I had an assortment of ideas for my performance. I knew I wanted to talk about the ‘dramacest’ which happens on our course, I wanted to confront the negative reactions to sex and also explore the ideas of gossip and secrecy. I thought about creating some form of diagram, linking people sexually. I thought of a Blind Date type game, where an audience member had to guess who had slept with who. I thought of disguising real actions and people behind comedic characters. I had all sorts of ideas. I had decided on a game show, I had decided on using ribbon to tie people together, and that was about it. So I selected an audience. Most of my selection was random, but some of my audience I picked because a) I knew they didn’t like me or b) I knew they were quite active sexually, within the course. I wanted friction within the audience, regardless of what my performance was. A bit of sexual tension.
And then someone (I know not who) decided to spread a rumour. This rumour I am not 100% certain of, but it sparked controversy. People refused to attend my performance on the grounds that it was, essentially, immoral. When I explained to people that I was not in any way sharing people’s secrets, and there was no sex chart, no one believed me. There was one heck of a who-ha on facebook. Which worked in my favour, I got an abundance of emails of people saying ‘Can I come to your solo? It sounds great.’ No publicity is bad publicity I guess. So now I had a problem, I had a mediocre idea of discussing gossip about sex, with a feminist angle against slut-shaming, and an audience who were eager to see me do something controversial and intimate.
I thought about game shows- I knew whatever I wanted to do needed the false reality and sense of humour these shows give in order to not be preachy or just plain bitchy. I thought about my audience. What if I put everyone in a circle, and just tied together the people who had slept together, pointing out the empty seats with the reasons they couldn’t attend; babies, cowardice, performances. Then I realised that it would be interesting perhaps, but not a performance. What could be interesting for an audience in that? Also, I didn’t want to upset people by being right, or wrong.
So I went to my route; game shows. What game can I play? What would be interesting and involve my idea of gossip, and lies?
And that’s when I thought of ‘I Have Never’ or ‘Never Have I Ever’. This game is a drinking game in which people say ‘I have never ____’ and if you have done the aforementioned thing, you drink. And, every single time the game is played, it always ends up being about sex. And usually people start to tailor things to their friends; if you know a funny story about your friend, I Have Never is the way to get the whole world knowing.
But I didn’t want people to drink. I wanted people to remember it. And this also means taking away the slander problem; I don’t want to claim truths about people that may be false, or upset people (more than they already were). Also, that would have probably needed an ethical approval form of some sort, and anything which is in any way ethically questionable I’m not a fan of. I want my audience to be engaged, and unsure of whether things are true, what I actually know and what I speculate. And also, I want to give them a chance to tell me the truth. Or not, dependent on their feelings and how comfortable they were.
To help people become more comfortable and willing to play along truthfully, I knew I had to open up too. I also felt the need to add a humorous element so that people didn’t take the performance, me or themselves too seriously. So I spoke to the one person on the course I’ve had sex with (not new information to any of the audience, although admittedly old gossip that everyone was very shocked at) and asked his permission to make a joke out of it. I’d given everyone cards with a word on to shout out instead of drinking, and so when I said ‘I have never had sex with a gameshow host’ the guy had to call out ‘Emily’. This made people laugh, and set the tone; I was not taking anything seriously, it was fun, giggly gossip.
The idea of the strings was a remainder from the spidergram/tying people together concept, and also that of the Chinese mythology that we are all tied together with a fine red line which we cannot break.
Tying them to the hoop with myself in the centre was both aesthetically pleasing and linked to the ideas of a circle of truth/web of lies. It also allowed me to be in control of who was ‘free’ as I could cut the strings out.
In terms of setting up the studio, I wanted to really go for the 80′s dating game show theme. So we used blue and pink lights on the back tabs, and blue lights against the wall. The circle was lit with neutral and magenta lights, so everyone could be seen well, but the lights were brightest on me in the centre. Once the people were in and the strings were tied, the image was quite stunning. And the shadows of the falling strings (as the lights were from all directions) were quite stunning. But more on the actual performance later…
Waiting for the show to start.