From October 2021, when Evelyn’s birthday party was premiered in the RMC canteen to April 2022, I was presenting the birthday narrative as the day of Evelyn’s birthday. I was a performer at the party, and I invited the audience to participate as that person. Since April 2022, when I first began presenting instead the rehearsal for Evelyn’s birthday party, I have discovered a much more comfortable balance of creating community and performing within it. I will expand on some of my discoveries:
I am not an actor. As I performed this Birthday party again and again, I have been unwittingly placed into the role of an actor, as I generate narratives to explain and maintain the situation. I presented myself as myself, under my own name, hired to play at Evelyn’s birthday party. I sustained the narrative throughout as I explained how Evelyn was supposed to arrive any moment, and what a shame it was that she was missing out, and where could she be? Etc… However it became clear at one particular gig, that highlighted what my performance was not (for different reasons I’ll go into later) that I am also, not, an actor. Acting is a skill which I do not possess nor do I want to posses it. This performance, and the idea of making a community with the audience relies 100 percent on authenticity. If I am not the author of the performance, I.e, if I am playing a role in a separate narrative, that requires continuous input to keep up it’s plausibility, then I don’t believe community will be as effectively achieved as if I am being genuine. When leading a community music rehearsal or workshop, the facilitator’s success in doing so relies on their genuine will to actually achieve something good. The same way we as humans can, and will always be able to recognise CGI from real images, I believe we can also recognise truth and genuine intent over one that is acted out. I believe any disbelief in the goal can fracture the path towards unification of the room. Unlike the birthday party, the birthday party rehearsal does not require narrative maintenance. I arrive and present the situation as the final rehearsal for Evelyn’s birthday party, and say no more about it. From then on, we are in a rehearsal, and this is a place where I can be genuine. Well, there are glimpses of narrative here are there, e.g. the birthday card and I say ‘on the day’… but I find it is much less demanding of acting ability in a rehearsal situation. I support and encourage participants to partake, as well to give things a go, try stuff out, and ‘practise’ my own performance, which then becomes the performance moments for the audience to just be an audience. Under the rehearsal narrative, I am both performing and building community, but they are both tied together in a more cohesive and safe narrative. Rehearsing music is something I know how to do, and it therefore allows me to be authentic in my presentation of the music and sustain the balance I am seeking to traverse thorughout, between community building and performance reward.
Originally I considered the idea of power, which slowly transformed instead into empowerment. There is a power dynamic between audience and performer, and in my efforts to create community, I wanted to diminish the power divide and allow the audience to take power. I see the idea of the stage as problematic to this idea. By being on a stage, sometimes there is a physical level that says, I am higher than you, you should listen to me, but even off the stage, on the same level, physical objects like mic stands and keyboard stands can reenforce the hierarchy. In the end, I have found a compromise for both. When I was performing the pure birthday party version of the concert, I found it difficult to validate leaving the performance space in order to enable the audience to participate with confidence. I could only do so much with my body and arms to indicate what they should do to contribute. I was also lingering on an old philosophy of not verbally communicating my intentions to the audience, and only inviting by gesturing and encouraging. However as the rehearsal format took over in April 2022, I found myself able to leave the stage and come into the audience’s space, and I was able to speak my intentions, ask them, can we try this? Or, let’s give this a go! This marked a key shift in the balance between participation and performance. We can try stuff out, make a community effort to create a sound together, and I can ‘practise’ my performance. It makes far better sense that the audience should feel safer to give things a go whole heartedly and honesty, if the storyline gives them a safety net, a feeling of if you fuck it up, it’s ok, it’s just a rehearsal.
I define the humour in my performance as intrinsic. I am not telling jokes, however there are several humorous things about the performance that make people smile. The humour is a consequence of the action, it is inside of it.
Referring back to something I said earlier about not being an actor. I discovered this clearly when I performed at a gig at Lygten Station on Saturday the 12th of March 2021, for the IPAF closing festival party. I was asked to perform based on an a performance I did at an open mic at the same venue. They thought it was funny, so they booked me. It turned out that the other acts were comedians. This was a comedy night, and they wanted me to play because of my ability to make people laugh. I performed as I do, a short set of 10 minutes, however as I started with the song Over The Moon, inviting the audience to create a beat using the percussion I had given them, I felt completely uncomfortable, because I realised there’s nothing funny about this. This is not a joke, and the audience had been laughing at other peoples’ jokes all night. It meant that I forgot the words, repeated verses and the song didn’t make narrative sense, because I was so distracted by this not being what they expected it to be. As this helped me to realise I am not a comedian, so did it help me to realise I am not an actor. The things that I am not is crucial for me to be the things that I am, and I take what I do seriously.
On Thursday the 8th of April 2021 I experimented with the idea of awkwardness during a presentation at RMC to my classmates. Inspired by some comedy performances by Andy Kauffman, I decided to investigate how awkwardness can work in an effort to unite a room as a community. I thought that if the audience were left unsure of what to do, how to behave, when to participate and when to not, I could build community by allowing them to decide as a group what to do.
Choir Piece – I stand, as if about to begin to conduct a choir, looking each person in the eye and holding out my arms as wide as the room, but do not give instruction, or make a noise other than a breath as if I were about to sing.
I Say You Say – based on a classic ‘I say ___ you say ___’ call and response moment in a concert, or maybe more likely a DJ set, but I deliberately get confused and forget to say what to say when I say ‘I say’ and ‘You say’.
I Don’t Need You Anymore – inspired directly from Andy Kauffman’s piece I trusted You, here I sing the line ‘I don’t need you anymore’ to a simple melody and repeat it, encouraging the audience with body language to join in. I start to stamp my feet to the pulse, and gradually become more and more enraged and emphatic until I begin shouting the melody, and loosing my breath and then gradually forget to encourage the audience to sing with me until I am just left uncontrollably stamping and breathlessly sing/shouting ‘I don’t need you anymore’.
Watching the video of Andy Kauffman performing I Trusted You left me in awe of his ability to create narrative and drama with just three words. His performance starts as with a groovy guitar riff and him singing the line, and the track sounds like an Elvis song. He becomes more and more agitated until he is screaming ‘I TRUSTED YOU!’, becoming almost incomprehensible in his delivery of the words. The tone turns from sweet to sour, as perhaps we slowly realise that he may be being serious. We’re left suspended not really knowing if he’s ok or not.
When I was considering this as a community building exercise, I wanted the audience to go along with singing something seemingly innocent, and then figure out, as a group, that the song had an ulterior message that wasn’t clear from the beginning. I had a similar intention with the previous two pieces. On reflection, I believe, yes, I think it works, in a way that I wanted it to, it created an awkward layer that united the audience in its uncertainty. However what I didn’t like about the songs or ‘pieces’ is that the lingering emotion is pity. The audience is confused and then feels sorry for me, as a strong emotion is revealed, or because I can’t perform a simple call and response. As a facilitator I want to remain as such, as somebody in control and in charge: showing vulnerability, yes however in a more relatable way. The relatability, such as that of the facilitator of community music, I believe should shine through in a more positive way, a way that allows the participants to feel safe and encouraged to succeed as opposed to confused and awkward. These pieces created mystery and questions, and a feeling of uneasiness. There is space for sadness and introspection in the performance, but I want that to come through in the songwriting.
In the end I have developed the awkwardness into a positive feature of the set. The audience is confused, but I, as the artist and facilitator of the situation remain positive and in control, and allow the awkwardness to become a uniting force that asks the audience to go along with it, even if it is a bit awkward. I think the use of this powerful emotion during the set serves a useful function and creates some humour that invites people to relax and enjoy themselves while participating.
I have been sending round birthday cards to Evelyn at performances, as a means of extra-musical participation. The cards act as artefacts of the concerts, and allow audiences to make a physical manifestation of their contribution that lasts outside of the performance space. It is my hope that, by signing their name, they make a declaration of their presence that therefore brings them deeper into the queered situation, and enables them to participate within the community with greater authenticity.
I have been wearing boiler suits (overalls) and feathers in different combinations for years now, before I began exploring community and performance. There are several reasons why: I enjoy the act of dressing up to appear on stage. It gives me a confidence I wouldn’t otherwise posses if I were to dress normal on stage. It gets me into the right head pace. I am not becoming a character, rather augmenting my own character to be able to perform. I enjoy the playfulness of it, being in overalls makes me feel like child almost, invincible and able to tumble and fall around without consequence. And the feathers are basically doing what feathers do, not helping me fly, but displaying an authority, an eye catching showman-like attribute that alerts people's gaze towards me. Again, it is a queer thing to do, to dress up and defy expectations of the normal. It’s nothing new, of course, artists and musicians have always found ways to accentuate their stage personas with fashion and costumes. What I have discovered in recent performances, is how effective it can be to add and remove costume as the set progresses. I begin in ‘normal’ clothes with no feathers, as a familiar, relatable human being in the room. Then with a brief introduction to the first act of participation, I then add the overalls and the feathers in order to perform. In this way, I have introduced the balance into the situation, between facilitator and performer. It is a visible transformation that tells the audience, I am here to help and I am here to perform. Between the songs, I remove the feathers as a way to step back into the role of facilitator and continue to build the audience into a community.
The rehearsal creates new territory in which to move around and inbetween. I have my space as the performer, and the space I share with the audience as the facilitator. As the differences between the two become more defined, it is easier for me to demonstrate to the audience what I would like them to do. When I want them to participate, I enter their space and lead them through the task. When it is my turn to perform, I enter my space defined by my mic stand and keyboard. They know then they can sit and listen, or in some cases, both participate and listen, if I have indicated to do so.
The act of joining in is humorous. It is an unusual request: for the majority of live music, all that is required is for you to sit and receive. It is a gift, or a reward from musicians to audiences that they attend and are given music. It requires some bravery from the audience, to break their oath of silence and do something they didn’t prepare for. In my experience, I have allowed audiences to enjoy this sensation, and smile at the strangeness of it. It does not aim to be funny, but it has something like funny, maybe humour, or maybe just something other. Andy Kauffman performs the farm song, where he invites the audience to make animal sounds to a kids song. I think the audience relish in the opportunity to behave foolishly, and the silliness of it can make them laugh, and allow them to relax and decide to trust me as the facilitator. As the situation is queered, new rules are generated and the audience is no longer obliged to behave as they do in a traditional performance situation. This opening of the situation is curious and strange, and invites a willingness to give yourself to the situation. Participation can also quickly gain energy. It only takes one person, in a crowd or at a concert, for example, to whoop and cheer, for others to catch on, and results in the whole group having permission to participate with sound.
My recent repertoire, as I have talked about in the section ‘content and methods’, contains everyday phenomenons, told in a simple, childlike way. Another thing is that it carries humour. It’s not trying to be complicated: it’s simplistic, but being sung by an adult, to adults. There’s a lot of sadness and conflict in the lyrics, but the naivety of it carries humour, and afterwards, meaning. If that’s what the audience wants to hear… of course. It’s also understandable that it might just be read as funny. In this way I am using queerness in the generation of my material also. It could be said that a songwriter is expected to write poetically, connecting to deep emotions and using esoteric language to convey their particular truths. This once was interesting to me, but perhaps because I never considered the alternative: that by writing unexpectedly simplistic words and nursery rhyme like melodies, I can jolt the listener outside of the normal rules of receiving a song, and into a space with more layers, that present initially something naive and simplistic, but allow for deeper reflection and relatability. I believe we are all guilty of seeking the easiest options in a lot of ways: the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the places we live… and so I want my songs to appear ‘easy’ but generate potential for a more rich and meaningful interpretation. In the song Everybody Needs Somebody To See Them, I sing ‘Everybody needs something not worth stealing/family pictures aren’t really worth stealing’. I notice how audiences smile at this line: It’s humorous in it’s strangeness, but invites a deeper interpretation of family, worth and value.
When I talk about the dynamics of my permanence, I am not talking about load and soft, but rather about big and small, and participation and performance. On stage, I use my body in a very physical way, moving around the space with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, often in order to encourage and support the audience in a participation process. I believe the process of covering my face as an exercise showed me the benefit of the contrast; by exposing the spectrum of all my
sizes as a performer, I can bring the audience on a more emotional journey than if my sustained a singular dynamic throughout.
On the 11th of February 2022 at Mellumrumet in Nørrebro, I decided to highlight this effect to an extreme. Just before playing a game of musical chairs with the audience. I placed a terracotta plant pot on a tall slim table in the middle of the room, with the intention that during the chaos of the game, somebody might accidentally knock into the table and break the pot. As it happened, no body did knock into the table so after a few rounds of the game I did it myself, and pretended it was an accident. I then performed a song called ‘Everything Is Broken’, which is an intimate slow meditative sort of song, exploring the idea of things breaking. The audience at this point, having been removed from their chairs and moved around the room, remained standing to witness the performance. I expected the audience would sit down in the nearest chair however the fact that people remained stood up I think created an interesting situation – something had gone wrong, the pot had broken and there was an awkward moment as the audience considered if the situation was genuine or not. As a dynamic exercises I believe this was had an effective result, displaying fun and seriousness side by side as a stark contrast to one another. However I believe in another way, the awkwardness is generated, and the ‘acting’ required to get there is not part of my artistic expression.