Fancy an audience caugh?

While having the opportunity of viewing various performance artists' footage yesterday I realised that audiences have an excessive desire to caugh during shows. It is something very common in theatres and cinemas, and although most may claim that they simply have a cold or an allergy, it is clear that audiences ( I won't say 'we', as I can't recall caughing during a performance) embrace this loud and germ-expelling act in moments of silence. Silence may be eerie at times for many. Coughs wouldn't be noticed that much, but they always happen to be in moments of silence. 

Does a spectator say: 'Come on, what are you showing next?', or does he think: 'Ok, I'll make myself heard now that noone is talking and I might just get a response from another lad'? Or is it simply that a considerate spectator coughs at a moment when nothing is happening on stage and the rest feel free to do it as well after the first one? Whatever the case, audience caughs are undoubtedly part of theatre and performance.


The video recordings I viewed yesterday just underlined this phenomenon. In the beginning I thought it was part of the show but as I went on watching different shows I realised that it was not quite so. As my work examines the role of spectators within a performance and their degree of activity in a piece, I am going to try and incorporate a caughing member of the audience in my next piece.

I did some recordings this morning and played with the projection on a black screen. Dark colour screens seem to absorb colours in a such a way that images appear more realistic as opposed to the strong and contrasting colours projected on a white surface. Czech set design artist Josef Svoboda, who contributed a great deal to modern and contemporary use of light and projections, widely used dark purple screens, claiming this was the best colour to project on.