Sunday, May 6, 2007

Assignment - Perfomance Ideas Wanted

Good morning blog readers,

I have this amazing access to a stage in New York City and I am looking for ideas to place upon this space. The stage is a long stretch of pavement along the East River on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In this space there are people enjoying views, walking dogs, going on first dates and doing other after-work-activities that take them way out of the present moment. I looking to wake them and myself up and would love your help to do so.

So here is the assignment: post any performance piece you would like me to attempt in this beautiful space. I have a partner who is willing to do anything with me -he is 6'9" with red hair and if you can think of specific things for him to do I'm sure he'll be into. Use his height to your advantage. For example we are planing on doing a piece which involve high volume lip-sinking in masks while my partner dances in a fish costume around me. We'll do anything we think is meaningful in its own right.

Once we receive your idea, I'll respond back just to have a dialog with you and then be off to the space to perform. I want to have a dialog so that it's a collaboration with my readers instead of just someone telling me what to do. There could be pictures or video tapes of all these performances if you want but I'm more into the written word so I'd prefer to just post some words on the experience.

So let me know what you think and send your idea - the weather is exciting and I'm warm inside with a bug of doing things.

6 comments:

Jamba Dunn said...

How about a super large super loud video projection of Linh Dinh's latest poem onto the outside of the building at night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8np57kzzoTE

Anonymous said...

3 off the top of my head.

-a protest: develop some kind of reason for protest: fishsticks, karma neglect, fascist magicians. You know, or war or something. Make fliers with info on the problems and like a twenty point list as to how to "heal" the problem. Make a booklet/chapbook/pamphlet series to give away. Bullhorns, signs.

-get dressed in wedding garb and inact a super-drippy scene involving crying and obtuse pledges.

-wear flesh colored unitards and act like totally psyched morons - freak the fuck out - about how absurdly lucky you both are to still be alive. Each do a small speech while the other one faintly beat boxes or chants affirmative words.

Do things in short bursts. Or really long drawn out sequences. Be aware of time passing and try to take your time.

oh wait, another one:

-have T tell some jokes, do stand up comedy while you sit in a lawn chair as the audience. bring yourself a cooler and all the picnic afternoon supplies you need. I like the idea of this going on for two hours.

More later?
Is that useful at all?

Ben

Weather Experiment said...

Jamba, I'll check that link out tonight. I think I accually have the equipment where I could do something like that.

Ben, your ideas are like fire in my mind. I'll have more comments for the both of you this evening when I start thinking logistics.

Thanks for the love power.

William Bolzebados said...

hi emily,

i'm going to send you some text from a manuscript of prose poems based around the chakras (we've talked about it up in portland). most of them are dialogic and it would be fun to perform them, yelling, gesticulating, in nude suits. the first three have colors associated with them (red, orange, dark blue), so you could dress in all one color, or maybe dress in the nude suit with a dark blue dot on your chin...

the last two are in interview form. the main chunk of the text is one voice, and then the one-line italics is the response/question.

jefferson

Anonymous said...

Awesome Jefferson, I love it. Most of all I'm excited to get some knowledge on the chakras. Send that stuff, I'll read it over and send some ideas I have.

Ben - the nude suites are a most. I've found some on line and they even have XXL for the big man. This weekend I'm going to be on my own - except for Vanessa's awesome presence on my couch - so I was thinking of attempting the protests. I love the idea of Karma Neglect. I'm going to be doing some research this week and start forming ideas before Saturday when I take to the stage. If you have anything you think would be impairative for me to use (props wise) send it down with Vanessa and I'll be sure to put it into my performance.

Jamba, I checked out Linh Dins's peice on youtube. I'm in, just need to find the equipment. By best friend boy friend works for an audio visual company and I can get my hands on some sweet eqpiment. I'm going to talk to him this week and find out if I can pull it off.

Thanks for all of your ideas guys. So far for this week, I'll be ordering some nude suites on-line, planing a protest for this weekend, organizing AV equipment and learning about my chakras.

The lights are flashing in my head. I'll be back in touch to let you know my progress.

Emily

Jamba Dunn said...

what happened with this one?