Let the ghosting begin…return?
Well since it has appeared through the module once or twice…
*or every other lecture*
…as a group we decided to look into the phenomenon of ghosting for our performative presentation as part of the practical part of this module. For the three of us, another aspect of the course that had stuck with us was the video we watched of Forced Entertainment where they used cardboard signs, which on later research we learned they use in various projects. The production of theirs we had seen was of their 2014 project 12am: Awake and Looking Down but they also use cardboard signs in their later project Real Magic. Whereas Forced Entertainment used their cardboard sings in 12am: Awake and Looking Down to “endlessly reinvent [the] identities” (Forced Entertainment, 2017) of their characters, we wanted to use our cardboard signs to help us reiterate what we believed to be the important aspects of the performance. We thought if our cardboard was covered in the research we had done and also some of the statistics we might find out, it would help audiences full engaged with what we would be telling them.
Fig i: Real Magic 
Fig ii: 12AM: Awake and Looking Down
So, that’s the general ‘what’ and ‘how’ sorted, but we needed some context, something we knew people could relate to, to make it interesting. Simple enough, we’re doing drama, we’ll do drama everyone in the audience will know, we’ll do Shakespeare. After all, sure there’s no one more ghosted on stage then the works of Shakespeare.
In our sessions about The Dramatic Text we looked at the introduction to Simon Stephens Pornography in which Jacqueline Bolton states that the seven scenes within the piece are “[b]ased upon Jaque’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech in As You Like It” (Bolton, 2013, 14). So, looking for more things to ghost in our performance about the subject, ‘Seven Ages of Man’ seemed like a good place to start.
Our idea was to do a simple power point with various slides on whatever topics we eventually decided on. Along with this we’d write a script that would discuss ghosting, incorporating some current popular figures (actors, politicians, etc.) and using cardboard to really state the facts. Throughout the script we would include the words from the As You Like It speech and then at the end we would show a slide on the power point which would consist of our script and all the words from ‘Seven Ages’ would then float together to create the famous Shakespeare speech.
One last idea we had that we wanted to incorporate was multi-media, linking this to our discussions on media within performance and also liveness. The three of us, of course all fans of theatre and actors, wanted so showcase some of the actors who are ghosted regularly and so had the idea of getting videos of these actors all performing the same speech and linking it all together to complete it. Since we were already looking into ‘Seven Ages of Man’ why not use that speech, it can’t be that difficult to find enough famous actors saying? Wrong.
Searching the internet for these videos proved harder than we expected, but in the end we found enough to complete the first part of the speech.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
The have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Shakespeare, 2.7.142-146
Through script writing and development, improving and devising as we go, we were sure we would then also find other Shakespearean elements we could ghost with our performance, as well as fitting in more popular and current characters and issues.
Let the group work begin!
Work Cited
Bolton, J. (2013) Introduction. In: Stephens, S Pornography. London: Methuen.
Forced Entertainment (2017) 12AM: Awake and Looking Down. Forced Entertainment. Available from: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/12am-awake-looking-down/ [accessed 6 January 2017].
Fig i: Forced Entertainment (2017) Real Magic. Forced Entertainment. Available from: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/real-magic/ [accessed on 6 January 2017]
Fig ii: Forced Entertainment (2017) 12AM: Awake and Looking Down. Forced Entertainment. Available from: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/12am-awake-looking-down/ [accessed 6 January 2017].
Shakespeare, W. (2010) As You Like It. Basingstoke: Macmillan.