Final Extra Credit: Rhetorical Analysis

Looking back at this semester and looking forward to its applications, I feel like I have come into a stride at the end of the semester with our theoretics being physically applied. When our audiences were vague or just general scholars, or when our ideas were completely presented in theoretical articles, I found it hard to get my footing. Literary analysis and research papers I find easy but loosing the formal edge of my writing to alter my audience from superiors to co-creators was difficult, especially as I tried to apply it to just common blog posts. Though, in spite of my discomfort at the beginning, through this class it was nice to focus on audience because it helped me find a style, it ultimately helped me find a way to walk that line.

Most of all I liked gaining my footing and learning to apply the theoretics instead of just talking about the ideas. Writing the review and creating the websites was doing what we were discussing, not just talking about it. I think by doing that I found ways to really take this class outside of the university setting and that is so cool, its something not all classes are able to achieve. Learning to create web design that could be altered and focused for different discourse communities and audiences was an extremely malleable idea that could not only work on different projects but so many different art mediums. I’m happy to see where it takes me.

Craft Screen: extra credit implementation refelction

I absolutely loved Jessica W.’s website proposing perspective film. The site wasn’t interactive nor did it evolve as the viewer interacted with it, both things that I think could help the site even more, but I believe the site was incredibly clean, enticing, and aesthetically pleasing. I don’t think her site could even possibly become completely engaging because her product doesn’t exist yet. In regards to her design I believed it was incredibly user friendly, clean and I liked its simplicity; it made sure the idea was on the forefront of the visitors mind and It made it very clear what the site was trying to sell you. What I don’t know was what the site was actually proposing on implementation level. The product was amazing but as for the site I wasn’t to sure what the proposal was, if it was about how to sell a product with a site, or how to give a presentation via media. So I don’t know how I might mold her idea to my own needs but I would definitely reference it if I was ever creating a site where I wanted to propose a product to investors or alternative audiences of non-creative patron types. I think the flow of her site lends itself to almost a power point style click through and as each of her pages builds off of ideas she had put on the previous page(s) I think you could use her style for other products or perhaps services within the art business.

Website/Craft Screen cont.

Poetics

My composing approach was based on three things, web design, full site flow, and minimalist composition. Purely based on the design, and not my website’s actual content, I wanted it to be a real website first of all. The real demo of creating the website took the mentality of “show and tell” which I found most beneficial. I liked this approach because I know, especially in academia, it can be the best form of teaching and yet the most underused. In higher ed we like to philosophize and try to verbally explain our ideas. Verbal justification and a strong argument defense is always important; however, for me to talk to someone about the “immersive” capabilities of media PR and ticket sales it would take a great deal of time, be quite confusing, and ultimately not be very convincing. If I explained my ideas in words I believe it would be harder for individuals (especially in the artistic community) to apply it to their own work. My audience was other artists who were interested in producing their own work, artists are great at listening and adapting but are also by nature very visually orientated people so the site demo was perfect.

As for site flow, I focused my proposal towards looking at the benefits of a completely immersive theatre experience. I wanted the flow to be interactive and personal to the show. The flow prompts the website visitor to engage in the site itself; it is harder to just skim over when the site asks you to read and choose your experience from the first page. This is the part that can be easily applicable to any show’s site curation. As for making it personal, that can be more difficult for some individuals to apply to their own work, but I figured leading by example was still the best way to go. My site is ‘created’ by the characters in the show that the site is actually promoting/representing, starting with that the site shapes itself. If you know the style and the nature of your show well enough something is bound to surface. As my play centers around just two individuals and the whole show takes place in their apartment it was clear that this home base could also be applicable to the flow of the website itself.

As for the minimalist composition, that was completely personal taste. I think that one should absolutely stay true to the show that they are producing and adapt as needed; however, I am confident that if a site stays as minimalist as possible than people of all demographics are more likely to stay with it and interact. With younger people the aesthetic is more pleasing as it’s in ‘fad’. The older demographic, and I would say all humans, are more likely to interact and actually enjoy their experience if it isn’t convoluted or difficult to maneuver.

Reflection

What was most amazing about this process was actually learning to create a website. This is a skill that has never literally come across my table; I have never been asked or lured into creating a website before but that was absolutely because in the past I was able to work around it. For one reason or another I was able to work around having to learn to create one. I am really terrible with computers, I was blessed with the ability to access Mac computers when I came to college because without their user friendliness I wouldn’t be able to do anything. With the ability of being able to create a website, even with the short time I have had in contact with Weebly, I have realized how often I can take advantage of this skill. I honestly don’t imagine producing work again where I I don’t utilize this skill in some.

Primarily while I was creating the site,  I realized one of the big limitations: a lack of interest. Honestly, with how vast the internet is and with how many publications have sprung up because of it, no one is looking for some random, unaffiliated person’s voice on art. Why would someone look for my voice on anything regarding the theatre artistic community if they could find some article published by a more reputable journalistic source? In regards to this proposal and website, amongst many other posts from our class that I have posted to my blog, I am starting to realize the lack of voice I and my classmates have while we are trying to reach fellow artists.

Out of this I have realized the silver lining in the practice. Throughout the semester we have learned the skills of website making, finding your discourse community, selecting/pandering to audiences, and talking candidly about one’s art. These skills have been cultivated through these assignments and I realize that as we move forward to perhaps positions with more agency, we will have the platforms to voice our ideas to a greater and more interested public.

I believe very literally, my piece spoke to my discourse community about a specific implementation of media in immersive theatre, but on a larger scale my project touched on the idea that most theatre is better if it leans in to the evolving digital age. To my larger community, my site was supposed to demo the benefits of leaning into tech. The fact of the matter is that you don’t have to have a large screen projecting live tweets on it behind your sow to be implementing digital media. I wanted as a part of my demo to show off the fact that even outside of your show, not digitalizing anything about the production itself, one can use digital media in the surrounding audience experience to alter their total journey, start to finish, for the better.

In conclusion my new perspective is that for me myself and I, I want to really utilize this immersive aspect. It is absolutely the kind of theatre that I enjoy most and am interested in making myself. For my own purposes I did learn something for myself as well. I will say that I think that It isn’t the best to force this practice on all productions/ theatre. I believe that you can alter my demo to fit almost any production’s aesthetic; however, with the nature of some theatre, it could actually be detrimental to the nature of the piece.

Personal website

Check out my personal website!
http://bernadettesefic.weebly.com/

I Made a Website!

It may have been the most gruesome and confusing process of my life, but here is my very first stab at using web design to influence PR and audience participation/environment in regards to a specific show.

Specifically a show titled Matt and Ben that I am producing this summer!

I hope you appreciate the demo vs. an explorative text post.

http://mattandbendenver.weebly.com/

Ex.3: By The Artist, For The Artist, With the Technology

Here I will be expanding on my previous review of Punch Drunk Theatre’s production of Sleep No More (SNM) while taking a closer look at its interaction/involvement with digital media technology and the possibilities immersive theatre holds with this technology.

If you know anything about sleep no more I am sure you are put off by even the notion of looking at such a production from a digital media angle because its lack there of is SNM’s pull, its beauty. The thing that made SNM so rare and so unique was its dedication to singling out each individual audience member and separating them from their reality and the digital modernist era.

Though most current immersive theater seems new and avant-garde, it moves in the opposite direction of modernist trends that focus on the future and the human’s inherent environment disconnect. Immersive theatre forces the audience member to swing in the opposite direction of their ever present digital state ultimately prompting complete curiosity and interaction with the environment put in front of them so they are completely ‘immersed’.

Instead of picking apart SNM to find its digital aspects and aiming to alter them to make SNM more media friendly I propose we take what is key and special about Punch Drunk’s technique and create something completely new.

One concept that stands powerful and unique to Punch Drunk is Duration. By Duration I am referencing the fact that the show is 3+ hours and there is no leaving the space (ultimate entropy cycle). Duration is key in this environment because as the audience member’s time interacting with the environment lengthens, the experience evolves and allows the person to truly loose the outside world. If direct media was integrated with a show like SNM the audience would be too reminded of the world and their lives just outside the warehouse walls.

Another key of Punch Drunk’s system is their use of rule dynamics. These rule dynamics, that of the silence, masks, baggage check, etc., are similar to that of what high tech POV gaming tries to achieve. Rule dynamics in combination with duration ultimately creates the most effective environment yet that lets the audience leave their lives at the door and truly experience.

So with keeping SNM as it is, using Punch Drunks unique and effective techniques, and integrating a dose of digital media technology I propose swinging in the opposite direction of SNMs historical prop based productions. Punch Drunk takes us to 1939 in SNM and to the 1960s with The Drowned Man. With the technology that has advanced far past our current common theatrical uses, we could create an experience similar to SNM but that is based in a futuristic society. If one thinks about the high tech stage that Is being used right now for The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time on a scale as large as the 3 warehouses used to make SNM and integrated with actor/audience member controlled and influenced technology, we could create an amazing experience that still allows the audience to leave ‘reality’ behind while taking advantage of our advances in tech today.

With such a proposal it would work best going big or going home, but there is nothing preventing people as young or unfunded as I to start somewhere. I believe it wouldn’t work as well without a full on Punch Drunk-esqe production, but in the scholarly side artists and academics like you and I could really put in the research and the know how to ultimately make something like this happen. So when the opportunity presents itself, we will be ready to take action.

Twittered: Extra Credit

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/theater-review-fun-home.html

The terribly difficult task of paring down this reveiw to 140 characters results as follows:

Fun Home throws out musical conventions in the best way. Music anchors a tragicomic narrative and its all with career notable performances.

Lean In: a Reveiw of Sleep No More

You know what Sleep No More is: the completely immersive performance that takes place in a to-the-minuet-detail hand crafted-3 warehouse-100+ room “hotel” based off of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Now if you are like me, you are scouring the Internet right now for details about this show because you are already intending to see the performance, not because you need swaying on whether or not to attend. Of course you are going to attend, this performance has audience approval on a level that has given Sleep No More an open run, no close date in sight, and it has the critic approval on the highest of levels with every publication from the New York Times to the Village Voice. They can tell you how good it is, I know how good it is, you know how good it is; what I can add to what you know is what makes this performance even better than my expectations and what set it apart from things like it.

I had incredibly high expectations walking in; I had gone and seen The Drowned Man, a production that Punch Drunk (Sleep No More’s Company) had produced in London loosely based on Woyzeck. I have deemed this production to be the best piece of theatre I have ever seen. As Sleep No more was in the same style, being completely immersive, I was so thrilled to be seeing it. What set Sleep No More apart from shows that are even just like it was its own tailor made and un-replicable atmosphere, its ambiance, its hand crafted experience.

Outside of the show itself Punch Drunk had created an experience that started the second you bought tickets and lasted till you left the building. The whole event is framed from start to finish as a reservation at the McKittrick Hotel (a prohibition hotel), which means you are greeted personally at a door with no sign or markings. When you enter you have to check everything you own including your phone, and then after the darkest and longest maze you have ever stumbled through, you enter an absolutely fantastic prohibition bar that you are able to hang out in all before and after the show. After the show there is a jazz performance that takes place in the bar that is truly spectacular, which is ideal as you want to sit ant talk about everything you just experienced. This start-to-finish nature sets the tone for the show and truly makes Sleep No More different. The set up so encourages you to leave yourself at the door and give yourself over completely to the art. It bans the audience together on a level as everyone is made to have the same footing but inevitably within the show itself you reside in on a much more individual level almost forgetting an alternative audience exists.

Within the show itself, it is still all about the environment. Obviously on the level of its immersive style, the environment is key, but in another unexpected aspect, Punch Drunk works with theatre on a very visceral and guttural level. So much of the experience does not consist of being moved by someone’s words, because there are none, or an actor’s actions; rather the whole experience is based on pure and utter emotion. For instance: you are in this environment, by yourself, disconnected from the world because you don’t have your phone, you have been separated from every one you came with, you are all inside your head because you cant speak, and on top of it all, you walk into a room that consists of dim lighting, a baby carriage, and 50 headless baby dolls hanging from the ceiling, hovering over the empty carriage, surrounding you. There is no way to not be forced out of the room because on level you know you have seen this in a nightmare before and your gut starts to eat itself.

Additionally that’s what makes it so meaningful when you decide to follow one of the characters that run past you and watch one of their scenes. By the time you come into contact with an actor, you are so influenced by the space and what you have seen or felt already that you crave the human interaction of the characters, you pray that someone will do something about the terrible things you have experienced, what you have riffled through on the asylum floor and the deaths you have watch unfold. The beauty is it only gets worse when you watch the characters themselves.

Ultimately Sleep no more does a fantastic job at taking a well-known story and using its popularity to do something completely unexpected. It felt so good to be completely disconnected from the outside world in every way to fully experience something on a very individualistic level. Discovering how you react in such an environment honestly allows you discover as much about yourself as you do about the story.

If you truly are planning to visit the McKittrick hotel and meet the Macbeths, I advise you lean into the experience; re-read Macbeth, leave your friends behind once you are inside, make sure you check your phone, and do a little of everything. You are going to wish to see the show 5 more times once you are done no matter what so do a little exploring, see a little dancing, visit all the characters, do something that surprises yourself, choose the opposite of what you would normally, and jump outside your comfort zone as much as you can. It allows you to be striped of all your guards so you can experience the show at its best, which is on your guttural level. And lastly if you ever get to see anything else Punch Drunk puts together, whether it’s The Drowned Man or something new, make sure you do because its something you will never ever be able to forget if nothing else.

Artistic Inquiry in Theatre

Before we can find what Artistic Inquiry means to theatre we must find what Artistic Inquiry means to art on a broad scale. Unfortunately the whole published art-scholar community seems to have varying definitions of what Artistic Inquiry actually means. often the definitions are vague enough that the differing views correlate and correspond with one another but there isn’t one specific consensus on an applicable definition. So for our purposes I propose we work backwards, look at what comes from Artistic Inquiry and through its end product, find its significance. I say we refer to a section from an essay entitled “Re-Visioning the Visual: Making Artistic Inquiry Visible” by W.F. Garrett-Petts and Rachel Nash. They question:

 If research, traditionally defined, promises the creation of new knowledge, what kind of knowledge does artistic inquiry produce? What effect might an emphasis on artistic inquiry have on the production of art? How does the increasing academic and institutional recognition of artistic research affect the artistic community?

Firstly I say that the kind of knowledge that artistic inquiry produces is the knowledge and creativity needed to create new artistic work. An emphasis on artistic inquiry creates art that is more affective and more powerful, as it comes from a process that is well informed and educated. Lastly, the increase in importance put on artistic research creates an artistic community that holds each other accountable for a higher level of production and a more enlightened collaborative community.

In theatre, we are extremely lucky that artistic inquiry is a fairly common practice. On the research level we have an entire position and profession entitled dramaturgy whos role it is to research anything and everything historically and artistically that could influence, relate, or help better the production being produced.
Alternatively it is expected practice that every individual working on a theatrical artistic production is engaged in some artistic inquiry. For instance when I was preparing for the role of Beatrice recently for the production of The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man In The Moon Marigolds, I spent weeks researching every aspect of Beatrice’s life mentioned or implied in the script: from manic depression to family owned vegetable shops, I researched the author’s life, the author’s other works, every song that was popular in the year it took place, the tv/other plays/movies/paintings that were made that year, the fashion of her child hood and what sanatoriums of the time were like. It has proven to me time and again that this detail applied to Artistic Inquiry is one of the most beneficial things that can be applied to a production. Unfortunately it is not common for every single member of the team to live up to the expected level of inquiry, especially actors.However, I know that every person and project would benefit if we put even more of an emphasis on it and I hope we continue in that direction.

Reviews & What to Reveiw

1. Here is a review of Sleep No More, I came across it as I was researching it last week. A fantastic show.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/02/shadow-and-act

2. Something to review: first Friday is today! Make it down to Denver and hit Santa Fe! If you don’t know what first Friday is,

http://www.denver.org/listings/Art-District-on-Santa-Fe/4721/