This Untethered Buffoon or the Trickster in Everything
(2020)
author(s): Stacey Sacks
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
This Untethered Buffoon or the Trickster in Everything is a documented artistic research project (Doctoral Thesis) in Performative and Mediated Practices, comprising a series of excavations and vivisections of W(w)hiteness through clowning, making and thinging. This work/play traverses the fields of critical whiteness studies, performance and clowning, visual and cultural anthropology and decolonial critique.
This eclectic mash-up of history, memory and trauma unfolds from my original question: as an actor, which bodies is it appropriate for me to inhabit? Via hyper-disciplinary experiments of the impulse and
what it means to be ‘on’ the moment, the research fabricates a series of clowters, performed entanglements of clown and character passing between various continents, temporalities and situated histories.
SQUIRM is the title given to both the final performance essay as well as to the reflective documentation emerging from this research. As experimentations with auto-ethnography and productive discomfort, the performing essays in SQUIRM document, animate and satirise explorations of W(w)hiteness, privilege and colonial logic. At the intersections of histories, they dig through remnants of collective memory, personal genealogy and shame, in the hope of reassembling new, sharper ways of giving and receiving attention.
From inside the body of this performer SQUIRM is about TONGUE-ING, about licking the future into softness by reinvigorating ancient clown practices to poke at whiteness in the current age. It’s about squirming and laughing through the discomfort of privilege in what feels like a crumbling time.
But mostly it’s about feeling great in a beard.
Body Language
(2016)
author(s): Charlotte Houberg
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Charlotte Houberg
Main Subject: Classical Singing Research Supervisor: Gerda van Zelm
Title of Research:
Body language of a singer on stage
Research Question:
How can a singer on stage use his body language to support his expression?
Summary of Results:
By the use of different research methods, there have been created ideas and strategies to become aware of your body language and how to use it in a confident way on stage. Body language is, next to singing, an equally important communication tool for singers on stage. It shows knowledge of the movements of the body and understanding of the role or character. The libretto can be translated into body language, so the audience can understand it without knowing exactly what text is sung. It can be concluded that all body parts can be chosen to show a certain mood which fits within the role or character. Gestures do not have to be over- exaggerated, because the audience is able to see and interpret small signs, even from a distance. Consciously chosen body language is easier to decode than spontaneous body language and can be more convincing, even though the singer is not in that certain
mood. Body language is part of the luggage of a singer and a tool for showing his expression and intentions.
I chose for the form of a research paper, because I would like to share new or expanded knowledge with my colleagues by doing an in-depth research.
Biography:
Charlotte (1991) takes part in Studio 32, an opera studio of her teacher Henny Diemer. She sang the roles Amor (Cadmus et Hermione), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and Bess (Porgy and Bess). She had a tour with Sinfonia Rotterdam and sang solo with several Dutch orchestras. In Jordan she performed Miroir de Peine of Andriessen with the Amman Orchestra. She has been invited for chamber concerts and has given song recitals on several stages of the Netherlands. From the oratorio repertoire she sings regularly the Matthew Passion (Bach) and the requiem (Fauré and Mozart). She will sing the role First Witch in the new opera of Andriessen (The Theatre of the World) in LA and Amsterdam.