Why Wait

Is the human body meant to look a certain way or is it down to personal preference?
This is one of my research questions listed below. After looking at how much research I have I think it is clear I need to DO something with it. The research question above it very closed and in order to open it up a bit more I am going to do an experiment with it.

In order to find the solution to this research question it would be best to first find the problem.
Why do people think the body should look a certain way?
Why are people self conscious when weighing themselves?

In order to explore these questions in greater detail I am going to set up a small experiment.
Throughout this research I am going to ask as many boys and girls as possible to give up 5minutes of their time to be involved in my experiment. I am not going to tell them what it involves but merely ask them to come a long. The participants will be university students of a similar age group to me (18-21) this is for ease and not because it is the type of people I want to experiment on.
When people turn up they will be presented with an empty room with some weighing scales in the middle. I am going to ask them to weigh themselves in front of whoever is there and then shout out their weight. Once they have weighed themselves I will ask them what they think would be the perfect weight for a female of our age and also what they think the perfect body shape is. I will be filming the process and looking at the reactions between the males and females and also the reactions of them having to weigh themselves in the first place.
When thinking through the experiment I thought some people may start to feel more comfortable to weigh themselves in public if others have already done so. In order to make this test as fair as possible I am going to ask each person to come in one by one and weigh themselves in front of the audience. Once the individual has done their experiment they can then either leave, or stay in the room as an audience member.
From my experiment I want to question:

• How people feel about weighing themselves in public?
• If they would have preferred to do it in private?
• If the idea of the ideal body and weight is similar with everyone?
• Is there a difference between males and females?
• Ask them why they didn't (if they didn't) want people to know how much they weighed?
• If people take their excess clothing off in order to weigh less?

Once I have a list of the people that partake in the experiment I will then contact them all and tell them that the footage I took will be going on to a further experiment where I will be showing the videos to other people who will then judge what they think. I may or may not do this but would like to see their reactions.

Throughout the partaking in the experiment I have come up with some other ideas as to what I could add to my work. I could look at the male gaze and how women portray themselves in music videos or magazines etc. Even when we go out. As a production idea I thought I could get a skin tight outfit and have natural hair and no make up to show 'the real me'


Results
Constructing this experiment was extremely hard to do. I found myself feeling very awkward asking people to weigh themselves in public and I think this emotion in itself is very interesting. What is more I had help filming the experiment from a male volunteer. This volunteer said how he felt very awkward listening to the girls shout out their weight and he would try and look as though he wasn't listening. When it was the boys however he felt fine. I think again these findings that I did not expect to notice are possibly the most interesting ones.
It is interesting to think that weight has now become such a personal thing for females and men are brought up, never to discuss weight or ask about weight with women. His discomfort for me was possible the most interesting part of the experiment.

The actual experiment itself gave very similar results amongst males and females. The answers were as you would expect them.
Did they weigh themselves?
Both males and females did.
Did they shout out their weight?
All males and females did.
How did it make them feel, weighing themselves in front of me?
Males all said fine. Females used words such as humiliated, embarrassed, uncomfortable.
Would they have to do it in private?
Males - No
Females - Yes
Why would the females rather do it in private?
For privacy reasons, don't like people knowing how much you actually weigh.
What would be the perfect body weight and size for someone our age?
Males on males - 13/14 stone
Males on females - Slender up top and curvy down below
Females on females - 8-9stone size 8.
Did they take off excess clothes?
Two females did. No males did.


An interesting case in the experiment was a reaction from one of the female participants. When she weighed herself she was shocked and embarrassed. She took off as much excess clothing as possible and kept saying how she needed to go to the gym. It was clear she felt extremely uncomfortable. When she shouted out her weighed she was in fact the lightest female we had throughout the experiment.
Why is it that the smaller more slender people are more embarrassed of their weight than those who are slightly heavier.

Movement and Dance

Dictionary Definitions
To move - to pass from one place or position to the other.
To dance - to move ones feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps, especially to the accompaniment of music.

Mind over matter

When looking into mind over matter, it seems that this phrase has come from meditation. Many scientists believe we only use the left hand side of our brain but meditation helps us to use the right hand side and thus create a mind of matter state within us.
What I wanted to look at in closer detail was mind over matter in running. Tim Noakes has argued that it is the brain that allows or limits endurance performance rather than the body. Noakes explains that the brain is there to look after us and keep us in safety and therefore it must be the brain that allows us or prevents us from carrying on with endurance activities. This is interesting to think about for my performance as it will be testing my endurance. Noakes's research has found that you can train the mind as well as the muscles. Mental fatigue can lead to the perception of physical fatigue. It is possible to trick the mind into allowing the body to work harder. 'If you want to be competitive, you have to deal with the discomfort.'
This information has come form the a website below:
http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=17712&PageNum=1

Tips to deal with Mind Over Matter in Endurance Activity

• Give yourself a pep talk. Tell yourself you are not physically tired, it is just mental and you can push through it.
• Break up the activity into smaller segments.
• Remember it's not meant to be easy. If it were then everyone would be doing it.
• Have a phrase that you repeat to yourself over and over to help you stay focused and motivated. Could get the audience to should the phrase out when I looked tired or have a recording of the phrase playing throughout. When I was training for the marathon I used to say to myself 'No pain, no gain.

Running is a great way in which you can learn about yourself and your limits. 

Henry Ford once said 'whether you think you can or you can't, you're right'.

Musicals

I remember the one of the first musicals I ever watched. I was at my Grandma's house and put on the sofa next to my brother and we were told to sit quietly and watch this film. As the music began and I heard the sound of 'Grease Is The Word' hit my ear drums I was instantly hooked. Ever since that day I have been attending theatre schools, dance classes, singing classes, watched many different musicals and even based by degree around theatre. As a result it has become a major hobby in my life and now I have been given the opportunity to create a piece of theatre I think it would be silly not to include musicals in it.
Once I decided this I came to a dilemma. HOW was I going to include musical theatre into my performance without just recreating a musical. As a result I began researching into musical theatre and came across the work of Brian Lobel who used musical theatre as part of a live art performance.

Hold My Hand and We're Half Way There
'Hold My Hand and We're Half Way There' is a durational piece of live art that includes the audience. I have found a better description of the performance on his website and am going to paste the extract below.
Hold My Hand and We're Halfway There , an interactive performance installation, uses four televisions, 12 headsets, a sturdy bed and over 100 classic musicals to explore issues of isolation, community, secret pleasures and the age-old question, When are you alone? And when are you lonely? Hold My Hand links Depression- era Dance Marathons, where contestants danced until they dropped in pursuit of fame and fortune, to young boys dancing in their bedroom after school, where they too dance until they dropped, often hoping for fame and fortune.


I find this synopsis very interesting because it incorporates many of my interests into his piece. Most obviously is includes musicals, what is more it is a durational piece of theatre that tests endurance and this is another thing I want to put into my performance. The piece asks many different questions and maybe I could use this and ask questions in order to help me create my piece. The performance also helps answer one of my research questions of 'Can musical theatre put a smile on anyones face?'


Below is a clip of the performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vcv-8GF69M

Although Lobel discusses how his performance focuses on loneliness I think it can also help link to my idea of the perfect female body and making women accept who they are. If you watch the video you see the audience members dancing in a care free manner. The short clip focuses on two female friends who explain how they enjoyed participating in the performance and when you watch them dancing you see how care free they were. They were not worried about what they looked like or the colour of their hair. They were just concentrating on having a good time. It seems from Lobel's explanation that the participants acted in this way because they felt as though they were along in a private space. Women could be who they wanted in their own private space but I want my performance to follow on from this and let women be who they want to be and accept who they are both in private and public spaces.
The information about Brian Lobel was found on his website and the link is posted below.
http://www.blobelwarming.com/index.html


Making A Musical
When I decided I wanted to put musical theatre into my performance I decided to look into how to make a musical.
When I did this I realised it is a lot harder than it looks. You can't just have an idea and expect a musical to be made.There is a large team of people that helps make each minor detail happen to the best of its ability.
What is more when you are in independent company you are often overshadowed by large companies such as disney that can make any production a success.
Throughout the article I read on making a musical the writer split each part of the making into sections and one section I found interesting was on the House Manager. The writer explains how the house manager is a person that works extremely hard yet doesn't get any credit for it and I found this extremely interesting and could maybe use this in my performance. 
Further on in the article there is a section on 'How to write a musical' and when I saw this I thought I had my performance in the bag. Unfortunately not.
The article explains that there is now specific way to making a musical, it all depends on your artistic preference.
However it does go on to explain how you know your musical idea/storyline is a good one. The article asks, 'how compelled are you to tell the story?' also questions 'do you care deeply about the story, so deeply you must tell this story or die?' The article explains that you should not create a piece of theatre that you think is an interesting topic to others but create a piece of theatre that is an interesting topic to you. Go with the detail you care deeply about with a story and characters you believe in. 


I found this part of the article a highly useful one which helps me back up a point in one of my previous blogs. I need to include something I really believe in in my performance or else it won't be as successful. Moss Hart once told Alan Jay Lerner that nobody knows the secret to writing a hit musical . . .but the secret to writing a flop is "to say yes when you mean no."
I should always be saying YES to my ideas and then they will be far more successful.


When creating a piece of theatre we have to question 'what is it all about?' We can't just say it is about a women who wants to accept her body but instead we need to find the emotional core of the piece. You must create a premise (what the show is really about at its core) and then make sure the material in the performance matches the premise.


Useful tips for creating a performance

1. Study the musicals I like and find out what makes them tick.
2. Create a piece that you would spend 5 years working on without even making a penny.
3. Make sure work has a genuine sense of humour. Don't make it too serious as it will bore the audience.
4. Show don't tell. Don't tell us what is going to happen, let the performance do the talking.
5. CUT EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT ESSENTIAL
6. Tell a good story in an entertaining way. NEVER PREACH OF TEACH. Do not create a piece of theatre that tries to preach a moral. If you create an interesting story that is entertaining, the moral will be clear.
7. If including music, open with an amazing song.

This information has come from the website posted below:

http://www.musicals101.com/index.html

The Female Body

From my previous blog we have seen that the body is capable of doing a lot more than we thought. In the video I posted in the blog there was a short section that discussed ballet dancers and in that section we are told that 'women feel pain sooner than men but they have a higher tolerance for it'.
I want to explore this theory further.
When looking into pain tolerance between men and women it seems to be a little up in the air. Some scholars believe men can handle pain better and some women.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/pain-management/do-women-have-a-higher-pain-threshold
This article above explains that, although we would have thought women would have higher pain threshold because they have to give birth, research has shown that it is in fact men.

http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/34/6/548.short
This article above also says that men can tolerate pain better than women.

It seems that most articles say that men should be able to cope with pain better because they are generally tougher where as others say women can cope with pain because they are made to deal with child birth. I think this subject is very up in the air and maybe has nothing to do with gender but more the individual.

The Ideal Women
Most men have a picture of the ideal women in their head and on average this picture tends to be the same. Research has shown that men prefer an hourglass figure (smaller hips with a larger waist) with large breasts. Gives me an idea for my costume in my performance. Could maybe try and create/ show an hourglass figure with my costume.
When people look at the female body the main thing we focus on is the breast and the bottom. Why is this?
The video below shows an experiment to find the perfect body.
http://www.maniacworld.com/perfect-female-body.html

The idea of having a 'sexy' female body is constantly spread about magazines and there is usually an annual rating of who has the sexiest body of that year. When you look at these magazines all the bodies are exactly the same and this then creates a social norm for what the perfect body should be. As a result females feel uncomfortable in their bodies because unless you're famous it is almost impossible to have one of these perfect bodies.
Social norms have also made it acceptable for us to judge the female body in the most intense way possible and people give their opinion on peoples bodies (mainly those in magazines) and these opinions can be extremely hurtful. This is another reason people are unhappy with their bodies, people are too picky and with that too strict.

What most people think is that, in order to be beautiful we have to change something about ourselves. For example, lose some weight or colour our hair etc. And this is not true. Women need to realise that no matter how much we change things about ourselves we will never be comfortable in our bodies until we accept who we are. 
I want to get people to feel comfortable in their bodies without having to change who they are but instead ACCEPTING who they are.


Weighing yourself in public is one of the hardest and most embarrassing things for a women to do. Could maybe have a live weighing in my performance?


'BELIEVING YOU ARE UNATTRACTIVE IS A LEARNED HABIT'

Some of the information above has come from this website:
http://www.emotionalwellbeingblog.com/2009/11/6-steps-to-feel-good-about-your-body.html

Pushing The Body To The Limit

Antonin Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty'


Aspects the interest me:

• Based on ritual and fantasy
• Minimises text
• Interested in Balinese Dancing - words are not essential in Balinese theatre and this interested Artaud
• Artaud was convinced that words are incapable of expressing feelings, instead he used gestures or sounds
• The theatre is not a direct copy of reality
• Artaud refers to the theatre as magical - this makes me think of the idea of magic, magicians and cards which I am actually very interested in. Linking cards to the colour red. 

Work he was interested in or has similarities to:

• Samuel Beckett - Poet, Playwright, Novelist etc. Work is a tragicomic outlook on nature coupled with black comedy
• Didier Rimbaud
• Charles Baudelaire - Poet
• Poe - Poet (Favourite Poem, 'The Happiest Day'
• Brook - Marat/Sade (most influential piece of theatre in 60's and used Artaud's theatre of cruelty)

Pushing the Body To the Limit

This video below shows how our body works and how owe can push it to the limits during physical exercise because of the extremely clever way it has been built.

http://dsc.discovery.com/video/player.html?playerId=203711706&categoryId=1425100514&lineupId=1427306027&titleId=1426309813

As you watch the street gymnasts you see how their bodies can cope with the extremely movements they are taking place and this is not only because of the way the body has been built but also because of extreme training in how to use the body.

What is more, our body works in an almost super human way when in a crisis.

The video below and above are from the same website and explore pushing the body to the limits. The video below focus's mainly on strength:

Strength - we have far more strength inside us than we know, but the only way we can use this strength is in a crisis. We learn to use our muscles together when we sleep.

The end of the video focuses on running and how we push our bodies to the limits when we run and this is part of my interests.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-body-pushing-limits/

Breakdown of Artistic Statement

After going through all my research and trying to decide what parts of it are useful and will be interesting for an audience, I have found that I am going to drop the idea of terrorism and trying to help people deal with things. When I thought it through I realised that I didn't know enough about these topic and also my heart wasn't in it. When researching the performances on 9/11 the performers had a significant experience with the attack where as I didn't. And so I began to think about the things I do have significant experience with and also that I am interested in.
Although I have cut out the idea of terrorism I still want to keep the idea of endurance performance and movement. I think my initial idea for the performance was trying to incorporate too much and thus would create a confusing and less emotional performance. I have decided to focus on one idea and explore all the dimensions of that idea and believe this would create a far more interesting and personal performance.

I have done some automatic writing to help me create my artist statement. I am going to put it on here to help me collect all my ideas together and then do some research.


Artist Statement
What you want to do?
I want to show a piece of theatre that will explore the physicality's of my own body and the extent to which I can push it. In order to do this I want to look into my own personal interests and incorporate them into my work. I want to show that the body is capable of doing anything with the right training and the right mind set.

My interests.
Last April I applied to do the Great North Run in order to impress someone. When that person left my life I thought there was no way I was going to do it. I started pushing my body, training as much as possible and began to realise it wasn't the body that couldn't do the activity but it was the mind that was stopping me. As a result, I realised I needed to change my mind set and start training and eventually managed to complete the 13 mile run. Ever since then I have been extremely interested in running and also pushing the body to the limits, questioning whether the theory of mind of matter is true.
Another interest I have is musical theatre. I find that most people either love or hate musical theatre but I think it is fantastic. I am interested in the colours, the bright lights and the dancing and when they are all mixed together I think they make a brilliant combination that can't help but make you smile. I am extremely interested in putting this into my performance. Brian Lobel has done some work on musicals combined with endurance and this work interests me a great deal and I want to explore it further.
Another thing I am interesting in is the body, especially the female body. I am interested in how it looks and how it moves and want to incorporate this idea into my performance.
My final interest would be the colour red. Anyone who knows me knows that I love the colour red and I thought this could be interesting to maybe explore further into my performance.

Research
In order to explore the things above I first need to do some research. The things I am going to look at are:

• Pushing the body to the limit -Antonin Artaud's 'Theatre of Cruelty'
• The Female Body - Biology of the female body, how the female body is meant to look due to magazines and catwalks etc, feminism and femininity.
• Musicals - Production, staging, costume etc. Brian Lobels performance on musicals and endurance
• Running - Theory of mind of matter
• Movement and Dance
• The colour red - What it stands for and what it can mean to people.

Research Questions

1. Is the concept of mind over matter true or does our human body stop us from doing certain activities?
2. Is the human body meant to look a certain way or have social norms made us believe there is a perfect body?
3. Can musical theatre put a smile on anyones face?
4. Can the colour red attach an emotion to it?

Theatre Interests

I am highly interested in endurance theatre and when researching this, I came across the work of Donna Kaz. She has a theatre company called 'Endurance Theatre'.
Endurance theatre shows the performance work of women over 40 and aims to give an insight to the strength and power these women still have at 40.

I found this information here:
http://www.womenarts.org/network/profile_115.html

She has also made a lot of work with musical theatre and this is another thing I am interested in and want to include in my performance.

When looking further into their work I saw that their most recent production has focused on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I watched a video of their performance:
http://www.performingtribute.com/performingtribute.com/Clip.html
and began thinking about events that have happened in recent history for example, a closer to home event of The London Bombings. When I saw that their performance was presenting audience members with a way of dealing with such a horrible event I became instantly interested. In 'Performing Tribute' they do not try and hide the struggle that they went through but simply try and show it is possible to deal with these things. I want to look further into these horrific modern day events and create a piece of Endurance theatre on it.

I think it would be far for interesting for me to look at terrorist attacks that have happened close to home and so I have looked into the London Bombings on 7th July 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/what_happened/html/default.stm
This is the bbc news page on what actually happened with some video footage. What is even more interesting to me is that the suicide bombers started their journey in Leeds which is also my hometown. What I find interesting about these events is how the men are walking to their death yet, in all the footage they do not look scared, nor do they converse with one another.

The event killed 52 people and injured over 770 people.

What is interesting to me now is that terrorist attacks have now become a social norm. They are something that we might expect at any time and this should not be the case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuhBdHc8Nqs
A key line in this clip to me is 'what many people seemed to notice was the loud noise that blasted much louder than that of rush hour'. This could be useful to use in my performance. What I think is promising is how the police and forensics have worked out who and why these attacks took place.