If anyone had told me that I would be reading the entire back of a cereal box for my last ever performance of my degree I probably would have told them they were crazy. However that said, this is what I have decided to do, whilst the video is playing behind me. This idea came to me when I was eating breakfast this morning and it just so happened to take me 8 minutes, after I had finished I went to look at what went into the cereal, and then suddenly and for no reason what so ever decided that this would be what action I do for eight minutes whilst the video I had made was playing behind me. It captures the act of the passing of time and how we are very out of tune of what happens around us in the world minute by minute. To me I was shocked to find out what had happened worldwide just whilst I ate my breakfast and it was an eye opener. One thing I wanted to avoid in this performance was making it seem like a ‘charity advert’ so as you can see in the video I made and posted on the last post I added in random facts such as how many iPhones were sold in a minute nad how much Oprah Winfrey made. I decided on the music that was added to the video as I thought it was a nice contrast to what I was saying, whilst I was eating breakfast on stage (which is quite calm) the fast forwarded video playing behind and the music was somewhat frantic, until the end where the music and video changed which changed the tone of the video. After searching through my cupboards I found a cereal that would take me a while to read; All Bran Chocolate Crunch.

I thought I may as well go for it and read every single word on the box and not just the contents of the cereal. Closer to the day of the performance I decided that I was going to sit round a table for the performance for a more intimate feeling because I wanted to attention on the video and not myself. The lighting I wanted to keep very minimal as I didn’t feel the piece needed a wild light design. I just wanted a dim general wash of the stage.

Posted on – May 9th 2013

The table I used was set so that in each place there was a number, next to this number was a photo of what had happened in the world after that many minutes (to correspond with the video.) I also placed a bowl, a spoon and a mini box of cereal in each place and on the table was a carton of orange juice, some paper cups. So that audiences members help themselves to the food I wrote three notes and left them on the table all of which said:

“Please feel free to help yourself to any food and drink. Keep your eyes on the video throughout this performance.”

This was to ensure that as soon as the audience took a seat at the table they knew that the video was the main importance of the piece, and not me reading the entire back of a cereal box. Up until this day I had been working 6 days a week for the past 8 weeks and moving house and finishing all other uni work so I hadn’t had time to worry about my performance, however about an hour before the performance I had finished moving house and had noting else to do, then it hit me; I was really really nervous. I started to doubt my whole idea and thought ‘will it work’ ‘is it to boring’ ‘what if no one comes’ ‘what if anybody who does come wish they didn’t’ ‘this is my final performance of my degree…and I’m reading the back of a cereal box’ most of these nerves were due to my video failing to work so many times when I was trying to make it, and without my video there was just me reading a cereal box. I finally got to the studio and the first thing that I got told was “Everything is fine, but the moby-go wont work” for about 10 seconds they let me believe this and that I would have no video to play, until they told me it was in fact a joke! Phew. 

As I started to set the table I got more of a clear vision of what the performance space looked like, and after testing the video all of about 7 times in an hour I was sure it was going to work and my nerves went. As I like things to be precise it took me a while to set the table so that everything was equal and ‘looked right.’ I realised I had only read through the back of the box once out-loud as it is something I did want to over rehearse, so my nerves started to come back slightly. I had really trouble pronouncing just one of the words so I asked someone who told me how to say it correctly.

When it got to the performance I was glad to see people did help themselves to a drink and some people to the food too, but everybody was keeping their eyes on the video which is what I wanted. I think the performance went okay but as we got no feedback at all it is hard to say until results day! I had forgotten how to pronounce the word once I got to it, so I read it out-loud once, then missed it the last two times, I think it is something that would go unnoticed by the audience. Everybody commented on my timing and that when I ate cereal at the end of the performance I did it at the exact same time on the video, which was playing behind me so I could not see it. When I ate the cereal it dawned on me how crunchy it was and that the one thing I hate is people crunching food really loudly so I just tried to eat each mouth full as slow as I could to reduce the sound! Overall I was happy enough with the performance and the atmosphere that was created by sitting around the table, with all the cereal and orange juice.

Posted on May 14th 2013