ICP Final Performance Project

For our second task of ICP we had to in our group put on a performance which related to an article from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To begin this task our group read the declaration then met up to discuss what we felt stood out to us personally, some people had stronger opinions on some of the articles more than others, but very quickly we came to our conclusion of which article we would focus on. - “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” -  We brainstormed through quotes and letters and videos on youtube that all related to the topic and gathered together ideas which would incorporate our specialisms. We made sure that we met up every Monday so that we could discuss progress on what we have found and any new ideas. So far I felt like I hadn’t contributed much, I had yet to have my light bulb moment where I knew what we could do in terms of staging. So one lunch we snuck into the venue in which we would be performing and had a look at the space, and my light bulb moment came! I wanted to have three large roles of paper which would be hung on a scaffolding bar, I ran around the venue space explaining this idea to my group and it went down so well with everyone and I finally got excited about this project, I researched the cost and compared prices on different sites so all I needed to know what whether or not we could get a scaffolding bar! The final week of ICP and our performance week came up rather quickly and it was on that Monday that I found out that we could not get a scaffolding bar, the technical equipment that we had been given was it, and no budget so the roles of paper would be out of our own pocket. I must say I was rather disappointed at this as I felt very disadvantaged within my specialism, but looking back, I think it was a very good learning curve as it left me to think of something else, and put me in an environment where I was very creatively limited. I came up with a similar idea to the concept of the roles of paper which would allow me to collaborate with the DFTV student within our group, this idea just used a piece of paper with writing scrawled  across which could be filmed appearing, or disappearing. I thought that this might end up a bit boring so I went to research some images on Google along with one of the music student within our group and found an image which was of a paper building, then I thought that instead of a piece of paper with writing on it we could make a paper city which would be in a circle, representing the world, and then we could graffiti over it with words that connected to our article. We explained this idea to the group and continued to start on making it straight away. I brought some people down to Speirs Lock Studios to gather materials and make a start. I spent two days making the city and then set it up ready for filming, then myself and a few others from the group wrote down words that we think should be written over the city and then we filmed these words getting written across the city. Our day came where we could rehearse in the space but unfortunately would didn’t get proper use of the technical equipment as it had broken, but we did a run through of the dance, and our speeches, and our musical piece which all went really well, and we rescheduled our tech rehearsal for the hour before our performance to begin. The day of our performance came and I have to say I think it was this day that our group finally came together and our group dynamic came out, especially after our first performance. Our feedback that we got from the rest of our year who came to see our performances were really good and we knew we had done our job well when everyone understood what we were trying to convey and also when it started a debate within the audience… slightly awkward… not going to lie! Getting to see the other groups performances were also really interesting! Because every group had chosen their own article to base their presentation on we had a very varied performances and I learnt a lot about the world from going to all of them, which I feel was a very good experience to be part of as it opened me up to knew things! I think the two days of performances as a whole was incredible! Drifting from one show to another and seeing how completely different everything is was just amazing to do and so much fun!