There are many different elements in our performance, perhaps this is to constitute for the lack of sight in the performance; so that we are able to enhance every other sense to its limit.
What we must address is what we want to accomplish from the inclusion of all these different layers in the performance. As the audience are at the centre of what we have created, we must look into what we want them to come away from the performance thinking or feeling, how can these different layers have been used to achieve this? One of the key senses we want to heighten is sound, this is because we feel sound is the pathway to imagination. When you are listening to something whether it be a story or a set of instructions, you always somehow manage to imagine yourself or someone else doing what is being said.
Headspace is a tool used to intensify and amplify the sense of sound through its ability to enter the audiences mind. Petralia in the article Headspace: Architectural Space in the Brain describes headspace as ‘sound of a physical presence being relocated to within the viewer’s brain’. (P.96/7) This can be used as a way to manipulate the audience into thinking what we want them to. Headspace will primarily be used to feed inner thoughts to the audience; we will each read out a personal monologue of a celebration allowing this to become the voice inside their head. Can we manipulate the audience so far that they question their own thoughts, where am I? Who am I?
This performance suddenly becomes personal; no two performances will be the same as the performance lies solely in the imagination of the audience. After all the audience will never know their true physical location, where else can the performance be?
In our performance we have an internal and external performance space, the internal performance space is located in the imagination, achieved by the use of headspace.
The external performance space allows us to bring the performance out so the audience do not only feel the inner thoughts of the characters and situation, but the audience are able to physically experience the celebration. The external performance space allowed us as the experimenters to manipulate other senses such as touch, taste and smell which in turn enhances the sense of sound. This allowed the audience to experience the celebration themselves, bringing experiences to the surface, as well as experiencing the celebration through the imagination and words of the monologue.
We want the audience to draw upon their own experiences of the celebration, therefore making the performance real and relatable – the audience can actually imagine themselves at the event.
Using our external performance space we are able to use the sense of smell to enable the audience to reflect upon their own experiences. ‘No other sensory system has this type of intimate link with the neural areas of emotion and associative learning, therefore there is a strong neurological basis for why odors trigger emotional connections.’ (Herz 2002, p.1) Therefore when the audience are placed in a funeral setting, they are overwhelmed by the smell of perfume, which is described as: ‘my mother’s scent’. We hope the audience will develop an emotional connection with this smell.
In the performance the audience are able to smell birthday cake from a child’s party, Hertz states that ‘the majority of odor responses are acquired during childhood’ ( 2002, p.1) most of the birthday parties the audience will have experienced will be in their childhood. We hope that the smell of cake will allow them to recall childhood memories through the use of smell.
Petralia, P. S. (2010) ‘Headspace: Architectural Space in the Brain’ in Contemporary Theatre Review. London: Routledge
Herz, Rachel S. (2002) ‘Do scents effect people’s mood or work performance?’ Scientific American. Brown University
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Charlotte Meek