A performance made up of three parts; The Beginning, The Middle and The End.  Woven into all three were the ideas of love [how it begins, how it ends], youth and ageing.  This last theme focused on was particularly poignant for Pinchbeck who, throughout the piece, was announcing his retirement to the theatre.  In doing so, he was finding acceptance to let go of what was by looking forward to what could be.  In this instance he was passing the task on to Ollie his colleague who is representative of the younger generation of actors fresh from ‘drama school’ (Pinchbeck, 2014). It drew a double dichotomy between old and young, father and son.

Although this show was not a solo performance, there were techniques and aspects within that could be incorporated into a solo show.  The first was the idea of using projection.  In the show, there was a camera on the table at which Pinchbeck was sat placing cards under with words that were telling the feelings/thoughts of the people on the stage without the need for direct speech.  As the show incorporated Shakespearean characters, that interpolated with this idea of love and the first time you were on stage to the last time you were on a stage, the cards provided guidance as to when you were witnessing Act One, Scene Two for example as the characters were indicated solely by props.  Bottom the Donkey was most often conveyed through hand gestures and the ensemble were presented through construction helmets that were placed carefully in regards to the telling and the narrative of the story.  The cards set the scene and because there was no speech, it allowed the audience to get from the story what they wanted and so subtly reversed the focus onto the spectators.   The music in the background also gave a lyricist quality to the structure of the piece that encouraged the audience to feel certain emotions, much like a movie.  Built within this was the idea of altering pace and rhythm with which the cards were placed under the camera, which was sometimes in contradiction to certain feelings felt, the divide between the two emotions portrayed creating a genteel humour.

The power of words.

In the post show discussion, Pinchbeck then talked about how there were no worries about learning the lines as the piece was more to do with tone of voice in communicating what was being said.  The lines were generally read off cards that formed the script that were then littered around the floor to create the ‘aesthetic’ (Pinchbeck, 2014), a word that was repeated throughout to enhance this notion that they were explicitly making the performance un-theatrical.

The second technique that induced this light hearted comedy was when Pinchbeck started to play the recorder but the noise was actually recorded and so when Pinchbeck stopped playing and started to talk, the music continued.  This instinctively prompted the audience to burst into laughter as we fully believed he was playing the musical instrument.  It touched on this idea of the pretend, playing with those notions of what is true and what is not, which I feel is especially relevant to solo performance in that the audience has to gauge how much of the performance is autobiographical and how much is fictional. This was encouraged further as the show, Pinchbeck described, lay between ‘hope and disillusionment’ (Pinchbeck, 2014), the space and time that people inhabit.

Solo –  1) a person who performs, acts, or works alone

2) unaccompanied

3) a person who performs or accomplishes something without the usual equipment

The third technique heard the voice of Pinchbeck’s son speaking out certain phrases to do with the gaining of love, the beauty of love, and the reading out of certain words that had been spoken ten minutes before.  In doing so, it incorporated this idea of repetition that renewed the piece with a freshness and innocence that emphasised the idea of youth and the journey undertaken from childhood to adulthood.  The atmosphere and mood that was created was one of beauty, romance and sweetness.  It was both charming and endearing.

For me, the most interesting concept in terms of what the performance was based on the way words and language were used.  The show looked directly at how writing performs, weaving words and text to find meaning, almost based on streams of consciousness, through which ideas were set up and returned to throughout which was not unlike the structure inherent in Spalding Gray’s monologue, Swimming to Cambodia.  The digression in the piece however, is what allowed the material to flourish and really benefit from in that all these layers that were continually introduced and woven together formed strong concepts and themes that were focussed on interchangeably, both in depth and from afar, that created various view points and stuck all of these elements together.

Art occurs in the gap where things cannot be said.  To perform the unexplainable.

Pentimento – to see through a layer to what was there before

Reference:

Pinchbeck, M. (2014) The Trilogy. [performance] Michael Pinchbeck (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 30 January.