My friends’ impressions:

Friend A (Stayed for the entire event)

He was unsure of how to act during the free-roaming “gallery” portions. He was expecting a much more straightforward theatrical performance with an audience bank and a narrative-based piece of sorts.

Similar to some of the other reflections that have been posted, my friend didn’t catch the themes/topics of many of the pieces (Carina’s Syrian refugee performance went way over his head, to name one).

He loved Omar’s performance. This isn’t a big shocker. He likes puns. It’s why we’re friends.

My friend refused to put his head in Bailey’s box. (I will never not love typing that sentence.)

I asked my friend whether he’d recommend the showing to another friend, and he said “Yeah, but they’d have to hit the bong pretty hard beforehand.”
… Frankly, I can’t argue there.

Friend B (Left at about 4:30 because he’s a philistine)

He was quite resistant to the very top of the show, especially being led down the hallway while blindfolded. “I kept thinking they were going to slam me into a wall!” That would have been a pretty powerful choice to start our showing with breaking their noses.

My friend heard most of Sophia’s story and thought it was hilarious. He asked me why she wrote that story about me. I told him, basically, that it was in response to some of my performance objects relating to my job-hunt anxieties. He said that made more sense than his original assumption, which was that she just really didn’t like me. (I hope that isn’t true, Sophia!)

Again, like other people have mentioned, my friend had trouble listening to some of the videos on the iPads.

My friend mentioned Bailey’s box (heh) but was too scared of the “glowing demon boy trapped inside” to stick his head inside.

Eventually, my friend peaced out because he received a txt from another friend about playing Super Smash Bros. in my common room. Guys, I just don’t see how we can compete with video games. We should focus on making those instead of making theatre. It’s a growth industry.

I asked him if he would recommend devised theatre to a friend as well, and he said “Maybe if some friend of mine was looking for some very specifically weird activity or for some horrendously bad first-date location.”
…Yeesh. That was a little harsh, Friend B.

My thoughts:

I think that Bailey’s box (heh) had its impact diminished by setting it in the middle of a crowded, busy room. I think that if we brought in 14 (or however many holes) people at a time to a side room with only the box in it, there would have been more buy-in from the audience and a more impactful experience for them.

As we discussed in class, we could have done a better job with considering the layout of the pieces. Even if we don’t go in a direction of more carefully crafting the audience’s exposure to the pieces, we could do some more logistical thinking to not put, say, two loud pieces right next to each other and to observe and try to predict the typical audience movement pattern around the room. — OH SHIT we should slap motion trackers on each audience member when the enter the gallery so we can analyze their movement patterns and see which pieces they gravitated towards and which they skipped as well as how long they spent near each! (Analytics is the future of devised theatre. Don’t fight it.)

Emerging Themes

• Writing in obscure fashions.

John’s video  “Remember Me, Please.” featuring the writing in reverse. (5/50 Assignment)

Sophia’s “Dismemberment” object (5/50, Cosmogeny story)

Sophia’s “Why Are You Crying” object (5/50, Why Are You Crying story)

Gabrielle’s objects 1-12 from “Easter, 1996” (the cut-out letters we rearranged together)

John’s “You & Me” story objects 1 (The World & Us) and 10 (Let Go)

• Creation Myths

Molly’s 5/50 Story #3 – Adam & Eve

Molly’s 5/50 Story – The Origin of Love

Multiple Objects from Sophia’s Cosmogeny Story (ex nihilo, in the beginning, etc.)

(Bit of a stretch here) Omar’s “The Land Before Time” story just based on the name alone.

• Music & Songs (perhaps too broad of a theme)

Carina’s bad singing performance in “Failure” (5/50)

Maddie singing “Human Again” + Carina’s juxtaposition piece involving the masks, the music, etc.

Omar’s lecture + show-don’t-tell piece on music reading (ELI5 + Show-don’t-tell)

Maddie’s lecture on chords and jazz (ELI5)

The Titanic music from Carina’s story (5/50)

Kimmy’s Beyonce-related story (5/50)

Phoebe’s 4th Story: “Sing us a Song” (5/50)

Bailey’s spooky music/chanting (Five Senses)

• Our Self-Image Changing from Child to Adult

Maddie’s Hunger Games Story (5/50)

My Job Application Video Pieces + Sophia’s juxtaposition (5/50, juxtaposition)

Carina’s decision to research the Syrian refugee crisis (ELI5, Show-don’t-tell)

Omar’s Adventures in the Osaka Red Light District (5/50)

Kimmy’s “Ripped from the Womb”, “A Summer of Sisterhood” stories (5/50)

Gabrielle’s “Easter, 1996” story (5/50)

• Self-Reflection/Self-Recognition (again, perhaps too broad)

My family’s history of alcoholism, my anxiety disorder (5/50)

Paige’s story about  OCD (5/50)

Molly’s story “Realizing Tourettes” (5/50)

Carina’s story “Failure” (5/50)

Maddie’s story “Dead Squirrel” (aka “Hunger Games” again) (5/50)

Bailey, “Brothers” (5/50)

Omar, “What’s in a Name? Puns, probably.” (5/50)

Kimmy’s 5 Senses Piece and her Show-don’t-tell piece.

____________________________________________________

2-3 things of mine which interest me:

My “Juxtaposition” performance piece, the letter from my dad (5/50), and my job application videos (5/50) interest me the most because they all explore what drives my anxiety and insecurity … and sharing that stuff with other people makes me feel significant.

_______________________________________________________

3-5 things of others which interest me:

Omar’s beat poetry “Juxtaposition” performance, Bailey’s “Show-don’t-tell” performance, Carina’s “Juxtaposition” piece, and Paige’s object in her “The Interestings” story entitled “Jules Jacobsen, looking back.” (5/50).

Why do these interest me? Omar’s writing and delivery are incredible and he deserves a TV show, Bailey’s placement of the audience as a vital part of his performance was really stunning, Carina’s experiential piece in the AMT blew me away, and Paige’s written piece struck a chord with me because I’ve been considering law school but I’m worried I’d become that man telling the story. (So, in short, I remember them the most vividly.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here today to tell you all the story of the life of one of the most original men with such an unoriginal name: Gregor MacGregor.

Gregor MacGregor was one of the greatest con men in history, amassing over £1.3 million in bond-market frauds over his lifetime (1786-1845), which would be about £3.6 billion today.

What was MacGregor’s trick to swindling so many people in the early nineteenth century? Upon returning to London in 1820 after an eight-year stint in the Americas, Gregor MacGregor invented a country.

But let’s set the story up properly with some background on our hero. When he was 16, Gregor joined the British army and was seconded (lent) to the Portuguese army where he fought
against Spain before sailing across the Atlantic in 1812 in search of adventure. He landed in Venezuela and joined with Simón Bolívar’s freedom fighters, later marrying Bolívar’s cousin. MacGregor worked his way up to the rank of brigadier general in the Venezuelan republican army after he organized a mass escape through a Spanish siege thanks to a French privateer while fighting for Colombian independence. MacGregor captured Amelia Island off the coast of Spanish Florida with a small force funded by wealthy Americans. These Indiana Jones-esque adventures are all the things he didn’t make up!

Upon his return to London with his wife in 1820, MacGregor started a whole different kind of adventure. He claimed that a Native American king had named him the “cazique” – or Prince – of “Poyais,” a land located near the Black River in modern-day Honduras. MacGregor claimed Poyais, an entirely fictional nation, covered eight million acres and was rich in natural resources but in need of development. That would require both cash and manpower. MacGregor persuaded people not only to invest their savings in the bonds of a non-existent government, but also convinced 250 people to emigrate to Poyais.

How did he accomplish this? Part of his success was due to his brilliant salesmanship. MacGregor got his interviews in the national papers, he wrote and published a book under a false name which confirmed MacGregor’s promises of friendly natives and plenty of natural resources. Another part of his success was due to the chaotic financial markets of the time, where foreign government debt offered a higher rate of return which attracted greedy investors who didn’t take the time to double-check MacGregor’s claims.

In late 1822 two ships carried around 250 settlers – including a banker, doctors, and military commanders – across the Atlantic to Poyais. On arrival, they found no port, no town and no roads. At first, they thought they must be in the wrong place. But the settlers stayed and tried to make the best of it. This didn’t work out. Six months later, a passing ship saw their camp and rescued the remaining settlers. Two-thirds of the “Poyers” (as the settlers liked to be called) had died. Word of all this reached London and the British Navy intercepted the five other boats that had already set sail. By the time that authorities tried tracking down MacGregor, he had already fled to France.

Once MacGregor landed in France, he set about constructing the exacting same scheme, raising money from rich creditors in exchange for Poyais government bonds, and convincing 60 French settlers to get on a boat to sail to the fictional country. However, the French government grew suspicious when they received 60 passport filings for travel to a fictional country. The government stopped the ship in the harbor when it was already full of would-be settlers. Once word got out that the Prince of Poyais was a fraud, MacGregor went into hiding but was caught and imprisoned. He stood trial for fraud in a French court along with his financial partners from the banks. What happened next? MacGregor was acquitted! He beat the charge!

Sensing that he’d better get the hell out of dodge, MacGregor sailed back over to Scotland where a few years later he tried to sell even more people on the idea of Poyais! It didn’t work this time. So what did Gregor do? He sailed back to Venezuela where he was made a citizen, reinstated as a general, received a military pension appropriate for an officer of his rank, and died in relative comfort.

After reading about MacGregor for a while, I actually started rooting for him. He’s a scoundrel, but he’s my scoundrel … like Han Solo but with South American independence movements instead of the Rebel Alliance. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to swindle some stuffy London aristocrats out of their money? Screw those imperialists!

But then I remembered that he conned 250 people into sailing halfway across the world on false promises and that all but 60 of the settlers died before rescue.

Alas, history has all but forgotten Gregor MacGregor. He pulled what is possibly the greatest swindle of all time, multiple times, and his story has single-handedly made me believe that anyone can accomplish great things in life with just a little imagination and no regard for human life.

SOURCES:
The Land That Never Was by David Sinclair (Da Capo Press, 2004) – Available on Amazon

http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21568583-biggest-fraud-history-warning-professional-and-amateur-investors

http://www.cracked.com/article_15892_the-5-ballsiest-con-artists-all-time.html