Whilst attending the performance Hair Peace at the Lpac on the 2nd Marc a particular moment stuck out for me, and made me want to take it and develop it further. It wasn’t part of the show itself and in fact Victoria Melody, the performer of Hair Peace, explicitly said that this wasn’t part of the show and that it came before the show. It was simply Melody checking with the audience if they would like to move, in order to enhance their view of the stage and therefore the performance. This got me thinking on the idea of a performance consisting entirely of this “not a show”, and with further thought I decided to try including all the peripheries of a theatre performance.

These peripheries include everything that occurs other than the performance itself, such as interval ice-creams, programs, promoting the company on social media, sitting in the right seat for your ticket and post-show discussions. Then there are also other elements that can be explored, such as risk assessments, ensuring mobile phones are switched off and announcing to the audience beforehand that the show contains one or more of nudity, violence, potentially offensive themes, harsh language or the ambiguous “adult themes”. Hopefully from this initial concept and short list of topics I will be able to develop a performance. The first step will be to fully explore potential topics, before testing them with my peers if at all possible. Once a number of the topics start to take a more practical shape I will then look to structuring the piece, so that the performance becomes more than a series of thematically connected moments. Despite this early stage in the idea, I feel as though the piece will consist of a “pre-show” segment which is the part primarily inspired by the moment before Hair Peace and then move on to a post-show discussion on what has been seen whilst still being part of the performance itself, hence the working title of Meta.

Unlike my previous ideas, this one feels as though it has a lot of space to develop, a good starting point and a real purpose to keep me focused during the development process. It is also a lot lighter in theme than previous ideas that I had, which could also make it easier to work on for the next two months.