eyes, or they
can look at the constant stream of
images and comments on the social
media group that appear on their
mobile phones throughout the event.
Various other immersive elements include ‘the traverse staging to give the
audience a varied perspective alongside a participatory role; the [liveness]…to
introduce people to the atmosphere of a real-life protest; and the sound coming
from underneath the seating to give a feeling of active involvement in the piece.’
(Nine, 2014, Unpaginated)
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There is only one aim.
“Lets bring about change!”
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Inspirations When Nine first set out to create a performance based on protest, it was not our
intention to represent a particular social or political issue. Our aim was instead to
make a visual embodiment of modern demonstrations and to make a comment
on the way that protest is shown in the media. Some of our work derived from pop
culture for example the MIA music video for ‘Born Free’ and Janis Joplin’s ‘Me and
Bobby Mcgee’.
One of our dominant inspirations for the piece was a book called Colours, by
United Colours of Benetton and the way it’s pages made protest seem somehow
beautiful. It was interesting to see how the plight of people so far from ourselves;
some so drastic that they pushed a human being to set themselves on fire,
became something mass produced
and distributed to western society
- to people like ourselves, who had
absolutely no experience of protest.
This then lead us to look at Pussy Riot,
the Russian Feminist performance
art group (freepussyriot.org, 2014,
Unpaginated) who are famous for
their protest performances, music
videos and shocking demonstrations.
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We decided that we wanted to show the glamorous side of protest. We were
particularly interested in the way that world issues, things such as: human rights,
the environment, gender equality, animal rights, are all so commonly mediated
online that modern society has become attached and how nowadays protest
has to be shown as cool or fashionable in order to make people care. ‘The design
of the show gives rise to a type of ironic spectatorship, by which participants are
encouraged to bring about change; when in fact they are not provided with
the tools to do so. Examples of this are the audience being assigned the role of
a protester whilst being restricted to merely sitting and observing.’(Nine, 2014,
Unpaginated)
“The spectacle proclaims the predominance
of appearances and asserts that all human
life, which is to say all social life, is mere
appearance.” (Debord, 1994, page 14)
This was what influenced our decisions on how we presented ourselves in particular,
wearing heavy make-up and modern, provocative clothing, and our choice to use
lots of references to popular culture, for example the heavy metal music which was
inspired by Pussy Riots video ‘Putin lights up fires’ (Pussy Riot, 2013) and our mission
impossible sequence.
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Physical Theatre
As theatre makers, myself and my colleagues work predominantly with physical
theatre. Using movement and gestures as language enabled us to communicate
common cultural signs to our audience who are then able to feel the idea (Keefe
and Murray, 2007, Page 4) for themselves. We worked hard on creating the feel
of protest, and exploring the different protest signifiers. For us there were certain
stereotypes we included, such as middle finger going up, the mooning and mob
formation all of which appears within the first five minutes. The reason we used
gestures, and all the whilst not explicitly telling the audience that they are at a
protest, allowed us to show protest rather than focusing on the various reasons
people to have for going to one.
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‘Performance can be most usefully described as
an ideological transaction between a company
of performers and the community of their audi-
ence’ (Kershaw,1992, Page 16)
We started to go deeper into researching the mediation of protest. One of the
most interesting things we found was the Janis Joplin lyric “freedom is just another
word for nothing left to lose.” (Joplin, 1971) We then took this quote and used it
to create a sequence. We asked each member of the group to show a small
movement that they thought represented the word “freedom” and then “just
another word” and then “nothing left to lose” creating movement sequences
similar to those that can be seen in performances by theatre companies such as
DV8 or Frantic Assembly.
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Mediation
We were also inspired by images of real
protests such as the pianist who played
Chopin in front of the riot police in the
Ukraine last year. However we do not
separate the images from the devised
content, it all just flows as material
throughout the performance which allows our audience to experience the work
in the way it is intended whether they are familiar with the real protests or not.
“The spectacle itself is not a collection of images;
rather, it is a social relationship between people
that is mediated by images.” (Debord, 1994, 12)
By looking at the way protest is mediated
(sofaer,2009, page 27), using real images of
protest we found online, performing them,
and then turning them back into images which
we ourselves post on Facebook, we were able
to manipulate our audience into repeating
our very own research process. Our audience
are constantly mass producing new media
throughout the performance by taking photos
of what we do and posting them (Auslander,
1999, 26/32), but what we are doing is copied
from images we found online and so we end up
making a continuous stream of copied realness
which is a mirror image of what Facebook is, and
the idea that you can re-blog (or copy) things you
like and ignore what you don’t.
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It also challenges the audiences idea of the liveness of protest, because most of
the protests nowadays are either organised online, happen online, or are mediated
online.(Auslander, 1999, page 2) We show how people whom have no first hand
experience of protest, experience it online, but in a detached way, something
that we try to reverse by performing it and posting it on the Facebook feed
simultaneously. It was interesting to us how nowadays Facebook is not only a means
of mediation, or sharing information, it’s an actual cultural context (Auslander,
1999, page 2). By using Facebook we were able to reach people in a means that
we knew they would understand and relate to but subverting it, because we were
using the Facebook feed to make people pay attention to what was happening on
stage, and to make them realise that all the while they were looking at their phones
they were missing all the real-life action. Funnily enough, after the performance we
had noticed that the recognition we received online was huge, far greater than
we had anticipated, and afterwards our audience continued to post feedback on
the Facebook group which gave the piece a lasting effect that we hadn’t given
thought to prior to the event.
The fact that the group remained long after the
performance had finished, gave our audience time
to reflect on what they’d seen and to process it in
relation to their everyday life once they had left
the performance space. It allowed the experience
to continue, and because they are still members
on their Facebook, there is still a reminder in
the corner of the screen of what we have showed
them, and so hopefully the active engagement
with world issues will continue to exist with the
legacy of our performance.
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“As audience members, our understanding
of what we have witnesses is mediated by a
continuation, legacy or after effect of the work
itself.” (sofaer, 2009, page 65)
Audience ParticipationWe employed audience participation as a technique for emotional evolvement
and by using things such as our protest song at the very beginning of our
performance (something that echoes protests of the seventies where peace
and love were at the forefront) we are gaining our audiences trust. What this
does is it sets people up to allow themselves to participate and even enjoy
whats happening on stage, so that later on, when the most fun-filled scene in the
performance transgresses into themes of terrorism and murder, the audience are
emotionally committed to what they’re seeing.
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‘Challenging an audience into rethinking their
assumptions is one of the rationales of contemporary
performance and art in general. Live work uses
the real-time interaction to lead audiences into
unexpected or controversial territories.’ (sofaer,
2009, 45)Moreover, we allow our audience
to become part of the work, as they
contribute to the creation of the
piece through the Facebook page.
The fact that they are allowed to post
pictures or comments throughout the
performance, means that they become
artists, or even protestors, as much as
the performers. This reflects the dawn of
the Facebook news feed, where people
can choose to either ignore, reblog or
comment on social and political issues
that don’t actively affect them as
they scroll past on a computer screen.
Interestingly enough, people don’t
react in the same way to something on
a computer screen to something they
see in real life (Auslander, 1999, page 26)
and so by using audience participation
we encourage our audience to react
in the same way to our online images
as if they were real life happenings
because we perform the images in front
of them before they’re posted online.
This way the audience experience
things in both forms, thus challenging
their detachment to evocative images
online.
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It is in this way that we are asking people
to question the way they view the world
because they can’t look at both their
phone screen and the live performance
- they are forced to choose between the
two at every point in their experience.
Even when Megan Rose is directly asking
people to “look up from their phones”
people are still seeing the words “look up
from your phones” on their phone screen
in front of them. Ironically, although
throughout the piece we are constantly
pleading with people, sometimes even
shouting at them, to get up and help
us, the only time we actually give them
the power to move from their seats is to
help us with the task of moving a prop
which has almost nothing to do with the
protest. We did this in order to render
people powerless, to echo the idea of
protesting behind a computer screen,
which is exactly what our audience are
doing. It raises the question of whether
society’s move into the cyber world is
helping the human race or hindering
it, something that is further explored in
speeches such as Isaac’s and Craig’s
when they talk about the environment
and our relationship with it as Humans.
This is exactly the ironic spectatorship
I discussed earlier, and the idea that
they are restricted to protesting via
Facebook, because they feel too
restricted within the social confines of a
performance space to do anything real.
“In a world that really has been turned on it’s
head, truth is a moment of falsehood” (Debord,
1994,143)
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This concept is explored further as the
performance progresses.The fact that
we are blogging comments about
ourselves and the on-stage action with
hashtags that suggest certain emotional
feeling illustrates the detachment of
our western society with the tragedy of
other, more distant, world issues. This is
prevalent in Megan Rose’s flat reading
of her poem about communication
technology. Because she merely reads
the poem from her phone screen
with no emotional implementation or
characterisation, it could be read that
she has succumbed entirely to the use
of communication technology and
no longer possesses the capability
for human contact, which is evident
considering the audience/performer
relationship of the Facebook group.
Furthermore, we use the mediation to give the performance an alternative
narrative (Giannachi and Kaye, 2011, Page 181), for example Gaby and Diogo’s
dance is shown entirely by mobile phone torches. We create meaning by directing
the light specifically towards Diogo as his speech plays as pre-recorded sound
through the speakers in the space, and as Gaby’s speech is played there is a
moment where she is only lit by the flash photography of our own mobile phones
and the cameras of our audience. This strategy is received ambiguously by our
audience, and it mirrors how social media can be simultaneously harmful and
highlighting. Gaby’s speech in particular is about racial abuse, and as a lone black
performer in the middle of a predominantly white ensemble, the flash photography
comes across as both visually beautiful and also malicious; carrying connotations
of a celebrity being hounded by paparazzi.
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There is also the contributing factor of the footage of this dance is shown in short,
almost unnoticeable clips amongst the projections of protest campaigns earlier
on in the performance. When it occurs again later as a live happening, we then
mediate it all over again by photographing it, once more returning to this cycle of
turning live into mediated, and then realising mediated images. It is from this that
we draw our audiences attention to the medias representation of protest, because
what they cannot see clearly onstage, they can see clearly from the photograph
they’ve taken with the flash from their phone or camera. What the camera doesn’t
capture is the atmosphere, or the feeling of that live moment, a feeling that only
the audience being there can create; something we feel when we are part of
something greater - like a protest.
Sound
The atmosphere of the piece is quite heavily created by sound. We used various
types of sound, both live and mediated for different effects. The protest song, is
probably the most noticeable, in that the live, ‘campfire’ (Peddie, 2009, page 25)
feel of that moment in the performance is nostalgic of festivals from the seventies;
where music was a huge part of peace campaigns. For us the live moments, are
about people striving to be heard, for example Marni who shouts her speech over
the music is clearly trying to get the audience to listen, and take her seriously. The
song itself, is a moment for the audience to join with us in being heard, whether
consciously or not.
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Our use of mediated sound is in contrast to this. The pre-recorded monologues on
the one hand were used to achieve a sense of ‘aural intimacy that can only be
obtained from the reproduction of sound.’ (Auslander 1999, page 35) The particular
speeches we chose for this called upon the necessity of this ‘intimacy’ because
of their nature, either having a particularly internal or reflective quality, or simply
because for speeches such as Amy’s being so personal, we felt they deserved to
be received in a way that was demonstrative of the fact that the audience are
being let in on her private thoughts; something she would not normally declare to
a room full of strangers. There is however, the potential that the recorded sound is
received as ‘material’ (Kendrick, no date, XXII) and this is an echo of the media’s
embellishment of real life - exactly what Amy discusses in her monologue. For my
speech, I chose deliberately to deliver it from behind a microphone, rather than
prerecording it or speaking it unassisted, and this was because I wrote it in the style
of the political spoken word made popular by poets such as Holly Mcnish or Kate
Tempest. The speech itself is a social political comment from a marxist perspective,
and it’s reflective of the mediated voices we see in music videos or on youtube. The
nature of the amplified sound imitated that of a poetry slam, this time however in a
much more sober framework.
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There are moments however, where
the sonic quality and the content
are not so compatible. For example
Megan Rose delivered her speech
fairly inanimately, as if reading it from
her phone screen, as I discussed earlier
to give rise to the idea of technology
taking over from personal experiences.
Although the speech she is giving is
really passionate, her uninterested
delivery of it is quite awkward to listen
to, and yet entirely advantageous to
the point we are making.
Later on in the piece when we develop
our live voices into recorded sound
to show our transition from protesters
into riot police; the audience become
immersed in a soundscape that is an
abstract representation of the ominous
sound of a chaotic protest, with the
beat of stamping feet that replicates
the sound of police marching, growing
louder, and more unrealistic in order to
simulate the approach of a stone-faced
front line of plastic policemen.
‘Immersed in the theatrical sound event, the au-
dience member hears everything, but listens se-
lectively.’ (Bovet as cited in Kendrick, No Date,
page XXIX)
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We also toyed with volume, to energise our audience, both in this instance to
instill in our audience worry and anticipation, but also in the very first moments
of our piece with the heavy metal music, which we used for both impact and
an ‘intrusive’ (Kendrick, No Date, page XIX) quality, that gave the performers an
explosive effect as they walk onto the stage, despite the movement being in slow
motion. The effect of the volume, was intensified by our decision to position the
speakers directly under the audiences seating. We turned up the bass in both of
these sections so that the audience could feel the vibrations of the sound, much
like the rumble of an earthquake, coming from underneath them. This at first, feels
thrilling, but after the progression of the piece from light heartedness to the grim
reality of protest, the foreshadowed feeling of the rumble under the seats turns
from one of excitement to one of fear which is exactly the effect we wanted the
riot police sequence to have. This is juxtaposed very abruptly with Craig’s classical
piano piece, and the soft, emotive music is a stark contrast to the rhythmic thump
of the recorded soundscape, outlining the plea of the man we modelled the
scene on: a protester from the Ukraine who played Chopin to riot police after
numerous after the demonstrations last year. (Classic FM, 2013, Unpaginated)
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Liveness
In order to give our topic the severity that it needed, and to gain full support from
our audience we chose to emphasise the liveness of our performance with a pre-
show set up as a sign in for a real protest. Our performed protest, begins online,
like a real protest, but the audience have no idea what they’re signing up for. We
chose deliberately not to use the word protest because we didn’t want people
to come with a preconceived idea of what the piece was going to be about.The
very nature of the piece is to show a critical study of the forms that protest takes,
and by telling people they were coming to a protest we would encourage them
to believe that the piece was about one particular world issue which defeats the
object of what we aimed to do. It’s also
worth mentioning that we didn’t want to
impose our individual beliefs on both the
rest of the ensemble and the audience.
The work is about both the crowd and the
individual within it, and we wanted to show
both of those.
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“[A]udience awareness and interpretation is
created not just through what happens in the
actual encounter with the work, but from the
information that is discovered prior to arrival, or
retroactively, learnt later on”(Sofaer, 2009, page
23)We were also concerned that bringing protest into the performance space alone
‘may push social and political question to the background’ (Kershaw, 1992, Page
2) because we didn’t want it to be an injustice to peoples suffering. By creating
the anticipation of a real protest, we instantly begin introducing a sense of active
participation, making the audience question what kind of event they had enrolled
themselves into (Sofaer, 2009, page 15) and committing themselves to be a part of
our plight. This commitment is something we exploit with the moments of audience
participation, for example when they join in with our protest song.
“Contemporary culture is marked by the eman-
cipation of the spectator and the transformation
of the audience from passive recipient to active
participant.” (Sofaer, 2009, Page 7)
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We also noticed that for some people; it could be their first experience of protest,
and our performance allows them to experiment with a real experience in
imaginary circumstances away from ‘norms, customs regulations, laws which
govern [their] life in society (Turner as cited in Kershaw, 1992, Page 24); perhaps
even encouraging them to attend a real protest in the future. Furthermore, by
bringing people into the performance space, and away from the restriction of
the outside world, we encourage them to push their own personal and social
boundaries and “bring about change” for “those who need fighting for.”
“Perhaps the theatre is not revolutionary in itself;
but have no doubts, it is a rehearsal of revolution!”
(Boal et al, 2000, 155)
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Staging
The potential for our audience to “bring about change” is developed in our
decision to seat our audience in traverse. It was reflective of different social political
views that people attending may come with, and the fact that they may not all
experience the performance in the same way mirrors this. We really play on the
audiences perspective, for example in the mission impossible sequence, one side
of the audience can see the faces of the victims, and the other side see the faces
of the terrorists. The audience can also see each other, and so are able to gauge
a sense of the opposite sides experience by watching them. However regardless of
the side on which you choose to sit, or what perspective you view the piece from,
you still leave having been as much a part of the piece as everyone else. People
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share photos of their experience on the Facebook group, and so all the best
moments are shared with the rest of the audience. It is this that allows us to create
both a sense of community for our audience (Sofaer, 2009, Page 37), whilst also
playing on the oppositional composition of the traverse staging.
References
- Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness. London: Routledge.
- Boal, A. (2000). Theatre of the oppressed. 1st ed. [ebook] London: Pluto Press.
Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g8ZbuK6AlqsC&printsec=frontc
over&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 4 Jan.
2015].
-Chatzichristodoulou, M. (n.d.). Cyberformance? Digital or Networked
Performance? Cybertheaters? Or Virtual Theatres? ...or all of the above?.
[online] cyposium.net. Available at: http://www.cyposium.net/wp-content/
uploads/2012/09/maria_text.pdf [Accessed 4 Dec. 2014].
-Classic FM, (2013). Pianist plays Chopin in front of Ukraine riot police Read more
at http://www.classicfm.com/composers/chopin/news/pianist-chopin-ukraine-
riot-police/#6fcFTyyBFwy4s9Ri.99. [online] p.Unpaginated. Available at: http://
www.classicfm.com/composers/chopin/news/pianist-chopin-ukraine-riot-police/
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[Accessed 16 Dec. 2014].
-Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
-Freepussyriot.org, (2014). About | FREE PUSSY RIOT. [online] Available at: http://
freepussyriot.org/about [Accessed 14 Dec. 2014].
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org/collections/special/columns/comparing_notes/content_images/Ukraine%20
Protests.jpg [Accessed 14 Dec. 2014].
-Giannachi, G. and Kaye, N. (2011). Performing Presence: Between the live and the
simulated. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p.181.
-Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2009). The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre.
London: Routledge.
-Joplin, J. (1971). Me and Bobby Mcgee. [CD] Columbia.
-Keefe, J. and Murray, S. (2007). Physical theatres. London: Routledge.
-Kendrick, L. (n.d.). Theatre noise.
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-Kershaw, B. (1992). The politics of performance. London: Routledge.
-Lecoq, J., Carasso, J., Lallias, J. and Bradby, D. (2009). The moving body. London:
Routledge
-Minnesota.pulbicradio.org, (n.d.). A Pianist At The Barricades. [image] Available at:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/comparing_notes/
content_images/Ukraine%20Protests.jpg [Accessed 4 Jan. 2015].
-Peddie, I. (2006). The resisting muse. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
-Pussy Riot, (2013). Putin Lights Up Fires. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=NrLI-5xYybo [Accessed 14 Dec. 2014].
-Sofaer, J. (2009). The many headed monster. [London]: Live Art Development
Agency.
-The Irate Jubilation. (2014). [Framing Statment].
-Waltz, S. (n.d.). Körper / Kūnai. [image] Available at: http://www.vilniusfestivals.lt/
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