I have been struggling these first few weeks to come up with anything even slightly creative for a performance. I have had a couple of ideas of themes, one was loneliness. However, I found that I could not fully commit myself to pursue them as I did not feel any real connection to them or have the desire to develop ideas without making material personal and I did not want to do this for the theme of loneliness. From discussing ideas in class, concerning recreating the feeling of loneliness for participants, I decided that spending my last semester at university should not be focussed on such a dark and upsetting topic.
A thought occurred to me, at the end of our most recent Solo Performance session, which would involve using gym equipment as a starting point for any performance ideas that were to follow. This led to me thinking about things that make me feel good – a polar opposite to my initial idea that was focusing on loneliness.
This is my own fail-safe list of things that always lift my mood:
– Gym (Working hard – I NEED to break a sweat!)
– Food (Not fast food! Made from scratch and full of flavour)
– Dogs (Especially my sister’s dog, Molly)
– Wine (Red, Champagne & Prosecco)
– Music (Wide range)
– Candles (Preferably cinnamon)
After creating this list, I focused on the music and started creating a Spotify playlist that consists only of my feel-good songs.
I would like to use all of these things on my list to create some kind of experience room. I do not know how this will be done quite yet but that will be the next step in my process.