“Street arts…have existed since man was created and since streets were built, in the dionysiac celebrations of Ancient Greece, the fairground shows in all of Europe during the middle ages and the Renaissance, and the Revolutionary festivities..” (Gaber, F. 2009:5). Even back to the 16^th century there was street theatre such as Commedia dell’arte and Bouffon. This was before the French revolution and even just after, street theatre continued with puppet work such as Punch and Judy. At the beginning of this semester we looked into ritual within performance, including culture, celebration and the theme of ‘circles’. This theme originates from very early on in performance where street performers create a circle (generally of rope) around them to show the passers-by their performance space. You also see many ritualistic circles, the most famous being Stonehenge. “There is always the chance that people will turn a ritual performance into an act of political theater. Central to the notion of ritual is the idea that only careful adherence to a traditionally prescribed format will ensure the efficacy of a performance. With any departure from a traditional script, a ritual ceases to be ritual” (Esherick, J.W. et al. 1990:844).

I was interested in using this theme of ritual within my performance, originally coming up with the concept of a journey; Travellers with some sort of meaning or mission, on a search like the wise men to discover something magnificent. I was originally in a group where we came up with the idea of creating vehicles out of recycled objects, such as shopping trolleys, bicycles and sack trucks. Due to illness I ended up changing groups, and therefore had to come up with a concept that related to a journey but was different to that of the other groups. We wanted to work with the theme of play. We thought it would be best to have some sort of audience interaction within our piece. “A coherent theory of play would assert that play and ritual are complimentary, ethologically based behaviours which in humans continue undiminished throughout life” (Schechner, R. 1993:26). We looked into different walkabout acts, firstly getting inspiration from an act called ‘The invasion’. Each ‘alien’ had its own physicality, body shape, movement, design and sound. The familiarity was that they were all pink, and also had a combined rhythm when together as a group.

As a group we really liked this concept of having something in common yet our own individuality. Our first idea was to have Ashleigh and I on stilts, and Chloe to have been born ‘backwards’ with really long arms. We had the idea for her to be on wheels, much like the small character from ‘The invasion’, and we would pull her along with us. We realised that this was a very visual concept, but we weren’t sure where to go with it. Also we were unsure where the performance was going to take place, and seeing as it wasn’t site specific we weren’t sure if using wheels would be a possibility. “When people go onto the streets en masse, they are celebrating life’s fertile possibilities. They eat, drink, make theatre, make love and enjoy each other’s company…Acting out forbidden themes is risky so people don masks and costumes. They protest, often by means of farce and parody, against what is oppressive, ridiculous and outrageous” (Schechner, R. 1993:46). We wanted to have a meaning, to have a story, a background, even a protest. Another walkabout act we looked into was by The Natural Theatre Company and called ‘The egghead aliens’, whose “attitude to the environment is one of silent observation” (Mason, B. 1992:66).

This influenced us through design and movement, which we wanted to heavily feature within our performance. The way the Eggheads moved in unison at points was something we wanted to adapt, and also the visual aspect of the head shape intrigued us. We wanted to work with something that was almost human but slightly different or extended, such as our original stilt idea. Another street performance by The Natural Theatre Company is where they go about town stopping people on bicycles and waving signs such as ‘down with bicycles’ and holding mini protests outside bicycle shops.

“Although there is confrontation it is gentle, never verbal and as far as possible spread amongst a whole group rather than focused on a few individuals. What they seem to be trying to achieve is to make fun of self-righteous reactionary forces but also to provoke the spectators into expressing their opposition to these characters, safe in the knowledge that it is only a game’ (Mason, B. 1992:66).

What Bim Mason says above is almost exactly what I wanted to convey on the street through this performance; to play a game with the audience through interaction, entertainment and parody. We started to think of a character that could possibly send a message through their performance, but through comedy and satire. This is when we came up with The Naturists. We were not nude, quite the opposite in fact, we were covered in vegetation. Ashleigh and I adapted our original idea of being on stilts, keeping the ‘twin’ aspect, and wore large plant pots. We adapted Chloe’s design by placing her in a wheelbarrow surrounded by plants, as this would be easier to move over different terrain. “A big part of the celebration is experiencing the transformation of work space, or traffic space, or some kind of official space into a playfield” (Schechner, R. 1993:49)

Our concept was to spread the word about nature, generally babbling to whomever would listen about how fantastic plant life is and how awful cars are etc. Originally I was going to have the persona of someone who constantly ate, and therefore you couldn’t understand a word I was saying, yet Chloe would always seem to understand. Ashleigh’s persona was quite the opposite, to throw in wise words which would get dismissed by Chloe, who would chose to agree with me over her. My identity was slowly adapted, because of ethical issues. Through workshops we realised that talking with your mouth full of food can sound like you are trying to imitate someone with a disability and it was inappropriate and not necessary for the performance. Therefore we changed my role to a silent one, and Ashleigh followed suit, leaving Chloe to babble unstoppably to the audience. Her character was that of ‘the woman over the fence’ or your ‘annoying auntie’. She went on and on about how to plant the best turnips, or how to make bio fuel out of parsnips. Ashleigh and I had a small dance routine, performed with a duck whistle, to accentuate Chloe’s comment about “dancing round the potatoes at moonlight”. This type of comedy was quite ‘in your face’, and Chloe’s gibberish was almost subtle in its humour. The plan from then was to offer children, or whomever, a vegetable seed in a small pot which they could go home and plant. This was a way to get the audience to approach us without feeling threatened by the exuberant costume or dramatic dancing.

When actually performing in the street it was very different to the rehearsal process. We had some issues at the start because of the wheelbarrow. We were originally going to start at the Guild Hall, yet we were moved the day before to the Brooks Centre. This was a problem as we started because we had to use the lift to get to the street outside, and as it was a shopping centre it took us a while to get a free lift. This meant that our performance started a bit late, so we had less time to do our walk about act. The act itself went really well, we had a great reaction from people in the Cathedral grounds. We chose to perform there because it had the most trees and grass in the city centre, which worked well with our concept of vegetation. We were lucky with the weather, with lots of people sitting on the grass and benches. Children seemed to enjoy it the most, and each time we stopped we gathered a crowd, the largest being about 20 people. This is something we didn’t expect and helped us to perform better. We moved on to meet the rest of our class for the end of the performance. Each group travelled from different parts of the city to meet at The Buttercross, a central statue in the high street. Once there we presented ourselves to the audience, and awaited ‘something’ from the sky. We brought a member of the audience forward and decorated them with sunglasses, feather boa, hat and frame. I think we had a crowd of at least fifty people, yet it was still hard to find an audience member willing to come forward. We continued on as a large group, parading down the high street.

If we had more money we could have made better costumes, and made a larger performance all together. “A serious lack of funding of street arts means that many British companies are unable to develop their work, particularly on the large scale” (Gardener, L. 2003:9) I believe the performance went well, and I enjoyed directing a performance as a group. Even though you can be let down, I have learned things through mine and others mistakes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

watch?v=Y07pK76v66Q [Accessed April 23 2011]

Esherick, Joseph W. and Wasserstrom Jeffrey N. (1990) “Acting out democracy: political theater in modern China,” The Journal of Asian Studies

Gaber, F. (2009) 40 years of street arts. Paris: editions ici et la.

Gardener, L. et al (2003) STREET ARTS A User’s Guide. Winchester: King Alfred’s Winchester.

Magicmarmelade (2011) The INVASION [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aplcuuw0aZA&NR=1 [Accessed June 11 2011]

Mason, B. (1992) STREET THEATRE and other outdoor performance. London:Routledge.

Schechner, R. (1993) the future of ritual. London: Routledge.