I just back from the West Coast where I participated in a workshop with Meg Stuart (Contemporary Performance choreographer) and witnessed a performance by a young San Francisco artist, Alicia Ohs. Their work inspired me to bring more live theatricality into this project and to include audience participation.
I’m considering starting the performance with audience participation in the form of a game of “steal the bacon”. We’d potentially present statements like,”If you hardly ever work out, steal the bacon!” ” If you need to lose 5 lbs, steal the bacon!” ” If you’ve had plastic surgery, steal the bacon!” and so on. Then we’d classify the audience into groups by how many times they won the bacon. Each group has a specific location where they must sit for the performance. After they’re placed, each group is addressed with a performance. The idea is to look at how fitness is used as a competition within ourselves and with others. In this society, one’s level of fitness is often a way to classify will power and willingness to “take control of one’s life”. Which can lead to assumptions about success. We would play with that social value by placing them into groups representing 3 levels of success.