Bryony Kimmings Solo Perfomance:

Friday 30 March 2012:

Bryony Kimmings: 7 Day Drunk:

When Bryony Kimmings was growing up, she thought the pub was a magical place. Aged 12, she drank so much that she passed out and soiled herself. Kimmings is not an alcoholic, but she admits to a "problematic relationship" with alcohol. Like many artists, she thinks there is an association between creativity and drinking. And so, for seven days – under controlled conditions and with the input of a GP, a neuroscientist and a psychologist – Kimmings drank steadily between the hours of 10am and 7pm, and played creatively, dancing and singing and engaging in Blue Peter-style craft sessions. The experiment was filmed and segments are used in this show, which is performed totally sober. Kimmings, who had a big hit at the festival last year with Sex Idiot, gets away with a great deal through sheer force of personality and a highly developed sense of play. She is a singular and persuasive presence on stage who positions herself somewhere on the cusp between live art, cabaret and a retro happening. (Gardener,2011)

The Way Bryony's performance was made reminded me of the reading 'Suicide-Site Guide to the City,' because before the show began she went round introducing herself the certain audience members and asking if they would like to participate later in the show.  Of Course she didn't tell them when or what they were doing.  

This performance was held that the Soho Theater. The setting was very intimate as the audience was seated round tables as ones you would see at a cocktail party. The stage setting was simple, set up with three main areas, a table in the middle and two table/chairs on either side. During the performance the artist broke the fourth wall in which she came into the audience and danced round the room also having an area in the corner in which she sang and played a small keyboard instrument. The performance was made as a result of an experiment that was carried out over 7 days in which the artist tried to find out whether alcohol enhanced creativity. Over the 7 day period Bryony was constantly made to drink large amounts of alcohol with her blood alcohol level (BAL) to remain at 0.8%. This level is the level of being slightly tipsy.


She was monitored regularly by a psychiatrist and a GP to make sure that she was okay to continue the experiment. She was also reviewed by audience members who watched how she acted during her time in this room. Byrony Kimmings performance refereed to moments of her up-bringing and using her own memories to tell the story. She used elements of intermediality in the performance to show pieces of her experiment. Before the show started she had selected 4 audience members that where roughly her height and weight to participate in the performance in which she later chose one to undergo the experiment she went through and getting her to drink the cocktail of vodka and cranberry juice that she drank during her experiment in order to reach the 0.8% (BAL).

By watching her performance it showed me how even though there is audience participation it is still a solo piece in that the person telling the story is using their own history and practically the participants are more like props in that they play other people that are in the artists life. In a way it is like documentary theater in that she documents her life and replays it back for the audience. The performance included text, dance, song and even elements of media. At the end of her performance she concluded that alcohol does aid creativity because all the songs she sang during the performance were written while under the influence of alcohol and this performance was also made.

This is the report detailing her experiment:

http://www.bryonykimmings.com/downloads/7_Day_Drunk_Report.pdf

This is a clip of the experiment documentation that was played on the screen at the back during the performance:

http://vimeo.com/ignorethisfilms/7daydrunk1 http://vimeo.com/ignorethisfilms/7daydrunkclip2

http://yourbrainondrugs.net/2012/03/bryony-kimmings-7-day-drunk-at-soho-theatre/


7 DAY DRUNK is a show created by Bryony Kimmings during a 7 day alcohol experiment, inspired by the historical links between artists and mind enhancing drugs. Bryony Kimmings is NOT an alcoholic. But she’s had a rocky relationship with booze. It seems it’s intrinsically linked to her confidence as an artist and her most genius and most hideous creations. From Jackson Pollock to Amy Winehouse, from Oscar Wilde to Charlie Sheen, everyone’s on something but why?! From the Total Theatre award-winning creator of Sex Idiot comes a hilarious and moving one-woman show investigating the historical links between artists and mind enhancing drugs.

2 parts song and dance routine, 1 part breakdown with a twist of sobering reality for good measure, the show follows Bryony as she cracks open her own creative psyche with the help of a film-maker, a team of scientists, carers and an American IT expert. Created solely from material made during a seven-day experiment, in which Bryony was kept in various states of scientific drunkenness. Performed sober.

Bryony Kimmings website:

http://www.bryonykimmings.com/home.html



BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Casper (2012) 'Bryony Kimmings: 7 day drunk at the Soho Theater,' http://yourbrainondrugs.net/2012/03/bryony-kimmings-7-day-drunk-at-soho-theatre/ (Accessed 4 April 2012)
Gardner, L. (2011) '7 Day Drunk Review,' The Guardian
Kimmings, B. www.bryonykimmings.com/home.html (Accessed 4 April 2012)