Think Tank Thursday

Blood Lust

...from an audience perspective.

I have mentioned many ways stage blood itself can be difficult (stage lights altering color, safe for skin/mouth, washability, sticky, slick, etc.). Physical aspects aside, blood is an attention demanding effect and if not given due respect it will distract or derail the story instead of enhancing it.

First, blood is red. Sometimes bright, sometimes dark. To be over simplific, our eyes go "Shiny object!"
Try for yourself. Look up and note the first color your eyes notice. Every time (unless you cheat!) Your eyes will go to the brightest color first then scan from there.
This may be something from our survival days; poisonous insects and animals are almost always brightly colored, life giving berries and fruits are bright colored, fire and heat glow brightly. It may also be due to the higher frequency of light demanding priority processing in our minds. It may be a combo.

Besides color, blood itself, is a warning of danger. It's never a good sign to be bleeding. We need that blood and our brain freaks out when it starts losing some! When other people are bleeding our brain equally freaks out, it is analyzing how the bleeding may have happened and working out ways to prevent it from occurring to us. A large part of our survival and dominance as a species is associative learning.

An audience watching a play is no different; hell the goal of any play is to teach the audience something. How not to bleed is a gimme. There aren't many people who have been stabbed in the stomach, after watching what happens, real or symbolic, they won't need the experience to know that it sucks.

The overall point is that blood has its own story and objective. It sends the audiences minds to places that often don't involve the play. You have to harness this nature of blood to serve your needs. If blood is out too early or long, the audience will miss important dialogue and action that explains or justifies its presence.

Blood revealed at the right moment, just near the point of a characters death for example (the act and portrayal of dying is just as interesting to the mind as blood), will greatly enhance the moment. An over abundance of blood in a comedy will push the mind past the discomfort envelope into humor.

On paper the blood effect may only appear on one page in one small section. That small area, however, demands the detail of an entire scene. If done effectively that small moment can be a pivotal point. If done ineffectively it can sour the entire show.

Greg