Wheaton Words

By Anonymous -

Wheaton Words was an extremely emotional, stimulating and sensual event. Each performer's experience was portrayed in either a poetic or prose manner and utilized the senses to convey the extent of each experience. The details and realism of each account has made Wheaton Words my favorite Wheaton event yet. While each performer expressed a deep, rooted, and maybe even hidden story about themselves, each account was unique in regards to the emotions it evoked in the audience, the feelings in which it manifested in the performer, and in the senses the actual performances utilized.

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.  

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 26, 2015 at 7:59 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amidst the Pandemic

By -
Image
I think having the opportunity to take Smells and Bells and then experiencing a worldwide pandemic came with good timing. Oftentimes, we’re so rushed to get from one one place to another that we miss out on what happens around us. We’re so accustomed to the lifestyle of being busy that it has become the norm for many of us. However, the pandemic has forced us to slow down. We’re now appreciating everything that we had previously taken for granted and noticing things in our surroundings that we have never noticed before.  Take this quarantining/social distancing as an opportunity to be more aware of what you experience through the senses. I don’t think my senses have necessarily heightened over the past 5 weeks, but I am actively making the choice to pay more attention to what I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I like going on nature/mindfulness walks and basking in the sunshine out in my backyard. This morning, I could hear a faint noise from the wind, hear the birds chirpin...
Read more

Food in the Afterlife

By -
Image
In Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions , Perez talks of Ashabi and her grandchildren providing food offerings to their ancestors. This immediately reminded me of the practice of food sacrifice in early China. I've taken Chinese language classes for about 7 years now and in one of the lessons, we learned about food as well as the history of food in Chinese culture. Ashabi and her grandchildren would give food offerings to their ancestors every day. This included nine beverages (coffee, liquor, and water mixed with sugar and molasses) and nine square pieces of coconut topped with red palm oil and guinea pepper. The offerings would also include whatever food was dropped on the ground. In their house, food dropping on the floor signified more than it would in common American households. It signified that the ancestors wanted that food and had willingly made it fall to the floor. They also used dishware that had been chipped which was...
Read more