Helen Butcher and I had worked together on almost all of the group projects so far this semester, and we both really enjoyed working together. So naturally, if I were to be performing with and playing off of anyone from the class, it was going to be someone with whom I had good collaborative chemistry.
We talked about our resources (namely the internet and a big bird costume) and tried forming a few ideas around that. While we struggled to find a good theme, we eventually decided that we could go more of an elemental route and go for Plants vs. Animals. Before discussing the different tracks we would use to construct this piece we decided that we would have a story arch to the battle that started and ended happily, but had some tension in the middle.
Our execution of the idea twisted and reshaped itself as we tested our links and realized that some tracks that we had our hearts set on were suddenly contextually out of place. We would not have been able to make that discovery had we not worked our idea a few times.
Our greatest struggles in forming such a battle was the mono-thematic nature of the audio tracks that were associated with plants and animals respectively. Songs about animals were usually more aggressive and sexual, while those about plants seemed to be more passive and peaceful. Helen and I were further frustrated when we came to the determination that birds don’t really eat trees, and even if the did, trees couldn’t really do much to fight back. We considered relying solely on the harsh contrast between songs like Welcome to the Jungle and The Green Grass Grew All Around and just had the bird pick on the tree the whole time, but that would have been less dynamic, less interesting. Much like Phil Hansen was faced with limitation in his Ted Talk “Embrace the Shake”, our creative juices started to stir with the limitations of our theme.
Eventually, we had the idea to bring in a faceless hunter to shoot Helen! Yes, the bird was the aggressor during the battle, and was exerting her dominance over an inanimate tree, but nature is a dog-eat-dog world and to bad so sad for organisms that can’t move or defend themselves. However, there is something harmonious and beautiful about nature.
To first establish sympathy for the shot bird, we decided to play In the Arms of the Angels, a song that is often used in conjunction with abused puppies. Then to show the sad majesty of nature we played the lyrics of a hopeful, yet earth-bound creature (I Believe I Can Fly) as the bird tried to fly with a broken wing. In the end, sad, violent, majestic, and hopeful scenes occur constantly in nature, and is all just part of “the circle of life”.
The final element that Helen and I made was that we had to be fully committed to our performance. I thought of the sad scene from the first season of Community where Brita is sadly performing a tap dance alone on stage. The tides of the performance changed when Troy sprung to her aid in a passionate modern dance. Since I don’t consider myself to be a strong dancer, it helped me to dance away some of my inhibitions before we performed. If we hadn’t been willing look like idiots up on stage, then our insecurities would have shown, and we would have created a self-fulfilled prophecy.
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