I haven’t blogged for about a month so I feel that its time to give an update of the solo process. So far its very slowly but surely coming together smoothly.

The official title for the show is ‘A Perfect Imperfection’ and it will consist of 15-20 people as an audience. The show’s premise is about a man who takes one selfie a day to find that beautiful image of himself. In the backdrop of the poem being told through voice over, what follows is a desperate quest to ensure that the perfect image stays in that form no matter how far it can go. He is a narcissistic person who doesn’t really care for anyone but himself.  The end of the show will have the song ‘All of Me’ by John Legend. This has been chosen because the song is about a man who is in love with a female. But it can be reinterpreted as a song about someone who loves their reflection in the mirror. That’s how i see it anyways.

The whole concept of this performance is to let people know that taking too many pictures of yourself doesn’t define how good you look. It’s rather about the inner perfection of the human soul that defines who you are or how you look. In short, its about personality over looks.

I don’t intend to sound pretentious with this show as I just want to tell a complex story that shows how we in today’s society thrive on the whole idea of using social media as a paradigm to showing off how we look through the art of taking pictures of ourselves. I don’t want to stop this from happening but i rather want to question why do we take pictures of ourselves too much and what the purpose is for it.

After carefully reading the Narcissus and Echo poem written by Ted Hughes, I have come up with another idea in how to incorporate the poem into the performance.

Firstly, the poem explains the idea of how the image of narcissus reflected in the water is one that he believes to be perfect and how he falls in love with this perfected reflection. If I’m using selfies as a primary basis, how could I possibly create this concept of perfection when it comes to imagery? Well I initially thought about actually dissecting the poem out of linear order because I feel that there isn’t any order in which the words are written necessarily.

For my performance, I want to use the idea of a ‘perfect imperfection’ (not to reference a lyric in the John Legend song) when it comes to image. For instance, i thought about saying different paragraphs of the poem in non-linear order and the idea that when it comes to the end of the performance, my image has somehow transitioned from perfection to a shadow of perfection. A kind of transitioned selfie video that has become a modernized occurrence of Dorian Gray of some kind.

For now i have been experimenting buy taking random selfies each day to reflect on the idea that taking too many selfies is allegedly  linked to narcissistic behavior. But i feel that there is a empty hole that could be filled using a distorted or unusual means of performing that very idea…

I recently has a brainwave about my performance because i felt that it wasn’t going anywhere and the idea was starting to sound either tricky or just very flat!

I’ve done some research on the concept of narcissism and i found out that interestingly, it fits in with psychopathy as new studies have suggested that a narcissistic person has psychopathic traits. Juxtaposed with this, i found an interesting article about how in today’s social media influenced society, the use of selfies are linked to narcissistic behavior. From this point onward, I want to use selfies as a part of my performance and portray the kind of narcissistic behavior that these apparently entail. I have decided to begin experimenting with taking selfies of my own because I want to show the audience and ask the question: how far is too far? For instance, what drives people to take selfies of themselves more than 200 times a day or why would they take one when something out of the ordinary is happening behind them? I intend to find that out…

In today’s session , we were asked to think about who our characters are talking to in terms of audience. It could be either we discussing who we want our characters to talk to or us speaking from the characters perspective. I decided to go with the latter because I feel that my character is quite philosophical with his own life. For example he asks himself these constant questions about his life with no answers to boot. Or does he have answers and he’s only being a deceptive person? I wrote a short monologue that conveys an overall sense of both awareness and unawareness of who it is he is actually talking to? Is it an audience? A loved one? Or himself? I let the ambiguity take form:

Who on earth am I talking to? I haven’t the foggiest. I could be talking to myself. I could be talking to my family. Or better yet, I could be talking directly to you. Yeah that’s right, you. You the people. You the company. My company. I need the company. So you’re my company. Company; that word comes in many different forms. One could argue that the word ‘company’ stems from loneliness. Am I a lonely person? Not necessarily. Does one feel that he is lonely? I don’t think so. Unless of course you’re going on about those pesky members of an audience. Well, maybe they are audience members. But then again, are they really and truly audience members or just eager observers just dying to hear a story being told? Am I really talking to people or am I just looking at my own reflection? Are the ‘people’ really just itty bitty fragments of my own imagination? I wouldn’t know. It’s quite intriguing to figure out who I really talk to. They say the first sign of madness is talking to yourself. Well, I could possibly fit into that category. But then again, maybe not. Maybe Im lying to myself. Or even better, I may be lying to you. If ‘you’ even exists.

Hello there. How’s it going? Are you comfortable? Are you chilled? Are you relaxed? Good, because you are about to see something that isn’t within normal parameters. You know, not what it seems? Beyond reality. Beyond the limit. Everyone has memories. This is normal. Everyone has dreams. This is normal. Everyone has nightmares. This is normal. Everyone can sometimes see things that are unexplained. Is that normal. Possibly. Potentially. Everyone has a switch in their head that can instantly be flicked when something inexplicable happens. Is this normal? I don’t know. Do you? Look closely because one look and it wont be there anymore. Just like magic. Its gone. Vanished. No, this isn’t a show where the rabbit get pulled out of a hat. This is the kind of show where that rabbit has well and truly fucked us. Luring us down that dirty hole into an uncharted realm. No, nothing like Alice. That’s just some kiddie shit….