Author: Sophie Jane Bullivant

Our ideas and research is gradually developing into vivid performance pieces now. A particular practitioner of site-specific performance who has inspired us is John Newling and his recent performance Where a Place Becomes a Site (2013). His participatory performance involved an installation of a long yellow jacket, suspended from the ceiling of Broadmarsh shopping centre, which draped along the floor for members of the public to admire.

Newling’s performance relates to our Women of War theme, as we wish to recreate a sewing factory atmosphere inside the Grandstand. Therefore, we are similarly creating a long piece of cloth, from scraps of material throughout the ideas/rehearsal process, which will then become an installation for the final performance. The cloth represents the role of women during the world wars and their newfound purpose in life. The process of sewing the large piece of cloth is being regularly documented in videos, which we then hope to project onto the cloth itself during the performance. The group is keen to use the corridor space that connects the main room with the RAF room, and could otherwise be forgotten as ‘dead space’. Consequently, we want to install the cloth there, for the audience to view as they journey from one space to the next.

Newling was there in person at the shopping centre, to ask passers-by for a ‘value’ in their life, and in appreciation he offered them a small piece of the jacket material. The concept of audience participation is significant to the Grandstand site, as collectively as a group we all feel that it is important to capture the audience members’ thoughts, emotions and ideas for the future of the Grandstand, as part of the final performance. Furthermore, the ‘values’ that Newling collected during the performance “will become a script for this live reading at Nottingham Contemporary” ((Nottingham Contemporary (2013) Where a Place Becomes a Site: Values, A Reading, Online: http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/where-place-becomes-site-values-reading (accessed Wednesday 27 February 2013).)), and likewise our feedback from audience members will, we hope, become part of an ongoing process for the Grandstand’s future.

The prospect of our performance as a starting point for the revitalisation of the Grandstand is discussed by Mike Pearson, who states that performance can function as “occasioning a critical reappraisal of the inherent qualities of places rarely visited” ((Pearson, Mike (2011) Why Performance?, Online: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_716442_1&course_id=_67088_1 (accessed Saturday 2 March 2013).)). Thus, with a strong focus on research, there is the opportunity to place the site in the public eye once again, and to re-establish the Grandstand as a well-known landmark of Lincoln.

The company Forced Entertainment stated how once you know a place well you can confuse the notions of fact and fiction when presenting to an audience. The idea was portrayed in their coach tour performance Nights in this City (1995), where the guide pretended through a comical narrative that Sheffield was alternative cities, such as Rome and Berlin.

Similarly, it feels as though our Site-Specific group are gradually becoming more familiar with the Grandstand location, and we too can start to “negotiate the collapses and collisions of facts and fictions” ((Hill, Leslie and Helen Paris ed. (2006) Performance and Place, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.)). For example, after last Wednesday’s practical session exploring the exterior and surrounding environment of the Grandstand, Phoebe, Emily and I ‘reconstructed’ our findings in the LPAC. Our discovery of vehicle tracks, paw prints, a hearing-aid, a pair of boxer pants, barbed wire and a glove, (being factual pieces of the site) then became part of a ‘crime scene’ narrative.

Furthermore, Mike Pearson’s question of whether the experience was a “quest” (2010, p. 21) emphasised our imaginary roles as ‘detectives’, and consequently we saw the Grandstand from a different perspective. The question of a “prescribed or proscribed” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.)) site also sparked our imaginations, and helped us to envisage new themes for our performance.