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Audience

Gary Stevens

Photo: Gary Stevens
1989 – 2024

21 minutes – student production

A line of performers on a platform-stage mimics each other’s position. They represent a formal audience that mirrors the real audience in the auditorium. One performer stands in front of the group and ‘conducts’ the stage-audience by drawing attention to their own foot or hand through movement. Two performers vie for the stage-audience’s attention by different strategies involving moving or standing still. The stage-audience points their fingers following the trace of their eyes. They are myopic, their attention span is short and their interest is curiously kinetic.

The formation is repeatedly broken and the mimicry becomes a way of isolating individuals who have been identified by their failure to copy the others. The rest form a tight group and the odd person momentarily becomes an outcast performer.

(Brighton Poytechnic) Brighton Pavilion, 1989

Photo: Gary Stevens
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