Nalleblue’s Weblog

Performance spaces
Simplified I would divide the three basic room situations we perform in as the public, private and exclusive rooms.

The public room
Example: street performing
The public room belongs to everybody and as an artist you are forced to justify why an audience should stop and spend their time watching you. Your audience probably already has an agenda which you must somehow be more interesting than. There is an immediancy in the public room that cannot be ignored.
The artist is there for the audience that wishes to partake or else the audience member chooses to leave.

The private room
Examples: hospital clowning, table magic
The private room belongs to the audience and not to the performer. This situation makes it vital for the artist to always ask for permission to enter before performing. We must always remember that we are guests in someone elses territory and depending on the fragility of the situation always be ready to respect a no.
The artist is there for the audience that wishes to partake or else the artist must choose to leave.

The exclusive room
Example: performing in theaters
The exclusive room can like a theater be architecturally designed to enhance the artist/audience experience using light, sound, seating comfort, clear sight lines and a structure that clearifies the border between the artist and the audiance.
In any event performance situation the artist will always look for areas that come as closely as possible to a theater situation.
Traditionally the audience cannot leave so somehow is there for the artist.

Of course these are generalizations but they work as frameworks for calibrating performances.
A childrens party might be in someones house making it a private room so it is important to ask permission to enter. The kids are high on suger and running around playing forcing the artist to switch to public room mode where they in reality must be more fun than the games the children are playing. Or maybe the parents have already gathered the children in the living room and built a small theater using chairs and sofas which would let the artist work in the exclusive room.

Pedagogical spaces
Working as a pedagog I have found it important to always spend the time in the begining of the process in creating a room where the students feel safe. It is the most important tool I have found in creating a creative enviroment. My ideal room would be warm enough to where a t-shirt, clean enough to roll on the floor, big enough to run around in but not so big that the individual gets lost in it. There is nothing easily broken or belonging to someone else and the exterior sound levels are not so bothering that they take the focus from the room. In the beginning with a new group I usually do not allow visitors and I try to focus on the group more than the individual.
I try and always begin with experience excercises that are impossible to fail at and that create a “we” feeling within the group.

As the group gets stronger it becomes easier for its individuals to trust that the group will be accepting of there failures and mistakes.

The fourth wall
In traditional theater the scenography would take up three walls of the stage leaving the fourth wall as the invisible line between the artist and the audience. To turn and speak straight to the audience is called “breaking the fourth wall”.
The clown traditionally never has a fourth wall.

Introvert / Extrovert
When performing without the fourth wall it is still possible to play between the two worlds of private and public. The clown gets privately angry with his shoe lace but when he has finished tying it he once again turns to the public and asks for recognition.

Personal territories
As an artist working mainly outside of theaters I find myself constantly meeting new people in new situations. Besides the different room definitions I have learned to define the different territories individuals react on when one enters them.

Within me
The introspect territory. Someone who is deep in thought, concentrating on an idea, asleep or doing yoga.

Touch
Aikido teaches this as one of the most important territories. When two people stand so that neither can touch the other one is outside this territory. Take one small step closer and the body physically goes into defensive reaction. This is one of the clowns most useful tools as it can be used to set someone off balance as well as used to create trust by asking permission before entering. I have still never met an audience individual who is aware of there reaction to this territory so it is a great strength to have knowledge of it.

Within the room
The immediate room. The doorway to the hospital room or outside the circle of a dinner table or group of people.

Within the horizon
That which can be realistically reached without much problem. This is just as much a physical territory as an intellectual one. Physically if you can see the goal it is reachable. Intellectually if you can invision the path you can reach it.

Outside the horizon
This is the territory outside your personal norm. It is the place you have never been. It could be the dream or a place of fear because of uncertainty.