Trying to understand phenomenology is hard! This is why I wanted to this blog post in two halves. This analytical approach isn't something you should try to do on it's own, it is better to use this approach to push your analysis into another analytical approach, such as semiotics.
To understand this approach, you must learn how to use it. If you are analysing an object onstage, you must look at how you react to it, without using many adjectives...
...yeah, I know!
Generally, if you eat a lemon, you would say it is 'sour' or 'bitter', but this wouldn't be a entirely phenomenological approach. You could say, however, how you reacted to the tasting of the lemon, even if you just make a noise. The next challenge is to transform this reaction into language, as close as you possibly can to the real reaction. Avoid using adjectives as these are only signifiers to your emotions or reactions, rather than the correct way to describe this.
If you are to write about an object and your phenomenological approach to it, you would describe how you felt around it, what it feels like in weight, texture, the smell of it, the taste of it, everything to do with your senses that you instinctively react with.
There is no right or wrong answer to your own phenomenological approach and this makes it difficult to be of use to other people around you that read your phenomenological analysis of a performance, however, it is very useful in conjunction with other analytical approaches. Finding how you react to something, then getting into the nitty gritty of what this means and the semiotic approach to it is a far more effective way of analysing a performance. Nevertheless, you shouldn't dismiss phenomenology, but don't get too bogged down into the meaning of it.
I could go on and on about how to write about the phenomenological approach to something, but I find that all research on phenomenology is very repetitive. In a sentence, phenomenology is the build up to a very effective analysis of a performance, and can be used in conjunction with other analytical approaches.
I know this is a very hard subject, and it can relate to many other industries and subjects of interest, but it is very hard to discuss this without over-complicating. If you have any questions at all, please leave a comment, email me at sophiimaria@gmail.com or tweet me (@SophiiMaria), and I will try to answer your question as much as I can; after all I am here to help you understand! If you have any examples of this, please leave a comment or if you just want to say hi! again, please leave a comment.
:D
