The Odds Are Stacked: A Reflection

Our performance at the grandstand on the first of May 2013 was one that I was really looking forward too despite the fact that I was very concerned about the performance as a whloe. I had had no sleep the night before and because of the nature of out piece we had never been able to go through the whole thing start to finish with much ease and everybody had so many ideas that it was rare for us to get through an entire rehearsal without one of us thinking of something to add in, or wanting to change something. The performance itself was one that we had spent weeks and weeks changing and adjusting in order to create a piece that all five of us would be proud of and felt passionate about. Throughout the entire process we kept asking ourselves how our performance related to the site as we felt as a group that this was the most important aspect of the entire module and if we found no meaning within the site to try and convey to an audience then the site itself would be wasted. Mike Pearson states in Why Performance? that performance can be ‘a means of exposition and representation,’ ((Mike Pearson Why Performance? 2011)) and the idea of exposing a history that had seemingly been long forgotten by Lincoln itself became a very important aspect of the project that we didn’t want to forget. We also kept in mind that we were actually representing the grand stand in a way that as far as we were aware had not been explored before.
First of all we hit a number of hitches in the pre set up for the performance. Due to the large area that we had to cover we had decided to create large sheets of newspaper that we would then put on the wall. However some of these sheets had become quite screwed up and we therefore had to use single sheets of newspaper to cover the walls that took a lot longer than we had anticipated. Secondly we ran out of blu tack with which we needed to stick up the newspaper on the wall. Which meant that a couple of us needed to run out to get some. This left a smaller number of people to help cover the walls and floor, a job that ideally needed everyone. However due to everyone’s hard work the entire room was covered in just enough time for the one o’clock performance. Due to the nature of our performance we had to then decide within the group just how much of the performance we could do at the preview show. We decided that to do the entire performance with us completely covered in newspaper wasn’t really plausible and so decided to just paper up our joints and hold the masks over our face so that the preview audience still got a feel of what the actual full performance would be like. After this preview we then had to set up the space again and completely recover ourselves in newspaper.
For the second performance we started to run out of time for all five of us to be covered and so everybody from the other groups all pitched in to help us. All five of us had at least two people helping each of us and without that there is no way that we would have been ready in time. From the start of this project there was a real sense of team work despite the fact that everyone had their own performances to focus on and this sense of all working together I believe really helped to pull everything together.
Our full performance was literally the first time that Charlie, Kash, Rachel, Emma and I had had an opportunity to go through the whole performance in its entirety and due to this at the time of the performance I was very nervous and was hoping that I would remember everything we had to do. However, the performance went well and I am hoping that it really showed how much work we had put into it and how much we wanted to relate to the site. There are a few things however about the performance that with hindsight I think I would change if I could.
Firstly, being covered in newspaper head to foot for the prolonged period that we were became very uncomfortable after a time and it didn’t really allow that much movement. Also because of the aesthetic elements of our piece we spent a lot of time trying to get the ‘set’ right and lost time when we could have been considering how to have more of a journey to our piece. Secondly, we decided to cover our faces by using plastic masks that were then covered in newspaper. While again this may have looked good aesthetically it became very uncomfortable after being in them for a long time and so by the time it came for the performance I personally was eager to rip it off! Also the sweeping away of the newspapers at the end of the performance could have been made a little easier if we had brought slightly bigger brooms because it would have been easier to clear the paper quicker but the ones we did have did the job just as well.
Apart from a few minor problems that we encountered I believe that overall our finial performance went well. I think that we engaged with the site that we had chosen and that our overall concept was one that I became very proud of. All five members of my group worked incredibly hard to achieve what we eventually came up with and at the end of it I was very pleased with the performance. I hope that we created an performance that an audience enjoyed as well but more importantly I hope that we created a performance that showed a history of our site and made our audiences consider the forgotten history of the historic Grandstand.