‘muster page habit’ engages with questions of speaking in public, of being on show, of being heard, and displaying coded behaviour. Deriving elements from Bell’s Standard Elocutionist and online dictionaries, the performance text stitches fragments, word lists, letter, and gestures into a display of awkward flapping interrupted by gnomic expulsions. Standing on a low plinth the performer listens to instructions and phrases on headphones and then repeats these verbally or physically toward the audience.
The work was developed for the ‘plinths’ element of PW12: Performance Writing weekend at Arnolfini, Bristol on Saturday May 5th 2012.
Loops a carrying strap, or cocktail device
consisting of tatty scrub
to support a broken limb.
Resembling ancient shorthand,
more grayish-white than needed,
insufficient words in a set text.
Fling or be flung, a knitted cuff for identification
with figured pattern printed on one side;
plain white under another shirt.
To listen and sew with game
hitting binding like a madrigal
(also to correspond with the instance
of being gradually displayed).
The sameness of data items in harmony.
