Today, I will continue to outline thoughts, decisions and developments that have taken place over the past few days. Rather than continuing with the Mr. Stevens psychopomp/changeling/Minotaur narrative, I will dive into design developments.

The Wardrobe

Jason Lehane and discussed various spatial and OHS/risk assessment considerations. Jason had been trawling Gumtree and Marketplace for an appropriate wardrobe that would fit aesthetically and that he could retrofit-design to purpose. Last weekend he drove to Camperdown, and visited an antique market, and found a pair of circa 1960 sliding doors (and the seller threw in a pelmet to go with them).

Jason then designed a structure that would fit the RMIT 4.2.3 space and parameters within which we are working, as well as meet all the creative research criteria.

Above: Jason’s design drafts for wardrobe design.

Mr. Stevens’ meeting point

Initially, I had proposed to have Mr. Stevens on a lounge; then I switched to a coffee table and chairs. A friend was rehoming a set of circa 1970 green wooden children’s chairs and table (photo below). Each chair has a lift-up lid to a storage unit under the seat. Mr. Stevens will only be present during sessions on February Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th, that is if the schedule I have drafted still holds after the RMIT risk assessment (HMS is currently under review).

This children’s table set adds a quaintness to the feel of the installation, and seating the bull changeling/minotaur at a child-size table and chairs reduces the character’s potential perceived “threat” by participants. In my experience across past works and also as an audience member, I recognise a power imbalance between the performer and the audience member/s, or in the case of this research project, “participants”. It is this imbalance that can create a threshold to participation.

In Barking Spider Visual Theatre works that I devised and/or directed, ‘The Memorandium’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2012) and ‘In a Heartbeat’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2017), there were high levels of audience participation/interactivity (I use these terms interchangeably). Each work was publicised as “interactive”. Most people in attendance at each work, but not all, are likely to have booked with the understanding that there would be a degree of interactivity and had had this expectation seeded. Even so, people can be anxious about what the interactivity will entail. For each work, the performers met the audience members in a “hostess” role. In each work, the performers were female (I performed in ‘The Memorandium’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2012)). I use the word “hostess” in a gendered manner, as the works, while not set in an earlier period, echoed, borrowed from and leaned into sensibilities, courtesies and etiquette from the 1950s, a time when gender roles were more pronounced. We tapped into the “hostess with the mostess” trope, attributed to Perle Mesta from Oklahoma City, (Howell 2022), which is gently comic in its nostalgic harkening. Each work had distinctly nostalgic elements and aesthetics. Performers were dressed in costumes of the period. At each show, audience members were each welcomed by the performer-hostesses into the space in a friendly, warm and familiar manner. In ‘The Memorandium’, (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2012), my co-performer Leah Scholes and I offered and served hot chocolate to people as they entered, and they were free to wander about on the set until the performance began. Audiences of ‘In a Heartbeat’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2017) were welcomed at the theatre door and gleefully ushered to one of seven tables, set for high tea. Each work began borrowing from Brechtian-style performance techniques, where the machinations of the theatre-show are not hidden from the audience, Smith (2015) and the set, seating bank and performers were in full view. Unlike Brechtian-style performance techniques, both The Memorandium’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2012) and ‘In a Heartbeat’ (Barking Spider Visual Theatre 2017) were prop-heavy, although props were held, touched, used and even consumed by the audiences, and each work contained segments where the audiences were passive recipients of story, spectacle or puppetry. Unlike Brechtian-style performance, each work deliberately set out to transport audiences, even with the fourth wall well and truly dismantled from the outset of each work. The fourth wall is a theatre convention where the audience and the performers are separated by an imaginary wall: actors cannot “see” the audience who are witness what is being performed (Bell 2008).

The distinction with Honouring Mr. Stevens is that participants will be first onboarded outside the installation experience in a non-performative manner, and then greeted in a performative manner by an actor. I plan to script a short yes-or-no fake induction survey for the performer to read through and notate with each participant. The survey will ask questions that may appear absurd or non-sensical, such as “Canine or Feline?”, aimed to amuse and intrigue the participant. Seeded within the short survey will be cues and clues to installation elements. “Canine or Feline?” is a survey question to be included, for if participants do unwrap a dog or cat mask gift from under the Christmas tree, they may feel a satisfied “aha” moment if and when they draw the connection from the survey (set up) and the presentation of the mask (pay-off). This fake induction will not have the gushing, “hostess with the mostess” style that I employed in the works mentioned above. Rather, while playful, I will direct the actors to have an air of mystery by not revealing the purpose of the survey, but presenting with a deliberate faux-seriousness as per someone making medical notes prior to a entering a doctor’s room. Unlike the two Barking Spider Visual Theatre works mentioned, there is no performer to guide the participants through the experience, and no overt story-telling. For participants who do encounter Mr. Stevens, the Minotaur, the changeling, they will discover the character, without any prior introduction or warning. It is for this reason that the quaintness of children’s table set may be important in enabling a participant to cross a threshold of performer intimidation, if the character is seated on a child’s chair. The tacit invitation will be for participants to join Mr. Stevens at the table and aid him in his activity. At this stage the activity will be sorting threads of read wool, which Mr Stevens has been cutting into pieces from a ball of wool, an allusion to Ariadne’s red thread.

However, I did find a wooden, upholstered, vintage (circa 1970) Carver chair on the side of the road a couple of days ago. I am interested to switch out Mr Steven’s seat from a child’s chair to this Carver chair, as it is far more imposing and grand than the small, children’s chair.

JANUARY 24 References

Barking Spider Visual Theatre (2017) In a Heartbeat, Barking Spider Visual Theatre website, accessed 27 May 2024. https://barkingspidercreative.com.au/in-a-heartbeat/

Barking Spider Visual Theatre (2012) The Memorandium, Barking Spider Visual Theatre website, accessed 27 May 2024.https://barkingspidercreative.com.au/the-memorandium/

Bell E (2008) Theories of performance. Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1-4129-2637-9

Howell M (2022) Perle Mesta: OKC's Hostess With the Mostest, 405 Magazine, Accessed 2025-01-24 18:13:27. https://www.405magazine.com/hostess-with-the-mostest/

Smith S (2015) Anti-Set design in Brecht’s Epic Theatre – curious arts, The Curious Culture In Canada accessed 24 January 2025. https://www.curiousarts.ca/anti-set-design-in-brechts-epic-theatre-curious-arts/