PROCESS

• Reading scientific research about side effects on screen-time.
• Watching documentaries about screen use.
• Reading articles and books about senses.
• Interviewing co-founder of Sisters Hope, Gry Worre Hallberg. In the interview, we discussed the performance group's intention to create a sensuous society for everyone.
• Experimenting with deleting Instagram and writing a diary about sensations.
• Walking everyday for 1-3 hours. Giving time to “mind-wander” with no phone interaction.

Focusing on the topic of “screen use”, it became a preference to work with comedy. I had research material about screen use that I saw within it a potential towards the comic space. I did not want to create a documentary, or a book with scientific information about the topic. I wanted the audience to laugh, but at the same time to be touched by the problems that phone use can create.

STUDIO RESEARCH





In May-June I had a four week period in Eden studio continuing researching in the studio. I invited Katie-Rose Spence to be my co-collaborator in the project. She is an actress, theatre-maker and clown and has created several comical performances. I wanted us to create a short version of a performance that we could continue working with after the research period. I presented the research to her a few weeks before starting in the studio. From day one in the studio we shared ideas, observations and thoughts about the topic. After a few days we found a co-collaboration method. Every day we warmed up and talked about ideas on how to work that day. We worked with improvisation exercises, clowning and score exercises around the research material.

Clown exercises:


Clown exercise phone: You want the phone, but you should not check the phone. Being torn between wanting and can´t.


Clown exercise: Two people sit on each chair facing front. The game is to not look each other in the eyes. See what stories come out of it.


Dark clown exercise: writing a few words describing being without a phone.


Silence. Great. Me time. Finally, lovely. Silence. What to do? ME time. Sit with myself. Boring. How can I do something by myself? Phone? No. Myself. Alone. Only me. How to do something by myself without a phone? Relax. I should relax. Enjoy silence. Enjoy. I can't enjoy silence without my phone.

Each time we found something we wanted to keep, we worked on it in more detail and focused on being in time with the beats. Eager to find the story, we created four different versions of a short performance. We improvised, reshaped and rewrote, and started all over again. Each time taking something from before into the next version of the story.

Early on in the process, we created a loop choreograph representing repetitiveness of screen use. This loop stayed with us through the whole process in different forms. For a long period the loop was the glue in the story.

We tried having youtube videos projected on us as part of the scenography. The first time we tested this with an audience we had a youtube video with funny dogs playing. We wanted the audience to find it funny in the beginning and eventually to evoke disgust at how tempting it is to watch. It worked in a way that made the audience hooked on the video and struggling to watch the characters. At the same time it did not work because the audience did not watch the characters at all. We decided to blur the video so the bodies in space could tell the story and not the scenography.

We decided to transpose smartphones using cellophane as a form of screen use. It represented transparency, filters and still being in contact with the real world. It was part of the research to not use the research material literally. Instead find a poetic space in an aesthetic world.

We had an intention in creating a comical space with a touch of seriousness. With the big collection of material, we struggled to find the story, form and characters. The research in the studio became around exploring this. We tried out different elements of the research material in different ways. We explored comical, absurd and tragic spaces. We discovered we were in a more tragic space than intended. To explore in the studio was important, but it was as if we did not find what we wanted. At one point we asked ourselves; “Why is it so difficult to figure out the form, story and characters?”  We realised this was because the research was too broad and could therefore go in several different directions. We had little frames and at the same time we were both result-driven. Parallel to exploring we expected results, and when that was not fulfilled we had a crisis in our process.

In this crisis we managed to change several key elements that created the changes we needed.

We had more research material that focused on the negative perspective of screen use. It became important for us to not only have a negative perspective on screen use. It’s easy to make fun of negative aspects of society. Even so, we did not wish to dictate to our audience. It was a wish and a challenge to make a performance about the topic that was not only negative. During the process we had consistently worked with the characters never managing to connect and having an unpleasant relationship. This was the key- the space transformed when we changed the characters to being on a journey together. This way the positive perspectives of screen use are demonstrated in connection.

It was a long process to find what we wanted to use from the research. Part of the research was a document with over 30 pages of articles about screen use. It had a linguistic content and we tried to find our own language in the process;  wordless, gibberish, reduced vocabulary, but bi-lingual in english and norwegian, or simple spoken english. We tried different forms, and agreed that it was important to tell the story with as few words as possible. This way we touched the overall theme from the research material. We focused on disconnection/connection, social/antisocial, addiction and typical phone use. We ended up letting go of most of the research material, however the whole research process is still represented in the performance as layers. The physical language also pointed us to more clown elements than the previous.

From the beginning we started with having two blocks in the space that we sat on. It came from the idea of having two characters in two different apartments. At one point we needed to take them away, because they limited us in movements. Our reduced movement became repetitive to watch and created a tragic atmosphere. Taking away the blocks helped, and inspired us to create most of the movements standing up. Eventually, we brought back the blocks and performed the loop score movement sitting on the blocks.

The loop is a representation of the process. We looped testing out different ways of doing the same research and went back and forth with our exploration. It was small adjustments to find the right form, story and characters for our process. The looping exploration process was necessary to find the most pleasurable result. As all loops, you come to a point where you feel uncomfortable, you feel it, and you move on.

We wish to continue the research and create a longer version of the performance. We want to rework beats, expand some sketches, add sketches and find an ending to the story.