The incorporation of poetry into a performance can help advance the potency of a piece, especially if combined well with the performers own actions.
Interestingly, in many ways the reciting of poetry could be seen as a very early form of solo-performance, as the performance of oral poems in pre-literate societies was commonplace. The poems were constructed using devices such as repetition, alliteration, rhyme and kennings to facilitate memorization and recall.
I have always found poetry to be a provocative tool with which to begin devising a performance, and so will endeavor to write original poems as often as possible, as well as begin reading more of others which may spark an idea.
First though, I think it may be useful to analyse a section of the poem placed within my previous blog post, in order to see what kind of ideas may be able to be used in performance.
One day soon, the tides of the teratomic moon will swallow us all
With the German-eyes rejoicing.
The teratomic moon is a reference to the ‘Giant Impact’ hypothesis, a theory which claims that the Moon was formed from the collision of two proto-planets, one of those being a newly forming Earth and the other was a Mars sized object called Theia. When these two objects collided the debris coalesced forming the Moon. The word ‘teratomic’ is derived from teratoma, a particularly nasty tumour which has received an ‘evil twin’ (Prasad, 2015) nickname, and must be cut away from the human body. Equating the Moon as a celestial teratoma is a result of its control over the Earth’s tides, and the threat that the tides carry as sea levels rise.
(‘Giant Impact’ Hypothesis)
The ‘German-eyes’ is a play on words. Clearly there is the German eyes there, a shallow and somewhat thowaway attack on Germany. However, there is also the word Gemini said when read, a reference to the Dioskouri of Greek and Roman mythology. The Dioskouri were the two brothers Castor and Pollux. Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who raped the brothers’ mother in the guise of a swan. When Castor was killed Pollux begged Zeus to let him share his own immortality with Castor so that they could remain together. They were then transformed into the constellation Gemini. The Dioskouri pair were regarded as protectors of sailors, and were said to appear as St. Elmo’s fire.
(Leda and the Swan by Peter Paul Rubens)
Gemini and teratoma were coupled in this section due to the parallels of combined entities.
With this information in mind I believe it may be effective to use lighting to enhance this segment of the performance, perhaps beginning with a starry night effect using a glitter-ball, similar to the one used by Laurie Anderson in her piece Habeas Corpus, then transitioning into a green St. Elmo’s fire hue when the poem progresses.
(Laurie Anderson’s Habeas Corpus)
I thought I should end with the W. B. Yeats poem ‘Leda and the Swan‘
Works cited:
Prasad, A. (2015) Teratomas: the tumours that can transform into ‘evil twins’. The Guardian, 27 April. Availale from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/27/teratoma-tumour-evil-twin-cancer [accessed 5 February 2016]