A Dream You’re Having (Interlude) – RuPaul, Realness (2015)

“If this is a dream, does that make it any less real?”

So the idea of what is real and what isn’t real is something that transcends and has fascinated the human psyche, no denying, and it’s this idea of what is real and what isn’t that surrounds the idea of ‘Theatre’ too. Realness and non-realness is something that becomes even more interesting when multimedia is in play. For example, using a live feed of a live human body that is acting. You’re watching a person with a fake persona being filmed, thus creating a fake image of a person with a fake persona.

And that’s just theatre… How fake are we in our own lives?

I turn to the supermodel of the world, RuPaul to help show some light on this. RuPaul is a drag queen, which already plays with the idea of fake gender identity and the idea of fake personas. Ironically, when drag queens describe their ‘look’ they describe it as ‘realness’. When a queen says “I’m serving realness”, what they mean is that they are wearing an outfit and makeup that makes them look like an actual woman. I find that this can be the same with every single person, though. Makeup, clothes, hairstyles… We all have our own version of ‘drag’ as it were. As RuPaul said herself; “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag”.

This train of thought only came over because I just bought her new album Realness, which again, ironically, uses more autotune and remixing than she has ever used before.

This idea of what is real and what is not is something very interesting to me and I’d love to use it as the premise of a performance. Gender, identity, honesty, stories, mediated image, cat-fishing… the list goes on. I’d just love it, especially in this class. So I thought I better just bring this up for anyone who doesn’t look at the picture and the 4 paragraphs and go ‘Meh’. Congrats if you read this.
Now, to play me out, I leave you with the queen herself…

The Realness – Rupaul, Realness (2015)

Let’s get this straight, more than metal is conductive? Why wasn’t I taught this kind of stuff in primary school. If I was allowed to put wires into bananas and play piano with fruit when I was 8, I may have probably ended up doing a science module right now, instead, alas, here I am. Currently sticking cabled and wires to someones body to create a full size Operation game board.

Yep, you heard me, Operation. The one with the butterflies in the tummy and the body that goes buzz if you go wrong. A much lighter result than actual surgery, but fun nevertheless.

By using the ‘Makey-Makeys’, a projector and a program called sound plant loaded with some buzzing sound effects, tense music, a flatline and a heart monitor beep, we managed to create an interactive full size game board.

The idea came around by the idea that the makey maker’s are used primarily online as a form of play. Seen here to be used to create a game pad out of play-doh, a dance mat out of water and a piano staircase, we chose to take that idea of play in the direction of making something an audience can play with. By having our ‘body’ lie down, connected to earth, then a ‘doctor’ stood at the side who holds the hand of an audience member, the audience member will be able to touch any part of the ‘patients’ stomach and a connection will be complete, thus creating a buzz sound effect.

We also added a projection onto the stomach of the game board which finished the look of the board.

All in all, the exercise worked reasonably well, with a couple of problems but on a whole it worked as intended. The issues were due to moments of poor connectivity, but with better cables and more careful placement, this could be avoided. What other game boards could we make? Buckaroo? Maybe not. Who knows…?

Give me a camera and a projector and honestly I’m like a kid at Christmas. I can get very easily excited over multimedia theatre, it’s something I’ve taken interest in since I started taking drama seriously, so being able to just have some time to ‘create’ is something I treasure.

This week we were allowed to do just this. As a group we were given two cameras and two projectors and let loose to see what we could do with live feeds. Steve Dixon wrote, “for many performance artists” including us, “digital technologies remain tools of enhancement and experimentation.” (Dixon, 2007, 8) Experimentation is what we were aiming for, and that is what we did.

Portals to the past.        

One way of using the projectors and cameras is by facing the camera directly at a projection of what it is feeding out. This creates a similar effect to that of a hall of mirrors. Where the same image will be reflected back indefinitely.

However, one interesting factor that makes the introduction of media to this is that a live feed will always have a small delay. When someone walks or moves in the eye of the camera, their projected twin will copy a short time after, and so on through each image. This could lead to an interesting take on performing with yourself. Especially if one was to try and catch themselves looking back at them…

Big Student, Little Student.

One very interesting way of using one projector to get multiple projections is careful placement of set pieces. By taking a flat and placing it in a certain place further forward to another flat, you can create what feels like two different screens, projecting the image at two different sizes. With careful placement of actors and clever flat placement you can create an image that closely resembles that of a giant and child.

The same can be done again with however many different screens you want.

Ghost of Multimedia Past.

The experimentation becomes far more interesting when you create something you have never seen before. Using the room we were in, we found two parts that looked reasonably the same, and had each camera facing these parts. By placing the projectors on top of one another facing the same screen, we could emulate the feeling of ghosts walking around a space, as nobody would be fully visible.

This was a clear demonstration of intermediality, as no part of this performance would work without the other. Similarly, you would not be able to view just one side of the performance. The performance came from both seeing the actors in the different spaces, the set up, and the eventual projection. It was in this inbetween space that the true performance lay.

Oh yeah, and it got even nicer when you add coloured filters to the camera lenses.

Works Cited

Dixon, Steve (2007) Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art and Installation. Chapter 1. Cambridge and London: MIT Press

Let’s take a moment to think how cool it is that you’re reading this right now. At one point in the past I was sat crossed legged on the floor of my student house in Lincoln contemplating what I was to write about in my first blog. Now here you are, sat at your computer/ phone/ tablet/ personal butler reading this to you (cross out as appropriate) experiencing it for yourself. It’s almost like travelling in time. Well, not really. However, in his book ‘Digital Performance’, Steve Dixon wrote “Many home pages and blogs constitute digital palimpsests of Erving Goffman’s notion of performative presentations of the self, with the subject being progressively erased, redefined, and reinscribed as a persona/performer within in the proscenium arch of the computer monitor.” (Dixon, 2007, 3)

His (rather brilliant) proposition explains that this blog could very easily be seen as a performance. It’s a bit difficult for me to get up and give you all a rousing rendition of On My Own from this medium, but he proposes the very essence of my words on this page is a redefined version of myself. My pattern of speech, my thoughts, my words. Think of it as some form of transmediality. Taking the ideas from one medium (my noggin) to another medium (your computer screen).

I guess what I’m trying to say is, albeit rather colourfully, is that the internet is vastly interesting component in the modern world, especially when combined with other mediums like theater to create something new. Having myself presented here on your screen is something of a performance. You could even suggest that “The world wide web… constitutes the largest theater in the world, offering everyone fifteen megabytes of fame” (Dixon, 2007, 4)

Works Cited

Dixon, Steve (2007) Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art and Installation. Chapter 1. Cambridge and London: MIT Press