Month: May 2013

The Creation of an immersive moving picture.

Emily Holt / / Women of War

The Women at War were transcendent within ‘Safe Bet’ as a whole production. As the audience arrived, they were able to watch four ladies who were dressed in authentic 1940’s attire, performing their morning ritual of getting ready for whatever the day may hold. “Rituals are performative: they are acts done;  and performances are ritualized: they are codified, repeatable actions” ((Schechner, Richard (1994) Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, ed. Tim Ingold, London and New York: Routledge)) The group thought that by having a couple of rituals signifying the morning rituals of these women, and repeating them, we would be demonstrating Schechner’s thoughts. We decided to use four actions linked with four objects: a comb; a perfume diffuser, powder and brush and some lipstick. The ladies were placed in front of four hooks in the exterior wall of the Grandstand on which, it is believed, the horses used to be tied to. These acted as the mirrors for the ladies but also raised issues of pre-war women, women that would have frequented the racing at the Grandstand, being ‘tied’ to the men of the time by marriage or by social conventions. The audience were able to view this happening for a while and passed it when walking into the Grandstands weighing room, where the majority of ‘Safe Bet’ took place.

Once the audience had taken seats inside, the women journeyed indoors and through to the back of the weighing room, which was concealed by a curtain. Since the piece was centered on three rotational exercises, this was a chance for the audience to be briefed on which rotation they would be partaking in first. Between each rotation the Women of War group came into the briefing room and presented some more rituals that women used to employ regularly. The first of these was to rub tea bags on their legs to stain them the colour of stockings, this was done as stockings were difficult to come across during war time England. Not only was it a way of showing a historical fact, but this linked in with our ‘tea’ theme and was a talking point for the audience. The smell and look of the act was noticed on several occasions. Secondly  we explored the drawing on of stocking seams, down the back of our legs in eyeliner pencil, this was also a way to make it look as though they were wearing stockings during the war. This was met with exclamations of “my nan used to do that” and “what are they doing?” from some audience members, showing a mixture of confusion and nostalgia. This gives evidence towards “nostalgic performances are more suasory than other forms of nostalgia because they involve embodiment, enactment and/or performativity.” ((Barry Brummett (ed.) (2009) Sporting Rhetoric: Performance, Games and Politics, New York:Peter Lang Publishing)) Towards the beginning of the process, we thought about filming some of these actions instead of performing them on the day. In retrospect I am pleased with the effect the live performance had on the audience that a pre recorded film may not have had.

Once the audience had been rotated between all of the exercises the Women of War stepped forward and stood in between the two male army officers. By standing next to the men at the front of the audience the group were showing the shift from women lacking power pre-war, to the beginnings of equality with men during the war, with women taking on new roles and exerting power themselves for the first time. Once the audience had returned, the Women of War thanked them for coming to give blood, as a group we had recently found out that the grandstand had been used as a donation station for blood and wanted to include this somehow within our piece. Acting as nurses, the audience were instructed to follow the women into the next room and wait for a nurse within the marked box. This was met with some nervous laughter from a few audience members. Once the audience had been taken to the box, the Women of War left to set up the factory space.

With the sewn cloth hanging above us, pointing to the bathroom which had become a factory, the audience were instructed to begin their next shift. Four or Five audience members were instructed to enter the factory itself and take a seat on the bench. The rest of the audience were stood looking in from the doorway giving the effect of a museum exhibition such as those we saw at the museum of Lincolnshire Life.  The structured scene worked well, with Vera Lynn playing to create atmosphere, and the noise of the sewing machines breaking up the femininity of her voice. An audience member told us later that this mixture of sounds, enhanced by the aroma of tea and perfume had made her quite nostalgic and a little sad. The whole piece was a juxtaposition of abandonment and business. A ghostly nod to the way of life that the grandstand had seen, women taking center stage in society and bringing together the community. The tea representing the taking of that community from the grandstand itself.

As it happened, all of the audience members that received the tea were male, this lead to an alternative reading of the taking of the tea. As well as it being the downfall of community, it could also have been interpreted to be the women taking the power (tea) from the men and pouring it down the drain. Until recently, women were not rewarded for their efforts during the war; therefore another reading could have been the women taking the rewards from the men and tipping them away to say ‘we deserve this too’ or something along those lines. The fact that there were many readings to the taking of the tea is very interesting and has been my favourite part of the experience. Learning how gender, age and even personality can affect how you interpret an act or performance to mean completely different things.

T.A.N.K.s for the memories

Stephenie Clubley / / T.A.N.K

“Devised performance, as contrasted with conventional theatre, results from the identification, selection and accumulation of concepts, actions, texts, places and things which are composed and orchestrated in space and time according to a set of governing aesthetics, ideologies, techniques and technologies.” ((Pearson, Mike and Shanks, Michael 2001, Theatre/Archaeology, London:Routledge, p.55))

The T.A.N.K group started with a fragment of information from the Lincoln Archives about tank test-driving on Lincoln’s West Common, and we added to our collective knowledge with other such fragments; masks the tank crews wore, the motto they had, the dangers they faced. Our first attempt at constructing a performance based on these fragments resulted in something too theatrical. The text we used at first was made up of dialogue that was too character based, and didn’t work. The focus had to be the tank’s history, not ours, if the piece was to work. We re-wrote this, but then we were unable to procure authentic-looking tank crew masks. We tried to create our own interpretations from the resources we could find. They were very stylistic and consequently jarring when put into a performance that was aiming to be more factual. Mike Pearson says “Assemblages – performance and document – are inevitably partial. Rooted in uncertainty, they all require acts of interpretation. And there is no end to what can be said about them, to how they might be interpreted.” ((Pearson, Mike and Shanks, Michael 2001, Theatre/Archaeology, London:Routledge, p.56)) This is true, but when working as a small group alongside other small groups to create one collective performance you must keep in mind whether your style of interpretation of your data compliments the rest of the complete piece.

Continue reading “T.A.N.K.s for the memories”

On reflection…

Phoebe Wall-Palmer / / Women of War

‘Site may be transformed by the disruptive presence of performance seeking a relationship other than that of a ready-made scenic backdrop of against which to place its figures.’ ((Brook, Peter (2008) The Empty Space, London: Penguin Classics, p. 45))

On the 1st of May 2013, our group attempted to inject life back into a site that normally lies silent. The research process meant absorbing and collecting the history of the sites past, thanks to The Lincolnshire Archives and The Museum of Lincolnshire Life, for example.

On performance day there were a few last minute adjustments. We had been told that the Grandstand had also been used as a place for blood donation, so we decided that when we take the audience through to the next section, after the rotation, we would thank them for coming and donating their blood to us. This was another moment of the past momentarily switching into the present, showing our aim for celebrating the Grandstand’s history. In addition, it introduced some humour into the piece, as the audience did not know what was coming next.

There were a few hiccups throughout the performance, where the rotation did not work as efficiently as we had hoped, and some audience members were waiting longer than others. We do hope, however, that as our sub group was a distraction in the same room (applying make up etc.) it meant that the piece did not fall flat, despite the extended time the audience had to wait.

Furthermore, when asking some audience members after the performance, it was clear that some had not noticed the stretch of material along the weighing room. In many respects, it proves the effectiveness of the entire piece as it shows they were immersed in the performance. The material was not on a persons ordinary sight line, as it was above them. As we realised through our ‘Drifting’ task at the beginning of the module, it is not until you intentionally look away from familiarity that you see the unnoticed. If we were to repeat the performance then the positioning of the material however, would be one to reconsider.

Our feedback from the audience was hugely positive and we were all so appreciative that the community had returned to the Grandstand once again. Specifically for our piece, an audience member described a slight sadness and wistfulness when watching us in the factory scene. The combination of 1940s music, the smell of tea and seeing a vision of the past being encapsulated within the space seemed to provoke this feeling. I feel our sub-group achieved the reconstruction of the past and celebration of femininity, but also embodied the hard work and strength that women would have had to demonstrate. We just hope that our representation did them justice.

We all became a ‘disruptive presence’ ((Ibid.)) to the normal order of the site. But I feel it was a worthy disruption. Hopefully, the Grandstand does not lay silent once again, and our project has highlighted the potential for the site. One day, the gateway to Lincoln will hopefully exist once again.

The Women of War during dress rehearsal…

Dress Rehearsal- Women of War

 

The Odds Are Stacked: A Reflection

Eloise Fitt / / The Odds Are Stacked

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.

Our Tank, Our Performance, Our Grandstand!

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / T.A.N.K

When I first saw the grandstand many weeks ago, I was intrigued and just saw it as the place at the end of Carholme road, a building in limbo but yet a significant place that is present as you enter Lincoln. Thousands of people pass it every week including myself, without even a thought of what this great building has been through. I feel that our site performance as a whole gave friends, colleagues and the public an opportunity to see a variety of performances that linked to the grandstands past, present and future. The moment each person enters, the building it takes a part of them, it takes their initial thoughts, feelings similar to what we were ask to do on our first visit to the site. Hopefully after our performance, they leave their mark not only with the building but in their own memory and thoughts. No matter your age, background whether you’re a local or a visitor it is a place of safe heaven, a place to go to see and talk to people, to practice in a band, to give blood, to feel part of a community. All of this happening in the 21st century makes me curious as to who out of all the people who grace the grandstand for one reason or another know of Lincoln and the Grandstand’s past. It has been lost in the walls but hopefully us bringing in some performance involving its history, observations and future may have given it some life, and hopefully communicated to the community how important and useful it can be for Lincoln’s future.

1st May 2013: Performance Day

The day was finally upon us, like a tank into battle, we as a group were to build the tank for the last time. I thought everything would run smooth, but like the testers of the tank found out, it’s not all smooth running. Due to a sudden illness we had to make altercations to our first showing at 1o’clock and minor adjustments to the 3’oclock showing. This didn’t hinder the structure of our section, the only change came when we had to make an executive decision and adapt to building the tanks caterpillar tracks by reducing the 4 people down to just two people, myself and Ben. We would single handily build move the caterpillar tracks towards the audience. Even though it wasn’t as quick as it was with all 4 of us, I found it worked well, as it left Callum and Steph free to guide and keep the audience in the marked box.

Our Tank performance linked nicely with Greg and Jordan’s pieces in which we worked on a rotational basis. This was a good idea as it gave the audience chance to experience all three performances in more intimate groups. However in practice at 1 o’clock the rotation did come with some difficultly, as there was a mix up with where one group went but this was quickly resolved and the Tank was only built twice instead of three times. The logistics of the rotation was reworked and ran smoothly in the performance at 3’oclock.

As a group we also found there was a difficulty in repeating our performance consultatively for three different audiences. It was inevitable that each audience member or group would see exactly the same as the last. This was due to the nature of the performance and working with unreliable objects (chairs) and not having a fixed audience number. But I do believe that this did in a way work nicely as it gave us chance to build our confidence and rework any bits to tailor our audience.

A key aspect to our whole process was the building of the tank; this was both a creative idea to use chairs but our worst enemy when it came to placing them on top of each other. Out of the five times we performed our section in both practice and performance only 1 chair fell. This didn’t hinder our performance as we had practice what to do if the unavoidable happened. The odds were stacked in the chance of a chair falling but it only made us carry on and gave us a chance to adapt to the surroundings. Similar to how the tank evolved, it had to adapt and if it didn’t work they would retract, rebuild and make do, mend and push on. Personally, I found the chairs were tricky, I peculiarly struggled the most balancing one chair on top of the other, this I think hindered my performance a little because I was too busy concentrating on the chairs not falling that I almost forgot about the words in the first performance, but toward the last time it almost became a routine and ran smoothly.

‘From the Blood, Through the Mud, To the Green Fields beyond’

These words added atmosphere to our piece, both said at the beginning and the end of the piece. The words chanted as the chairs were moved added a sense of tank creation to the audience and I think it worked well. As we started to reach the last chair you could hear the exhaustion through our voices of performing the tough repetitive movement with the chairs and the chant at the same time. Although I was a little slower than Ben, I think the pace kept the audience intrigued and interested into what was happening around them.

The number of audience members that experienced the Tank varied through our day, from 2 to est.15 people. This made a difference to the beginning of our piece, as we wanted to make the audience feel as though they would in a real Tank, claustrophobic. Putting the piece of army netting of the top of them, added some more discomfort however this was difficult only have 2 audience members but we adapted and in some cases instead of holding the netting up high, we lowered the netting so they had to crouch down. With the performance however, we all felt the pace of the piece could have done with being smoother and a little more movement. Personally, I think we should have done something more exciting or have more panic in our voices between the transactions.

The section in the middle of our piece I felt was the strongest was the diary extracts. Although we were shaky on lines, the way in which we delivered the lines, towards the audience and overlapping showed panic, and as we layered up our voices and repeated our extracts over and over again the audience were surrounded by different voices at different paces and tones which also could be seen as us making them feel more claustrophobic. They were also hearing the thoughts of real people and either their panic, and their feelings as the Tank would advance into battle of which I would hope left an impression on the audience members as they watched our last sequence.

‘LT. Arthur E. Arnold, D Company, Heavy Section MGC:

We were advancing; the tank was on top of the trench. There we paused, whilst the thickest guns raked the enemy to port and starboard, then on we went again. ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y0ZHESxVEc ))

Another aspect of my contribution to the overall performance ‘Safe Bet’ was music. Although I had preconceptions at the beginning about playing my Tenor Horn in public after not playing for months, I am really glad I did it. It gave me the chance to showcase something which not many people knew I could do, and let me have the opportunity to gain confidence in playing again. In performance I worked closely with Jordan to get the timings right with his poem, and on some occasions as he said ‘as the band played the last post’, the main melody of the last post would juxtapose the words being said. The music also worked well with the poem, as he talked about the fallen, and the last post was written to remember the soldiers who have lost their lives in the numerous wars from WW1 to present. It is a timeless song, which related to every audience remember. I enjoyed hearing the brass sound hitting the walls of the now bare weighing room, and how it linked in to Jordan’s speech, the factor that I fluffed a few notes only added to the performance, and I would like to believe the audience enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed playing.

Overall I do think our performance went well, it created in within a space that doesn’t normally see this much activity. Despite some minor hiccup, the audience hopefully gained some interesting information on the Tank, the war, the horse racing and the grandstand itself and how much it contributes to the west common, and Lincoln’s History. If we had more time, I would have liked to be able to develop our piece more by creating the tank in various ways and getting the audience more involved with the building of the tank or even working on the discovery of the trenches on the west common. The Tank is not a strong link with the grandstand but more so with the ground around it, but I think it was essential to add to the piece as it linked well within in the war aspects of everyone’s performances.

On a personal note, if we were to do it again I would create a piece that can get the audience thinking, provoking them to think why they had been brought you to the space on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, what was there purpose, although this was answered by another group by giving the grandstand its voice back, I would have liked to maybe do multiple performances or maybe an installation that could have been left as a memorial or indeed got some more community members to see the performance.

Coming to the end of our process it reminded me of this question: ‘How long does it take to know a place?’ ((Tuan,Y(1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, London: Edward Arnold. Pg. 183)). After all of the time we spent researching and developing and getting to know the space as much as I felt a part of it I couldn’t help but wonder if we were missing something, missing a part of its past which hadn’t been found. This lead to me at the end of the project almost feels lost and upset at the thought of our performance just becoming forgotten and lost again. Yet ready for someone to stumble upon it in years to come. The time we were there it felt like it was our grandstand, our place like it is for the community groups that hold functions there. To everyone the Grandstand is theirs and I hope that our being there has sparked some interest in the community and the council almost enough for them to realise how valuable the Grandstand is to Lincoln’s Future, but not forgetting how valuable it was to its past.