Week 1

Week 1

Today was our first day back of this new year of university and although i was late and missed the first 10 mins of introductions i found the class got to the point very quickly, our new teacher Claire Qualmann gave us information about what the module will contain and a brief look at what we will be doing in this semester of study. We then went on to examining the phrase ''contemporary performance'', and what it means, which i gathered as performance in OUR day and age, as it is different from the past being that most all art forms are ever evolving in some way and change throughout history.

We then went on a walk through Stratford, we went to the train station and stood upon the high balcony and watched the people going about their business. Claire then told us to put our headphones on and carry on watching the people. We did this as an exercise joining the people with the music influence. this is something i experience on a daily basis being a person that often carries headphones but doing it as a group was effective as i got to hear everyone's perspective and was often surprised how different or the same it was to mine. i was listening to a very fast paced angry parody song which just made it look like everyone was rushing around pointlessly at high speed, quite a trip!

Harvie, J (2009) Theatre and the City, Basingstoke: Plagrave MacMillan pp1-10 

In 'Theatre and the City' Harvie starts off by stating that even though we may not be aware, we can be a part of a performance that is happening. She refers to a performance titled ''small metal objects'' held at stratford station. she relates this performance to the importance of performance space, in this case the city and how it can help us to to understand the city and how things work together.
This reading this left me pondering the relationship the city has on performance and also the impact performance has on the city.

Harvie uses theater to mirror and effect social experiences in the city using two critical approaches: cultural materialism and performative analysis. According to Harvie, cultural materialism can be defined as conditions of cultural practices and how these conditions affect and limit the possibilities and performative analysis is explained as our daily performances and projections of identities and this is done in order to understand both theatrical and social performance in the city.