As mentioned in a previous blog I set up an online survey to establish what the public were waiting for. The answers varied and some were more helpful than others. From the question “What are you waiting for? This could be a life event, something you are waiting to happen to somebody else, a world or society event, or simply a doctors appointment” we chose 21 answers to put into narratives:
- The story of Willoughby Spendlow
- Waiting for your turn in carpet boules
- Mortuary waiting room
- Waiting to test planes
- Waiting for trench training
- Waiting to give blood
- Waiting for the next race
- Waiting to praying
- Waiting for a wedding
- Waiting to become a teacher
- Waiting for pay day
- I’m waiting for my tea to go down before I eat my Crunchie
- Waiting for a less stressful day at work
- Waiting for my house to be built
- Waiting to finish uni and get maried and have loads of babies
- I’m waiting for the justice system to change (prison sentencing etc)
- Waiting for summer
- Waiting for the Next Chapter
- Waiting to do a 12 hour lambing shift
- Waiting for happiness
- Waiting for my future to begin
We then selected some of the responses fpr what people think the grandstand is waiting for:
- a BULLDOZER
- something new
- To be used again like it was when the horse racing was there
- A new lease of life
- salvation
- a comeback
- a grand event
- a race
- recognition
- to be decorated
- facelift
- to become important again
- something ace
- to be noticed
- time to catch up
- people, noise, celebration
- love
We decided to merge some of these ideas together to create narratives that some of our audience members will carry out. This will enhance the idea that we have different levels within our audience. Participation from audience members is crucial to the running of the performance so while we have been planning we have been taking into consideration what we would do if we had any number of audience members for each performance. In our last meeting we decided on a process in which the audience members will enter the room and be given a name tag and an envelope. The envelope with either contain an instruction or a narrative and this will decide the level of participation the audience will have.
We also discussed what would happen if an audience member refused to do what was in their envelope, whether that be follow an instruction or read out a narrative. This in mind we are thinking about ways in which we would deal with that situation if it did arise. We also need to think about how we will go about pre-warning the audience that they will need to participate.
This is a lot for us to think about, my next blog post will be after I have some answers or indeed approaches from other practitioners and theatre makers that we can be inspired by.