Tim Crouch

In the first few weeks of the module, one of our group members did a presentation on Tim Crouch. We were presented with excerpts from two of his performances My Arm (2003) and An Oak Tree (2003). Both performances play around with the conventions of performance.

My Arm

In My Arm a ten year-old’s “…story is told through a combination of live performance, digital film and the animation of everyday objects supplies by the audience before each performance” (tim crouch theatre, 2013). The story revolves around the gesture of the arm, so Crouch raises him arm throughout the entire performance. In terms of the ‘objects’, this idea that the audience supply objects for the performance seems to add a sense of the unknown, putting power into the hands of the audience who have, in a way, become a part of the performance. The performance is described as “…an extraordinary piece of theatre about modern art, bloody-mindedness and how the things we do when we’re ten stick with us for life” (tim crouch theatre, 2013).

How I see this relating to my performance is that I too will be allowing the audience to enter my performance space. I really like how carefully Crouch structures his performance, using ‘everyday objects’ because they have purpose in the overall storyline. I have started to think about how I would like the audience to dress me. If I get them to place a Seventeeth Century British Woman’s attire on me, I can become Ophelia. I might get a few costume options and move into the character they choose me to be. Each costume will represent a poignant character, one which has been performed on numerous occasions over time. The point of my piece is the intimacy felt between audience and performer. I am asking whether they feel closer to the performance because they have had an input in it. In contrast, am I no longer intimately connected to the audience when I represent a character that so many people before me already have?

An Oak Tree

This is a play about a man whose daughter has died in a car crash, so he no longer knows how to talk, react or move in situations because of the devastation. Crouch plays his part in the play as a hypnotist who directs an actor to be the FATHER character. When reading the script of An Oak Tree, there were points in it that I found relevant to the shaping of my performance. In each performance he brings an actor on stage that has never performed the part before. The actor is directed by Crouch throughout the performance: “HYPNOTIST [Tim Crouch] … Move to this chair, say: ‘Peter’” (Crouch 2005, 23) and the actor replies “Peter” (Crouch, 2005, 23). In this section he is getting the actor to move through the audience, asking him to answer with different name each time he moves seats. Tim Crouch crosses over between stage and audience space, something which I intend to include in my performance. This will hopefully make the spectators feel like I am getting closer and more involved with their presence.

Another element is the scripting. The HYPNOTIST voice is scripted in a way which makes you feel like the speech is unrehearsed: “And then – And then, when I click my fingers… you’ll be convinced convinced that you’ve killed someone” (Crouch, 2005, 31). There’s something about the way he writes that makes me feel like he wants the audience to feel like they aren’t watching a scripted, perfectly rehearsed performance. Because I want to make the audience feel distance and closeness to me as a performer, this idea to script speech in this way could make the audience feel like I am more real. Again, this plays around with the perceptions of performance.

Tim Crouch states in the introduction of An Oak Tree’s script that

“You see, when we make and watch and talk about theatre we can have all sorts of conversations about the phenomena of it: about the live qualities of theatre, how it happens right in front of you, how we can move through space and time in different ways. We can talk about the reality of theatre, about the truth of it, and how as well as being very real and here and now there might not be anything real at all here” (Crouch, 2005, 6).

This perception links perfectly to the idea behind my performance, how close do we feel to the performance we are watching? Looking at Tim Crouch’s work has developed my idea and linked it more closely to the changing intimacies with the audience. I would now like to present my performance in way that moves between these intimacies, rather than structuring it in a way that the audience are presented with four separate sections.

Works Cited

Crouch, T. (2005) An Oak Tree. London: Oberon Books.

Tim Crouch Theatre (2013) Shows: About My Arm. [online] tim crouch theatre. Available from http://www.timcrouchtheatre.co.uk/shows/my-arm [Accessed 28 March 2014].