During a visit to the capital earlier this week I took in a ‘tour’ of the Globe Theatre at Southwark, Shakespeare’s spiritual London home. When the tour started we were told that, with rehearsals taking priority (understandably!), we would not get to go on the stage, nor behind the stage etc; our hour would primarily be spent standing and sitting in various parts of the main auditorium as our guide walked us through what Shakespeare’s sixteenth century London experience would have been like — and what would have motivated him, driven him on, influenced what and how he wrote.
However, my initial disappointment at these inevitable constraints soon gave way to something else entirely as the young actors for Romeo and Juliet appeared and began to walk through various parts of the play — primarily, as it turned out, the murders of Mercutio and Tybalt.
I was absolutely spellbound. Whilst our guide’s narrative purred through my headphones, I found myself simply unable to take my eyes from what was happening on the stage. It was a privilege being witness.
Later, in the early evening, I attended an hour-long concert given by the Piccadilly Sinfonietta and three opera singers: Susan Parkes (Soprano), David Powton (Tenor), and Thomas Isherwood (Baritone). For an hour they mesmerised us with arias by Verdi, Mozart, Donizetti, Bizet and Puccini. I don’t mind admitting I had a tear in my eye at the end of David and Thomas’s rendition of the famous duet from Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles.
Both of these experiences — having been so moving — left me wondering about the nature of ‘performance’; not in the fact that supremely talented people are able to act, sing and play so wonderfully well, but rather why they did so i.e. what was their underlying motivation.
I quickly dismissed the practical and pecuniary on the basis that the most profound outcome of their efforts was to transmit something to those who were watching. And this recognition then had me thinking about Crash and my own motivation for standing in front of an audience for thirty-six minutes as I ‘performed’ my own work.
Who was I doing that for…?
Rightly or wrongly the conclusion I came to was that, thus far (and after four performances) I had primarily been delivering Crash for myself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in itself, of course: it was me trying something new, proving that I could do it, demonstrating competence, talent etc. All those things. Yet suddenly I found myself wondering if I hadn’t been missing something. What if I should be performing it primarily — and selflessly — for the people watching? What would that do to how I delivered the piece?
It was a tantalising idea.
When I perform Crash agin in Louth in April, I won’t really need to be doing so in order to prove something to myself i.e. I know I can do it, I have a ‘track record’. But what might potentially happen if — in some newly conscious way — I managed to tell myself I was delivering it wholly for those in the audience and not for me at all? Would that change my relationship with the piece, with those watching? Instinctively it surely must; that was my inescapable conclusion. And if ‘transmission’ became (consciously or otherwise) the primary driver, then how might that affect my delivery — and what the audience might get from it?
Just food-for-thought at the moment, but when I start rehearsing again in earnest, it will be interesting to see how my delivery may change and how it then feels — because surely feeling, for everyone involved, is the most important thing…
Now this is really interesting, because when I read my poems in our poetry group, I always try to read what I intend them to mean. To convey what I want them to convey, and they tell me that I do so. I have done amateur dramatics in school, and when growing up in the village, both in Sunday School and local drama group, plus I'm used to speaking to audiences as well, so I assume that that contributes to it too. My brother worked in the theatre, front of house, in London's west end, and always got me good tickets if I happened to be in London, a definite advantage.
I think it shows in the way people perform if they are doing it more for themselves than the audience. Regrettably at open mics where eyes never stray from the phone they are reading from!