Shane Koyczan's Poem Move Pen Move

My performance was inspired by my favorite spoken-word poet Shane Koyczan and his poem Move Pen Move that is dedicated to his mother who passed away because of cancer. I chose this poem because I identify with it a lot regarding my personal experience. I was aware of the fact that seemingly poetry and cruelty contradict each other. I associate ‘poetry’ with something gentle, lyrical whereas word ‘cruelty’ is associated with something anxious and unpleasurable. I decided to create a performance that is a combination of both. This idea seemed to be controversial and unconventional. People have a tendency to pay more attention to something that intrigue them.
The main theme of my performance is death. There is one main character, a young girl
In terms of props, I tried to stay minimalistic as well. My main props were chair, knife, wooden board teddy bear, white piece of cloth and roses. In terms of lighting, I used spotlight in red and white colors. My costume and make up were designed by me. I used a white, long dress that I cut and modified into a dirty piece of cloth with many holes. The make up was mainly based on the dirt that was spread on my body in order to give the audience an indirect clue of what could have possibly happen with the character before the action on the stage. During performance I was in control of my body language, using concentric and eccentric movements. I played a lot with the contrast, not only contrast between body movements and gestures but also contrast in the articulation of my voice, experimenting a lot with the escalation and de-escalation. For instance, parts 2 and 3, when from screaming and crying I move into silence and soft expression of the phrase “I wrote her
I chose to experiment with the combination of two types of body behavior: concentric and eccentric. I learnt about these types of movements during my theater class last year. Concentric movements are very limited movements, not exaggerated whereas eccentric movements are the opposite. I wanted to proof that cruelty does not necessarily has to be expressed only by intense movements on the stage. I wanted to give the audience the feeling of cruelty from different perspectives. In my performance, I showed this contrast through acting on different levels of body movements; from impulsive character throwing things away to very humble and calm.
Firstly, I tried to understand better the importance of movements in Theatre of Cruelty by reading carefully paragraphs of Artaud’s work Theatre and Its Doubles. Then I started watching videos about impulsive movements in Theatre of Cruelty and I found one exercise in which there is a visible escalation of movements. Here there is one of the links I used