Site and the City

Site (include brief rationale for choosing site) The majority of the high street. It is undecided yet but as a group we will either be scattered down the high street in a straight line from House of Fraser to just before the train lines, or in the shape of a cross around the area of the arches. We chose this site as represents the journey King Edward I and the body of his wife Eleanor took to London (From near the Cathedral to the train tracks, a direct link to London). Alternatively if we use the cross shape it is because it mimics the shape of the Eleanor Cross itself.

Critical and Contextual Engagement (justification of theorists/practitioners underpinning and influencing the performance so far) Slightly Cloudy Chance of Rain by Lee Miller and Jo Whalley: The idea of trading something for something else has influenced our piece, but rather than an object for an object like they did on the motorway, we want to trade flowers for love stories. Mark Auge: We are making a non-place (the high street) into a place by making it into a place where declarations of love occur. Deodry Heddon: Autobiographical – we are using our own and other people’s personal stories to create our piece. Joshua Soafer: Our piece is a piece of Live Art as it is created in the moment in front of the Audience, and only lasts for that moment, it is not a permanent fixture.

Description of Intended Performance (think about the relationship between performance, audience and performer/s) There are a few elements to our performance. Our audience are very much going to be incidental as opposed to invited. There will either be one, two or four of the group acting as town criers, shouting from different points in the city couple’s stories that we have gathered over the weeks leading up to the performance. If there is one they will be situated at the top of the high street by House of Fraser. If there are two the second will be situated at the bottom by the railroad tracks. If there are four the other two will be to the left and right of the high street, and the second person will be brought further up. With two people it will represent the final journey Queen Eleanor and Edward I made together from Lincoln to London, with four it will be in the shape of a cross to represent the Eleanor Crosses that Edward had built upon Eleanor’s death. In the middle of these town criers will be a simplified structure of an Eleanor Cross. It will be made of wood and one or two members of our group will be scratching into the wood names and dates of the couples who have given us their stories over the previous weeks. If there are not 4 town criers the remaining group members will be approaching people, focussing on couples in the high street asking them their stories, and they will then relay these back to the person/people at the sculpture so they can add them to the wooden cross. It is undecided how this information will be relayed. The relationship the audience has with the performance and performers will differ depending on how many town criers we choose to have. If we have one/two they will have a much more personal relationship as they will be interacting with us and seeing their stories become a part of our performance. Whereas if there are four it will be less personal/intimate but more immersive as they will be surrounded by the sound of these stories and each audience member may hear different parts of these stories more clearly than others, giving each audience member a different experience.

Methods, Modes, Technologies and Experiments (what are the practical explorations that have led to the outcome as it stands in week seven)   Due to late group formation and having trouble creating ideas this week was the first week we actually tried anything practical. Although prior to this we have been gathering stories, which confirmed to us couples were willing to give personal information away, including photographs. This week we created a smaller version of the Eleanor Cross with paper on the floor of the high street and wrote down names of couples on it, and the date they began their relationship. We also included a bit of historical information about the original cross on a separate piece of paper just below it. People were immediately interested in what we were doing, and came over to read the names and information we had already written down, as well as asking us to explain what we were doing. Actually creating a structure showed to us that it will be enticing for audience members, and we believe it will be even more so when it is a 3D, larger structure and we are etching into the wood itself. We also practically tried shouting as town criers, and the public immediately quietened down when one, and four criers we shouting to hear what they had to say. Although using four town criers seems a little threatening especially in close proximity, so our next step is to try it again but at different distances and volumes. Although we were already collection stories online, we decided to try in the high street, for the short time we did it, it was successful, although as stated before we do not know how we will relay this information back to the structure, or if we’ll use it at all, considering the fact we may have 4 town criers, and may gain enough stories by asking for them through friends and on social networks.

 

• Prior to this week’s session the group and I had a meeting to finalise the theme we wanted for our final peace that wasn’t to be changed.
• The meeting resulted in our final decision being a piece based on Romance and Love within Lincoln.
• We spoke also about three main starting point for possible sites that we could use.The square in front of the WW2 Memorial
• Buildings before the Ritz
• Before the Arch Ways
• We entered the studio at the beginning of the session to de-brief with Steve what our objectives were for today’s expedition and discussions.
• Once we had done so we set of to our previously discussed locations. The first one being THE ARCH WAYS. Which to our surprise there was already a piece of Live Art taking place by a busker and his guitar.
• He was soon joined by a group of other men that joined him in singing. This created a lovely joyous foundation for a bigger crowd to share the emotion. Yet once the son had stopped one of them group members turned to us and asked the group and me a rather personal and deep rooted question: DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SPENDING ETERNITY?
• Being a part of this performances audience I felt very uncomfortable and without answers because of how social unacceptable the question was.
• The group and I sparked a conversation about the way these men had built this piece and how unexpected and tense it was. This sense of unknowing had us wanting to use the same technique to create the same interesting, exciting atmosphere. (The washing line technique and other visual aids would be the ploy we will use to entice the passing audience.)
• Once we moved from this site we moved to our next one which was the MEMORIAL SQUARE.
• In this location we all saw it through the same view point, being the visual aids and where they are going to assessable. This location had flowers beds that were surrounded by metal railings about knee height. That were also surrounded by lampposts that would also be easy to attach the washing line and pin-ups to.
• Once we had evaluated this site we moved to our third site which we discussed in week three, SPEAKERS CORNER.
• This building is surrounded by tall bollards that work as support beans for the roof. These would be more than suitable to create a perfectly spacious area for us to create our performance in.
• Having such a solid view as a group on where we wanted to perform our work we were pretty closed off about anywhere else but we decided that we were going to give all decided destinations an opportunity to get us the best outcome performance.
• With this in mind when we got to the last location and we were taken aback by one of the older styled buildings what the history was.
• We went into the building to ask for the history of its existence and it turned out that the building was built to be the original train station in Lincoln. And it was for many years until they moved it to its existing location.
• The floor of the shop still had the imprints of the old train lines which continued into the next shop.
• As well as this incredible factor each building we went in that contained these tracks also harboured information posters that were either based on the previous train station but also about the historical setting for Lincoln in past eras.
• To our advantage one of these posters involved a love story from the mediaeval times between Edward I and Eleanor of Castile. This both relating to Lincoln highly due to it being royalty and prestigious. As well as it also being romance related.
• Whilst we were individually reading different snippets from the posters we met and elderly man named Collin. He passed by and explained that he can remember when it used to look like this.
• Once having a detailed discussion with Collin we asked him about his wife whom was with him. They were kind enough to tell us about how they met and what year.
• This information is key in relation to our piece and the research aspect of things.

COUPLES IN LINCOLN

. Collin and Kathy – 69 and 66 – 1968 they met – Married in 1970

. James and Alice – 2015 they met whilst both were touring with a theatre company

. Michael and Mark – 2012 – they met – 2014 – they got together – 2016 – cute memory from Herston Park

. Laura and Elliot – both 18 Years old – 1^st conversation – 2 hours long – 1^st date – Bells Café – clotted cream scones.

. Emma and Jeremy – September, 2014

. Corey and Louise – September, 2015

. Holly and Matteo – 29^th April, 2015 – 1^st date – Lincoln Pizza Express.

. Laura and Peter – 2011 – they met – 2014 – they got married with three children.

. Amy and Martin – 1^st March, 2015 – He would put love hearts in her drinks when she went to his cocktail bar.

• During the reading week (22^nd – 26^th February) I did some research on the site specific subject.
• The notes from the beginning of this blog are based on a document I found from a book names “Making a Performance” written by an actress, Katie Normington, and two others name Emma Govern, Helen Nicholson.

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• SCHECKNER – Environmental theatre works through creating a living in styled performance.
• A style of performance based on the natural state of everyday life whilst having an alternative meaning.
• Polish Director – GROTOWISKI – Created living environments through witnesses.
• GROTOWISKI – “Dr.Faustus” – His perception of the table scene, his audience members were seated within the scene, around the table.
• This is an example of how his audience would witness his workings. They would live that specific moment of his performance with his actors. They would be just as involved within the making of the scene just without dialogue. Mute characters.
• GROTOWISKI’S style of environmental theatre gives the witness’s a sense of community. If not because they are being involved within a situation with others both actors and the other witnesses. But the community created for the witnesses alone because they are all just as on edge and apprehensive as each other. This gives them a sense of security that they aren’t alone.
• The reading itself refers to this ‘community’ as similar to the spectators in a religious situations – VICERS vs WORSHIPERS. – Due to the living moment that is lived by all within that situation.
• TRADITIONAL THEATRE IS AS FOLLOWS:
• ON STAGE – INSIDE –the living moment
• AUDIENCE – OUTSIDE – only spectators to the event.

 

• Within Living Environment Theatre the boundaries set in place by traditional staged performances are completely banished. The audience are invited in to closely witness the ‘living happenings’.
• LIVING SPACES – A techniques used frequently within the workings of a theatre company called ‘RECKLESS SLEEPERS’
• RECKLESS SLEEPERS group was founded in Nottingham in 1989. Their works are a combination of all the following:
• DURATION PIECES – On going performances that are detailed/repetitive.
• SOUND INSTILATIONS – Performances based on the sense of smell to create an outcome.
• EXBIDITIONS – Travelling performances that include more techniques such as activities to engage the audiences to focus and think about the topic of the entire piece.
• OUT DOOR PERFROMANCE – Performance that involve all of the above but outdoors.
• One of their very famous pieces was when the group were commission to create a piece of living theatre based on ‘The Last Supper’.
• The groups research Brief was to elaborate the phrase ‘Eating your words’
• To gather information and practical evidence the group took to the streets and read text from pieces of paper. Once they had read the entire piece of text they would move onto the next after putting the previously read one into their mouth.
• They continued this process until they had no other room spare to talk their own words. This thought of having the words but not the voice gave the group a solid stimulus.
• They looked at convicts that had been sentence to either be executed or live a life on Death Row. The autobiography’s that were written but convicts were used by RECHLESS SLEEPRS, the exact words from the convict’s mouth and their case numbers, table number, and a number with no significance.
• The result performance was performed in GLASGOW at the Tramway Theatre, 2005. All 39 audience members were given an invitation to a dinner party at this location. Before they entered they all received a table number, an incident number and number.
• The audience were escorted to their specific seats. An actor dressed as a chef would appear and shout a number across the hall. That person with that number would be fed 1 dish from the three optional: CHOCOLATE CAKE, COTTAGE CHESE, and LIVER AND ONIONS.
• The dishes were specific to the performance due to these three items were the exact things that Death Row occupant Lennie White asked for as his last meal before his execution in 1997.
• LYN GARDNER- a Drama and English graduate from Kent university – Gave a review of this piece in which she mentioned that “it gave a voice to the voiceless” This being due to the actually words wrote or said by the convict before their death.
• She spoke of how the imaginary words spoken buy some of the actors would be relatable to that of those unfortunate souls who were murdered by the chemical explosion Hiroshima.
• These aspects of a performance, use of imagination, are created by many different techniques: A director’s encouragement of using non-performing throughout the research and rehearsal process.
• Also by the reportage and down playing of emotion within the piece, deliberately just reading the text from a written script.
• As well as emphasising the game playing from each actor, they also play up to the audience. They continuously refer to the audience as themselves: “I don’t know what to say this.”
• This leading to an all matter of questions:
• ARE THEY THEMSELVES?
• ARE THEY INVENTED PERSONA’S AT ALL?
• ARE THEY MOMENTARILY REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PEOPLES WHO’S WORDS THEY SPEAK?
• This performance was performed at the TRAMWAY THEATRE in GLASGOW, Scotland. This buildings history is as it sounds. It was a building created to be a tram shed on the edge of GLASGOW. This building was also used by PETER BROOKS when his performance of “MAHABHARATA” toured.
• The building itself is a quintessential industrial due to its –
• CONCRETE FLOORING
• EXPOSED BRICK WORK
• DUCTING- Air ventilation systems
• GIRDERS – Support beams for a structure.
• During the performance the tables themselves were cluttered with wine and food – this heightens the irony of the building due to the unhinged effect of the derelict building.
• The Last Supper performance it’s self-acted as a realisation for both the actors and the audience. That both fact and fiction can be equally unreliable as each other. That history’s stable entity is and can be banished.
• From this reading and research I gathered the knowledge that a site specific performance doesn’t need to have a solid link to the topic of the performance. It simply has to be mouldable to work with the topic.

In the morning, I met up with my group members to discuss and reflect on out ideas. We decided we ill  be doing an installation piece (Not per formative) based around the audiences romance life’s. We’ll be discussing with the audience about their relationships, and how certain areas in Lincoln may bring back certain memories relating to their relationship. We have concentrated on involving visual art such as, a washing line with images of the couples hanging, posted notes describing how certain areas of Lincoln remind them of their partner, creating paintings to express how they feel about their partner and a placard advertising our aims towards the audience.

In the session with Steve, we began with a 4-5 minute  video explaining “What is live art” by Joshua Sofaer, with him standing on a busy street in London. He describes live art in the sense that the actor “chooses to make work directly in front of the audience”. An interesting point he makes is that when a site specific performance is taking place “the city itself becomes a gallery”.  Towards the end of the video, there is a comic aspect where he turns around and there’s a large hole in his trousers showing his bum. Next Steve told us he wants to arrange schedules for each group, for rehearsals, meetings and tutorials.

Steve sent each group out to explore the city center, for performance ideas. This was really helpful as we came across some interesting areas for the performance.  We’ve considered setting the performance near a building close to speaker’s corner because it in a busy section of the high street, giving us to opportunity to appeal to a wide range of audience members.. Also we have looked at the old train station, which now is a cooking utilities store called Lakeland. The station became particularly interesting when we met an Old couple, explaining the history behind the station. Considering our performance is based around relationships, we used to opportunity to ask about their relationship (E.G, how they met, how long there we’re together). It was really interesting, because the station was a significant factor to there relationship when they were younger, as the man traveled on the train everyday to visit her in Newark. After this, we headed back to meet classroom to reflect on each groups ideas.

 

This is one location we considered using for our performance. We considered having a washing line hung from lamppost, to the other.

Below are images of the old train station, situated inside the Lakeland store.

 

Here is an image of the building we’re considering to use for our performance.

We are thinking about placing the washing line idea, hanging images and information of the couples around the pillars.

 

Psycho-geography. Palimpsest. Rhizome. Scriptotheropy.

Words, actions and basically, things I had never heard of until a month ago when I encountered this module. Who knew that pretending not to see and looking away when someone trips over in public or realising that you’re walking in the wrong direction so you pretend that someone rung you on your phone to go the correct way are actual recognised ‘things’? I always knew about anthropology but it never occurred to me that these everyday occurrences and social norms (known as tacit agreements) are actually a gateway into viewing how humans interact and ultimately, live.

I never thought that within a drama course there would be so much emphasis on psychology, sociology and anthropology. Site Specific performance has made me think about everyday life in a completely different way.  In some ways, a lot like Erving Goffman’s own thoughts who believed that ‘normal’ life was a lot like a spectacle which is explored throughout his first and most famous book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) which I am currently reading. This idea of people, constantly performing is not however, a new idea by any stretch: Shakespeare himself did in fact famously write in As You Like It that:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players”

Furthermore, this idea of people constantly performing without realising is also a continued study with figures such as Richard Schechner still writing about it to this day. I am more vigilant, looking up instead of down on my phone constantly or ignoring the outside world with my headphones in. It’s interesting to people watch, to see how different people interact with each other and what can happen within the public space.

So, what does all this mean? What does the relevance of Goffman’s, Schechner’s and even Shakespeare’s theories have to do with doing a performance within the city? Well in short, our idea!

Mine, Joe, Lucy and Emma’s idea is less about the actual city and more about the people that are part of it. Within Mike Pearson’s book Site Specific Performance (2010):

“Dartington artist and academic Sue Palmer comments ‘…it’s not just about a place, but the people who normally inhabit and use that place. For it wouldn’t exist without them.” (8, 2010,).

This is exactly what our group are wanting to really encourage. We wanted to look into the ideas of authenticity and communication. Within the workshop session, we went into the city to our chosen site which is a small gathering of benches in the middle of the high street overlooking the canal. We decided to eavesdrop at people’s conversations and try to gather as much verbatim material as we physically could. There aren’t many (if any!) full conversations that we recorded or heard. It was mainly just small sentences or parts of long sentences that we managed to hear before they walked away. Some of my personal favourites were:

“Oh there’s swans there. Massive aint it?” …. “Yeah it’s a bloody nightmare innit!” … “He’s letting me have it for 8 quid. Y’know, it’s been going for the past 8 years, int doing too bad”

We got some strange looks and people in neighbouring cafes soon began to realise what we were up too. We even got asked outright what on earth we were doing. In its own way, just us sat there in such close proximity manically scribbling down people’s conversations was a performance in itself as people who noticed what we were doing, watched and became an unintentional audience drawn in by our strange behaviour.

We plan to go into the same space on a number of days this week separately or in pairs and get some more conversations recorded. Then, we are going to write up a script using the snippets of conversations we have gathered. We are then planning to go back to the same space and recording different people to read parts of our script so we have an even wider range of people within the space. This is to create palimpsest (layers) of the performance. The last layer of the performance will be on performance day where we intend to mime over the top of the recordings that we had collected through the previous weeks.

I’m feeling really confident about our piece especially as we have so much theory to back it up with.

Until next week!

Holly M