I think the main question that we are posing with our piece is: What makes a person the person they are?
There is a scientific and very human debate surrounding this question and two main factors are cited: nature and nurture.
I watched the video below to understand about the dichotomy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksP34GYwbY
He somewhat jokingly references how people expect there to be a gene for everything including depression, divorce and weight gain. I think what he is playing on and alluding to is the fact that people are too quick to attribute something to either genetics or nurture factors without appreciating the crossover that nature and nurture can have in order to make a person. He says himself that people think something is either "environmental or DNA, it is either nature or nurture". I strongly agree, I do not think most things are solely nature or nurture it is the combination of both. Saying this I believe that some things like sexuality are predetermined and environmental factors can do little to change them - at least in the way that we consider change.
For example the gender or genders someone is attracted to probably is pre-determined and doesn't change but I think the look/appearance of the people you are attracted to is strongly influenced by social factors. So nature and nurture are intermingling.
This also makes me think of a debate we had once in Religious Studies about whether talent existed genetically or whether there was no such thing as talent you are born with but only hard work which creates talent. My teacher brought up the fact that Mozart could play extremely complicated compositions on the piano at the age of 6, which some adult pianists could not play, to prove that some form of genetic talent must exist. However, what she neglected to mention was that Mozart's dad was also a pianist and trained him everyday since he was a very young child. Would he have been able to play such complicated compositions at such a young age without his father's training? Would every six year old be able to play such complicated compositions even with training?
Another thing which Steve Jones said which resonated with me is how 'people often think of nature and nurture being both part of a cake and if you slice it you can get either nature or nurture' but to get the ingredients of nature and nurture back 'you would have to unbake the cake'. I think this statement resonates with me because although there are a lot of people who think that a person's nature is unchangeable, I also think this can be true of nurture. I think that things that happen to you especially in those early, formative years can often be irreversible and there is only so much that therapy can do especially if as an adult you are trying to heal mental scarring that occurred when you were a child. I just think of all the people that carry experiences positive and negative that occurred during childhood right to the deathbed. So maybe it's not just nature that has an indelible, irremovable mark on who you are as a person but it's also nurture. Perhaps Shakespeare should have also said:
"With thou foul nurture in tow, nature you will never return to."
******
Before rehearsing this performance I never thought about things like the 9/11 bombings as being an issue of nature vs. nurture. I think I always assumed they must be an issue of nurture. I've never thought, perhaps out of optimism and perhaps out of ignorance, that the will to commit those crimes could have come from natural sources. But now I guess that, that must play a part in some capacity. Given human variation in almost every aspect it makes sense that if parts of your body responsible for your emotions, like the hippocampus, are smaller or release less neurones, you might be more predisposed to have the will to do that. But even saying that feels slightly wrong because it feels assumptive and leaves everything to science.
I think what this performance has also made me think about is a film called Boy A which is about a boy who committed a murder with another boy when he was a child and how this has affected his adult life. It's a very moving film and I love how sympathetically he was presented and played. One of the boys had been a victim of abuse as a child and you could tell how much that had affected him and how that was a raw wound in his life. It makes you ask all these questions about how that issue affects violent behaviour and it's quite uncomfortable for me to talk about but ultimately I think although a person isn't their experiences they can't be separated from their experiences. I think as humans we should strive to be better than we think we can be, even if we fail. I think that's the only way to live.
*******
Evaluation of Piece/Performance
We started the piece with the question: What makes someone who they are, nature or nurture? And looking at our piece - without the questions at the start and the end - I'm not sure the audience would get that that was the question our piece was trying to pose.
There are parts in our piece which allude to nature and nurture's factors: for example the race for sperm to fertilise the egg implies how genetics affects who we become. I don't really think our piece overtly presents a selection of answers about what makes a person who they are all the time but I don't know if this is so much of a problem because I think that when you are making art you should allow it to mutate and evolve. I think we started with the stimulus of nature vs. nurture and it became about facts and cycles of life and what we all go through as human beings. I feel like our piece was very moving and it might not have been such if we tried to force the questions.
Performance in group piece
I felt exhausted before our performance and so was not overly enthusiastic before we started to perform but once we started I found myself feeding off the audience's energy and the realisation that this was the first time they were seeing it. It was this fresh energy which made the performances fresh and exciting for us.
It was interesting to see audience members' reactions to our interactive approach I think all of the audience members I asked the questions to during the beginning section were scared but some of them responded to all of the questions and some only responded to the questions they were comfortable with. This made me feel uncomfortable in asking the questions because I felt like I was intruding for no reason but I had to power through. It made me think about how taboo the topic of nature vs. nurture can be and how this can make it difficult to understand the topic.
By the third performance, I did feel physically exhausted and because my character's quirk was a shaky hand. I felt my hand and lower arm cramp during the performance.
Installation
Although I felt that visually our piece wasn't necessarily stunning, I felt like the struggle me and Shayde went through during the performance was clear and this attracted the audience to our piece because there were sections of our performance where it was clear we were actually struggling. During the last performance of our piece there was a part where I was struggling because the water had gone up my nose and I couldn't breathe out my mouth because I had an apple in my mouth. During the last performance I felt my piece being pushed a bit more, I felt like I really pushed the rage aspect of my getting the apple and this made it more enjoyable and interesting for me as an actor.
One thing I liked about the nature of our piece was the endurance aspect because it never felt repetitive or boring for me and Shayde, it always felt fresh and new. With endurance it never gets boring and hopefully this freshness was translated to the audience.
Evaluation of whole piece as a theatre product
I think as a theatre product The Cabinet of Curiosities works quite well due to the breadth of performance in the space, not only are there art installations but there are also ensemble pieces and the whole piece feels united and grounded when the whole ensemble comes together at the denouement of the piece. I think one of the strengths of our pieces as a theatre product is the autonomy the piece gives the audience. There are points when the audience are free to choose what they watch but there are also points where they are guided. This variation in audience experience makes our show varied and appealing to audience members.
