Performance Lab by Christine Brubaker with Nightswimming’s Pure Research
Actors experience the story they are telling differently in relationship to specific audiences and performing circumstances. Theatre performance will feel different than on-camera work. A story will feel different in front of a full live audience than an almost empty house. The repetition and disruption of filming can change the actor’s experience of that story entirely. In all mediums, a story can sometimes can feel easy to tell - the story can take on a life of its own - it inhabits the whole body and imagination; the actor feels “connected”. Sometimes self-consciousness sets in and a story can feel false and the performer feels exposed. Sometimes, even after telling a story a hundred times, the very presence of new audience lets you hear something brand new in the story - you discover something you have never known before about that story. In this series of questions, I am going to ask you about the extremes of these experiences during the current performance in an attempt to understand how various audience types affect the actor’s experience of story. Please answer the following questions in relation to the audience medium for which you just performed. I ask that you indicate with an X to reflect how you feel between the two extremes.
For example: When you woke up this morning, did you feel... Hungry?
Not very ________________________ X__________________________ Very
(Your answer would indicate that you were neutral about your hunger - neither not very hungry nor very hungry)
This morning when you woke up and discovered your car was broken into, did you feel... Angry?
Not very ________________________________________________X_ Very
(Your answer would indicate that you felt very angry about this circumstance)
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