82 acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators” (Bakhtin 1984:7), an issue that becomes threatening once it spills into regulated space and clashes with everyday society. Confrontations clarified that control over attention was inseparable from control over technology, leading to our final decision to use a projector and portable power source within the peep box. Mayhew’s assertion that, “spectacle is a toy to amuse the senses, and through them, lull the reason” (Mayhew 1840), was instructive here, as projection allowed us to produce illusion without institutional support, as while we’re given more to play with, using a projector, the visuals are not constrained to one box, and can be projected anywhere. Rather than overwhelm- ing the viewer, the projected image worked sensorially, confirming Caroline Radcliffe’s claim that projection enables immediacy while maintaining distance, where viewers are “not allowed physically past the boundary created between the audience space and the stage” (Radcliffe 2009). Within our peep box, projection intensified this boundary and reinforced the power of the frame while my body remained exposed as its operator. As our final performance happened on a stormy day, we were nervous of the peep box’s condition: however, the design held strong for the full performance before collapsing under the elements, a moment I mourned, having invested each morning in creating, maintaining, and naming it. Bakhtin states: “Freedom and equality are expressed in familiar blows, a coarse bodily contact” (Bakhtin 1984:265) – which I unfortunately experienced when my previous broken finder was stepped on by an audience member. Schechner’s notion of restored behaviour resonates here, the repeated, ritualised actions, even under pain or weather, constitute the performance’s conditions (Schechner 2004:324). The box, now destroyed, became a martyred emblem in this labour, becoming a striking final image in this fight against the world to put on a show. Throughout this process, we foregrounded the role of audience complicity and engagement. Bakhtin reminds us that carnival laughter is a tool of inversion: “The theme of mockery and abuse is almost entirely bodily and grotesque” (Bakhtin 1984:319). My injured finger or blasting the bugle at spectators was, in effect, a loyal enactment of this principle, as we forced the audience to participate in the absurdity of exposed labour. These playful acts were ritualised, instrumental, and deliberately reflexive. Kershaw’s notion that, “the force of these varied forms of resistance and transgression…may be generated in linked sources, in the reflexivities of performance” (Kershaw 2014:155), frames my portrayed madness, with the absurdism of Thing 3, as method rather than mere mischief, through awareness of the audience and the systemic inequities being critiqued.
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