Transforming for an Unseen Audience

We could no longer leave it up to chance.

This week, the most crucial week in the execution of this project, Phi and I had scheduled blackouts twice leaving us with no internet or electricity for several hours at a time. That's Manila! We switched from a live performance to a video recording. Easier? Maybe. But as artists, we are confronted with not only the technical complications of changing mediums, but the artistic implications. As the general arts community has acclimated to presenting work online in this manner (we have come to accept that there will always be a windows between artists and audiences for the foreseeable future) we continue to work in the grey area between filmed and live media.

In a meeting with our facilitator Su PinWen, she pointed out the major change for us would be with our audience. "How many people do you think you are performing to?" she asked. I thought I had not taken this into consideration as we were creating the work, but I realized that we were subconsciously creating an audience responding to each section of the performance. For musical numbers, I had imagined a group of people, a traditional theatre audience. For smaller monologues, I realized that we had directed Phi to be more intimate, as if he were speaking to someone in casual conversation. And in both scenarios, we were responding to our ideas of what audiences could be like, not the live audience that would actually be watching our show. And how can we? There is no audience more anonymous than one sitting behind their computer screen.

The newly-refurbished Manila Metropolitan Theatre! I'm KIDDING it's the living room of Phi's house.

Then there's the question of the performance space itself: Phi's house. He's gussied up a part of his home, as if he were inviting guests into the living room for merienda. But, this is not how Phi exists when he is alone. His own house is performing for him. And in turn, we as an audience now exist in his intimate space. And while I initially believed that Phi's house was just a temporary venue, not selected by us but chosen for us by our worldly circumstances, I am slowly being convinced that Phi's own home is in some ways the most ideal space to recount some of his most personal experiences.

And what if (by some grace) everything returns to normal? Will we bring the work to a traditional performance space? In losing the intimate space, will we lose an intimate performance? Will the more performative elements come through, and present a new facet of this presentation? Who says they cannot co-exist?