Wheaton Words
The senses I believe received the most stimulation Saturday night were: sight, hearing, and touch. Aside from the popcorn and candy provided during the intermission, I also thought that the sense of taste secondarily contributed to the audience's experience. As Professor JBK began the first performance of the night, he poured himself a nice cold beer. He then proceeded to pour his personal thoughts and intimate accounts of a past relationship out onto the stage in such a manner that for a second I thought I was listening to him speak at an old bar. The tone in his voice was so calm yet stumped and with each time he sipped his beer I felt myself becoming more and more invested in his story. Other poetic works relied on the combination of precise syntax and diction to engulf the audience in the story. The use of repetition and of long pauses in a couple of the poems created suspense and time for certain occurrences within each performer's account to form into images in the minds of the audience.
Along with my sense of hearing, I believe that my sense of sight helped me understand each performer's tragedy and their current states or attitudes toward the situation.
Watching one performer run onto the stage from the Chapel doors and another stand up onto the pews made clear the setting of each story. Lastly, I want to mention a few things about touch demonstrated during the event. While I noticed that several students' poems or proses involved an account of some sort of inappropriate, physical behavior done towards them, I also noticed that a few times all the performers sat in a circle on stage while holding hands. I wonder if the times the group gathered together was symbolic of the group combating the performer's fear of touch after the incident. Though I know I could never fully understand the physical and emotional pain each performer endured at the time of the incidents and each day following, I do know that through my sight, hearing, touch, and taste, I was able to empathize in each situation. My senses allowed me to step out of my world and into the world of my fellow peers.
I find it very impressive that in performances such as this, be they theater or artistic expression of real world experiences, the audience is meant to be transported out of their own lives and into that of the performers. What I find most interesting is that the audience really only uses two of its senses to have this out of body experience. We see and hear the performers. It is a rare performance in which the audience is physically touched by the performers and they are rarely close enough to be smelled. I do not think I have ever heard of an audience tasting what the performers are tasting. For example a truly integrative experience would be one in which the audience all share a beer with JBK.Yet this is not the case. We are left with our senses of hearing and sight for most artistic performances.
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