It is now four days until my performance. Scary. In the past few days, I’ve been working on the script and I seem to be perpetually dissatisfied with what I’ve been writing. Nothing I write seems to address the issues or my Granddads life in the manner that I’d like it too. Much of the elements have remained the same – the music, setting, activity and approach – but I’m just not generally satisfied with the dialogue I’ve written. However, I’ve taken steps towards improving this. I’ve scrapped all lines that I’m unhappy with – throwing them away entirely, and bullet pointed what I want to talk about: The Serial Position Effect, How & Why We Forget, Facial Memory, the effect of alcohol on the memory, but most importantly of all, Granddad. The structure I have adopted, inspired by Spalding Gray, remains much the same – I talk about memory and the science behind it, and then focus on Granddad. I feel comfortable with the sections I have written on Granddad, apart from the ending – but I’m never satisfied with finality in my work. I just want to find a balance between entertainment and information – after all, I don’t want to sound like I’m reading straight from a textbook whilst tidying away clothes – that would be terribly dull. However, I’m sure I can manage in these next three days before my tech rehearsal – or, at least, I should hope so. Attached below are some examples of where I found my information about memory:

YouTube. (2014). How We Make Memories – Crash Course Psychology #13. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSycdIx-C48&t=40s [Accessed 20 May 2017].

YouTube. (2014). Remembering and Forgetting – Crash Course Psychology #14. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVWbrNls-Kw&ab_channel=CrashCourse [Accessed 20 May 2017].

So, this morning, I performed my show. My family came to visit and watch my show and found it to be very moving, or so they told me. I am somewhat in awe of how quickly it went by. I’ll break down my feelings on it in three sections: Audience, Performance, and Improvements to Make.

• Audience –

My audience far surpassed what I expected for 10 am on a Wednesday morning, about 24 in total. I spoke to some of them afterwards and they told me that they liked it and also found it to be moving. I’m very pleased that none of them felt it was poorly written, or that the message became muddied by sentiment. It seemed like they came away with the feelings I wanted to convey. Some responses during the performance where not what I wanted, however. In a section meant to replicate people suffering from dementia returning to a state of second childhood, which was meant to be quite distressing, I could hear a couple of people laughing, which is definitely not what I wanted from it. In future, I would like to ensure this moment feels more distressing and overwhelming. However, overall, I am satisfied with the audience response I received.

• Performance –

In my performance, there were a few mistakes here and there, which comes as a result of my being unable to rehearse them without spending a fair amount of my money on books with pages I can tear out, and my having written some lines a few days ago, as well as some tech going wrong – some lights went off sooner than they were supposed to – but overall, I am satisfied with the way it went. Ideally, I should have rehearsed with books more to ensure that I knew the kind of timings to expect with this kind of thing, and my lines should have been on point.

• Improvements to Make –

To improve my show, I feel like I could have spent more time on the visual of memory. The facial memory part of the mirror was something that my audience seemed to enjoy, and I would like to if I carry this show forward, add more visual elements to it – perhaps creating images similar to that of the electric signals going through our nervous systems, perhaps projecting that onto my body, as I know a few other people did in my class – the results of which I am looking forward to seeing. Going forwards, I suppose the one thing I should focus on more is creating a more interactive show. I’d like to create a show where I involve the audience in scenarios that they might find themselves in, should their loved one have dementia, in order to break the fourth wall.

Overall, I think back to where this process started – a show inspired by humanity, and by the exploration of empathy in a neoliberalist country where empathy no longer seems to be something of concern to those in power, as a means of satirising what we understand of humankind today. However, I still think some of this still exists in the show I performed today. After all, a large portion of Roy Batty’s final speech is about memory and the nature of it in a life that is so fleeting. I feel as if my show had some presence of that – and earlier drafts made direct reference to it – through the idea that as we grow older, we cannot pass on the lives that we have lived – after all, there is currently no way of living my Granddad’s life to its exact specifications. We exist through the stories we tell, and the stories told about us. If my Granddad were alive today, I would have included recordings of me having a conversation with him about his life, and what his experiences have been, to add to the sentimentality that this performance had to me. Most of all, I wanted to write a show that I will remember – one that will make me proud to have written and performed in my future. I feel that I have achieved that. I am proud of what I made, and I would like to expand upon it further to see the limits I can take it to.

Over the past week or so, I have been experimenting with the style of my show. In doing so, I have uncovered that Spalding Gray’s style is what I am looking for from this show. His sets are basic, and the running narrative broken up by seemingly unrelated stories is, ultimately, what I am looking to achieve. I have been working on how I would like to stage it – going from a fully furnished bedroom to a more sparse and barren one, with only a few pieces of furniture around the room. Also in my experiments, I have decided that Music is the part of music therapy I would like to be looking at – as I have found several videos of dementia patients responding to it. I recently remembered my first two CDs ever bought for me, as well as the first few albums I bought for myself. My Dad first bought me Stevie Wonder CDs when I was around 10 because I had been humming Superstition, and he wanted to nurture my interests in him – so he bought me Talking Book and Music of My Mind. The first albums I ever bought for myself was Demon Dayz by Gorillaz, Riot! by Paramore and Wasting Light by Foo Fighters. I have decided to focus on Stevie Wonder, as I feel his music will add more of an “older” texture to my show, as both of these albums were released in the 70’s.

I have also been looking at ways to make my staging and blocking feel more worthwhile for a 3/4 thrust- so I have been looking at activities I can relate to the brain and how it memorizes things. Given the setting, I felt that things like dancing, or using pogo-sticks (However visually interesting it might be to watch me trip and break something valuable) would not fit the theme properly. So instead, I decided to try something I only do when anyone is intending to visit my room, and tidy. I felt that tidying was something that most of us have done, and can, therefore, grasp a metaphor between tidying and the brain storing memory. However, I don’t intend to stick to this space specifically, after having gotten blackout drunk recently, I decided that talking about alcohol is an experience that most people would do outside of their bedroom. So, in this, I intend to treat this space like a nightclub – a setting not unfamiliar to most students – and create something that is – at least slightly – visually interesting for an audience to watch through my godawful dad-dancing. I’ll do some more experimentation – though I acknowledge that I have catered this performance to my preference of rehearsing in my home – and see what sticks and what can go.

Over the past few days, I have been trying to incorporate the stand-up style into the show, but I cannot find a way of writing it in this style that I am satisfied with. It feels much too dishonest as a presentation style for the subject at hand and I don’t want to make it feel like a waste of time – so I have decided to start my writing again. In doing so, I am taking on a different style, more inspired by the style of Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. Having watched in class, and again recently outside of it, I found myself getting engrossed in Gray’s method of story-telling – the wide array of characters, and the running narrative, broken up by different sub-stories. This kind of structure is something I am exploring in my writing now. I intend to keep some elements the same – the production elements going wrong throughout the performance, the focus on dementia and forgetting and the colours of the lights to reflect the colour of my childhood bedroom. But in this case, I’m writing in a totally different style – moving away from the cabaret, towards a more serious, yet still humorous approach to memory and dementia (Where that can be managed). I will look at how to adapt my theme and how I feel performing in this different style, and how to incorporate my research on Music Therapy and how music has affected mine and my Granddads life:

Below, I have attached my former script:

“Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. Before we get started, I’d, uhh, just like to thank everyone for coming tonight – especially to those that have travelled to, um, Lincoln to see this. Some of you, erm, may know that this has been in the works for quite some time, uhh, particularly since I’ve had to, um, write and learn these songs for the show. I’d like to dedicate tonight’s performance to my Granddad, Bill. He um… He passed away in my first year here at University, and I, uh, am forever grateful for everything he did for me. Despite his Alzheimer’s in later life, he continued to motivate and inspire me with um… With his successes in his career and his pride in me. (Clears throat.) Aha, anyway, let’s start the show, shall we? There’s so much to get through… Um… House lights, please. (The house lights go down, and a warm wash comes over the stage.) 

My name is William Joseph Cummings. My parents are Shelley Cummings and Danny Cummings. My middle name comes from my Godfather, Joe. My first name comes from my Grandfather, Bill – who was an Opera singer. I was born on the 15^th of August 1996, in Chelsea and Westminster hospital. My birth was difficult. I was a ventouse delivery – which is a vacuum assisted birth. This is because, as ever, I was awkward. Though, in this case, my head was awkwardly positioned. My Mum likes to remind me that I had a cone shaped head for the first few weeks of my life – which I imagine must have made me look rather strange. Of course, I don’t remember any of this, being a baby and everything. In fact, my first memory was much, much later. I would have been about… 3 or 4. A bee stung my big toe and I was running around the garden, looking for my Mum to try and make it better. I don’t know what date this occurred, or how old I was, but it is my first memory. My most distinct memories come from around July 2002, when we moved into Greenholt. This is the house I consider to be my childhood home.

(The wash turns into a blue wash, with points of dark blue.) I still see it in my dreams, as vividly as I would if I still lived there. My bedroom had light blue walls, with dark blue circles on the walls. Mum painted it for me, and I stuck little stars in the dark blue circles. I don’t know why I did it, but I liked the way it looked. It made it look like one of those iPod adverts – you know, with the people dancing on brightly coloured backgrounds? And these colours are what I associate with my childhood, so when I need to remember that time, I think of those colours and suddenly, beloved childhood memories come flooding back. Memories of being 8, and watching The Simpsons at Nan-Nan and Granddads on a Friday afternoon. Nan-Nan would normally give us Heinz Ravioli, chips and peas, and then afterwards, we’d have raspberry ripple ice cream with lime jelly. Granddad would come in through the door, with his tweed jacket, and matching flat cap on. He’d have come back from the shop with a paper for him and my Nan-Nan under his arm. He was vibrant and alive. He made me and my brother laugh by popping his false teeth out, and then he’d pull this wicked grin at us. It’s one of my favourite memories of him.

(Light change, slow fade into green and yellow wash) I’m not well known for having a good memory for the important things. I always forget to do things that people ask me to do, but I can always remember simple trivia about all different things. (Light change: Single spotlight on the left side of the stage. I am standing on the right. I shuffle along to the spotlight.) Ahem… I know that the ocean is six miles deep. I know that the famous “All these moments will be lost, like tears in rain” line from Blade Runner was an improvisation by Rutger Hauer. But I can’t tell you what year my Mum was born, and in a couple of months, I won’t remember the date of this performance. Granddad went into the home in 2007.”

I recently wrote about dementia and my relationship with it as a central part of my performance. I have begun writing the script, exploring stand-up as a method of performance – the basis of this would be to talk about my life from an autobiographical standpoint, talking about my family and my relationship with my Granddad. As the performance would go on, I would become more and more disillusioned with reality, gradually forgetting more and more of the play as it begins to focus more and more on my Granddad’s dementia. This would create a stark contrast of humour and the harrowing illness of dementia. I have also decided on the kind of set that I’d like to use for the show – I have chosen my performance space to reflect the intimacy of this as a domestic issue – it affects people in their homes and where their lives are. I want my space to feel intimate so it reflects the personal nature of this issue, and how personal it is to me. I will experiment with the stand-up style and see how it feels to perform.

I also decided to research into methods of treatments for people with dementia and found a video my Mum showed me of a man reacting to something called “Music Therapy”. Upon some minor research, I learned that the thinking behind it was that you could use music from the youth of the patient to bring them back from near-catatonic states. In the video I watched, the example used was Henry, who reminded me quite a lot of my Granddad. His story was very touching, and I’d like to have some focus on the video, and on the research behind music therapy. I will endeavour to add reference and perhaps add it to the show if I can.

YouTube. (2017). (original) Man In Nursing Home Reacts To Hearing Music From His Era. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM&ab_channel=Music%26Memory [Accessed 23 Apr. 2017].

YouTube. (2017). Oliver Sacks – Musicophilia – Alzheimer’s/The Power of Music. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdYplKQ4JBc&ab_channel=knopfgroup [Accessed 23 Apr. 2017].