Table Manners pictures

Some images from Table Manners, the project I made last month with Contemporary Performance Practice students at Leeds Metropolitan University. These photos are all by Sebastian Juszczyk (thanks Sebastian).

The show consists of a series of performer-audience member encounters over a table top, sometimes working on an individual level, sometimes with the performers all working together delivering the same material.

At the start there's an etiquette demonstration with paper cutlery and crockery:



Then the worktop becomes a drawing table:









And a place for conversation and story telling:







In the middle of the show there is a one-to-one origami lesson for each audience member:







And there are quieter moments of contemplation:





Each of the 20 audience members meets 13 of the 20 performers. So it was possible to come to see the show more than once, which a few people did, and see a very different version. I was making this piece in the middle of the making process of Homo Ludens, and there is a shared formal exploration here, in the dual layer of group performance/one-to-one performance experience.

Table Manners origami paper

This is one of a couple of images I've just put up on our Flickr photostream from last week's performance project, Table Manners, devised with students of Contemporary Performance Practices at Leeds Met University.

The show was performed for 20 audience members at a time, all sat around a large U shaped work bench, and was structured as a series of one-to-one performance encounters across the table top, including etiquette instruction, drawing, dialogue scene, handwriting demonstrations and an origami lesson. The image above is the 'origami paper store', held in place by candles, positioned on a 'neat table' in the centre of the space. This centre table was partly inspired by the amazing Pile of Index Cards (PoIC) project/system, particularly this image.

The 20 solo performances happening at any one time began in sync, or as a group performance of a shared text, early on in the piece, but moved into individual responses to particular tasks and instructions, sometimes becoming completely different. So depending on where you sat, and which combination of performers you met, and in what order, you could get a very different show from someone sat 4 places away. The intention was to use the table not as a barrier, but as an intimate place to meet someone, talk, hear stories, make something.

Table Manners

As part of my part-time role (somewhere in between senior lecturer and artist-in-residence) at Leeds Met University, I've been making a show with the final-year BA Contemporary Performance Practices students.  This is the third year I've run this end-of-course module, and, being only slightly obsessed with the number 3, it does feel like this is the last installment of a trilogy of large-cast (for us at least) shows made in and for a particular space, Leeds Met's House 14 rehearsal room and performance studio.  The first two pieces were Compendium in 2007 and A History of Objects in 2008, and this year's is called Table Manners.  All three are theatre pieces that play with the performer/audience member relationship to a greater or lesser extent.  

Table Manners is for a limited number of audience members, but there are a few spaces left for this year's showings.  Full details below. 

TABLE MANNERS
A tasting menu of things that are right and wrong with the world, 
brought to you by the students of Contemporary Performance Practices, Leeds Met University
Directed by Alexander Kelly, Co-Artistic Director of Third Angel
  
We’ve been trying to understand etiquette.
We’ve been trying to remember what happened where.
We’ve been trying to work out why some things are good, and some are just rubbish.
We’ve been taking responsibility, we’ve been laying the blame.
We’ve been trying to make the world a slightly better place.
We’ve been sitting down to eat a meal together every day.
We’ve been trying to keep our elbows off the table.
It isn’t always easy. 
We invite you to come and help us.
 
Performance Times:
Tuesday 19, Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 May
Doors open 7.45pm, showtime 8pm
Matinee: Wednesday 20 May
Doors open 2pm, Showtime 2.15pm
 
Venue:
House 14
14 Queen Square
Leeds LS2 8AJ
 
Free! But limited audience, so advance booking advised.

If you're interested in seeing the work, contact me on my Leeds Met email: a.kelly [at] leedsmet.ac.uk.