Sending our Audience to the Floor

Sandra is also bubbling with visions of audience/performer space layouts. I believe she envisions an audience on seats (with backs, much like PaulO's drum throne) that pivot or rotate 360 degrees so that the audience could spin around to any direction in the center of a large circle. Performers are on the outside of the circle, perhaps up off the ground level by a foot or two. Here are her sketches:

With this configuration, when the performers stare down at the floor (as is inevitable, non?) they would at least be staring directly into the upward glancing faces of their audience.

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Maybe another way of re-framing this whole question is that if an audience has trouble sitting on pillows on the floor in the center of the circle, then perhaps our shows are just too long?

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Comments

[Paul O'Rear]

Once when having a small circle rehearse at my house we had a little impromptu performance for my family encircling them around the dining room table.

My daughter's response: "I felt embarassed like I was the center of attention."

When considering performance spaces and configurations we need to recognize the psychological affects of the space and configuration as well. Will people feel like we're 'towering over them' if they're all in the center? Will they feel like they're an afterthought if they're all behind our backs? We all know how people react to RF's sitting down while playing, let alone going off into the shadows these days.

In conversation with Lee the other day about Sakya, I was observing that if our music was really about meditation (at least for that environment), then perhaps it would overall be better for the performers to be completely out of view, with the audients only being able to hear the music. That way they would not be distracted by what they couldn't see.

[travis hartnett]

Pivot. Squeak. Turn. Squeak. Turn. Squeak...

Players in a circle is a good way to give an instructor a way to work with the largest "front row" possible in a space, but while it was an interesting performance approach, I always find it lacking. Particularly from an audience member's perspective. People want to sit down at a performance (and, they do), provide chairs for them.

Having cushions on the floor is a either a "bold new way of reconfiguring the performer/audience dyad" or perhaps the answer to the question "Now that the frowning guitarists have taken all the chairs, what do we do to the audience?"

[sandra]

Sitting in the center of a Guitar Circle is a unique and special experience to some, but discomforting to others. If we perform short sets, but more often, that might be part of the answer. Performing in a manner that allows the audience to find their own comfort, be it in a chair, sitting on the floor, or lying down; inside AND outside the circle may be necessary. What if they could come and go as they pleased, with enough room between musicians to invite "walkthroughs"? What if there were works of art displayed and projected on the walls, ceilings, even on the floor? What if the audience had a clear choice as to whether this performance were background to something else, or the main show?

[Howard Snyer]

During some of the LCG performances last year in Atlanta we had the audience sitting in the center of the circle. This was a bit uncomfortable for some and definitely tight for the performers, however, those performances were the most pleasurable I've had and in which I had a stronger sense of contact with the audience. Some audience members with which we spoke after the show mentioned how they had enjoyed sitting in the middle of the circle because that made them feel more connected to the event.