The stimulus we are using is a performance art called Rhythm 0 in which the artist stands in the public and put different objects in front of her, including roses, knives, cameras, guns etc. People can choose to do whatever they want with the objects provided. Initially, we tried to explore the complexity of human nature because in the performance art, people’s behavior differs a lot after they realized that the artist is not reacting: at first, people take photos with her, decorate her, but gradually, they started to hurt her. So we tried to develop a character who is controlled by opposite human instinct: good and evil. In the short piece we developed, the good and evil is fighting for the control of the people, lead to different extreme behaviors which implies the behaviors of people in the performance art.
However, we realized that the piece is too abstract and monotonic, so we decided to expand our ideas, and no longer focused on the idea of abstraction of human nature. We came up with an idea that we can incorporate our personal experience in the work and combine those stories with the idea of human nature. We decided to review what struggle we have been through, and develop that into a story that can present the complexity and inner struggle of people.
The characters in the play all have been through tough experiences about family, society or internal, and based on different situations, the reaction of characters differ a lot which also show the uncertainty of human behaviors. In my story, the character is ignored and abandoned by her family which lead to mental breakdown and we are going to incorporate the piece we constructed before which perfectly match the mental state of the character.
Tech plays an important role in our story to show the mentality of characters. In my story, I chose not to have the parents actually onstage, instead, I prefer to deliver the lines of parents through background voices and only have the character herself onstage to show the solitude of the character and her alienation from the family.
Our intended audience is everyone because our theme is human nature and we aim to explore the external and internal effects on people’s behavior, so we want to arouse the empathy in the audience and make them understand what the characters have been through.
Our piece is also inspired by Livi’s solo performance in some ways, in her performance, she tries to deliver the emotion of the character through movements and facial movements and depends less on words which is really powerful. So we tried to explore how can a story be delivered through other theatrical elements as Livi did.
