Output details

Peep

Peep took place within a constructed confessional booth inside a theatre studio at York St John University. Participants were invited four weeks prior to the event to write a confessional letter, a series of sins recorded on paper and were asked bring it with them into the performance space and perform them without revealing the confession. The research develops upon Claire Hind’s work into conceptual adaptation, considering the confessional booth as a repetitive space of adaptations relating to a Lacanian reading of the death drive, using and adapting a peeping Tom scene from a David Lynch film (Blue Velvet, 1986).

Hind’s research question asks: Whose confession it is within the performance of Peep? And: How do players choose to perform their confession without revealing the ‘sin’ or content of their confession? The findings reveal a new development of deep play as state that Hind has termed ‘trans-deep’; relating to Lacan’s ‘Symbolic, Imaginary and Real’ (Žižek, 2006: 9). Lacan’s term the ‘big Other’ (Žižek, 2006: 9) is also explored and the research found that participants got in touch with their ‘uncanny’ external voice; a strange and guttural series of utterances and sounds they were surprised by. Hind’s research has developed a typology of complex play strategies which detail how players engaged in a creative mode of dark play where unspoken contents of the confessional letter drove the performance approach into deep play. The strategies also reveal how the players transformed from powerless to powerful performers whist playing through vertiginous states. The research also reveals that players engaged on a symbolic level as if performing for a big Other. Hind’s research findings into Dark and Deep play have been explored cited by Fenemore in the Intellect book publication of The Rehearsal (2012).