Author: Emma Taylor

‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage’ ((Brook, P. (1996) The Empty Space, New York: Touchstone. P7)) says Peter Brook in his book The Empty Space. And that is exactly what we faced when we turned up at the Grandstand- an empty space. We were to bring this space to life with our performance.

On the morning of performance day we had several things we needed to sort out and confirm with each other. First of all, we had to decide whether or not we were going to use music- we had previously discussed using the famous William Tell Overture, as it has a connection to horse racing due to Spike Jones covering it in 1948 as an underscore to a horse racing commentary. We all agreed to use it, as it would start just as we rip the newspaper off of ourselves and as we gradually begin to build the excitement of shouting out horse bets and odds. Another thing we had discussed previously was using quotes about gambling from in the Bible, especially as we had found that one we thought fit nicely in with our theme of loss: “People come into this world with nothing, and when they die they leave with nothing.” Ecclesiastes 5vs 10-17 ((The Holy Bible, New Century version, 2003: Thomas Nelson Inc)) This quote sums up the journey that the Grandstand has gone through; it went from being nothing, to being an active and focal point of Lincoln, and now has gone back to being nothing (this time in a metaphorical sense.) It also describes the journey that our piece will take; the empty Grandstand, which then comes to life through our performance and through sound and movement, and then gets all packed away and goes back to being empty.

We began to assemble our set, and by this I mean we wallpapered the walls with newspaper! We taped out the outline of the horse on the floor, along with the box for where the audience were to stand. We wanted the audience to be in the centre of the action, similar to how The Performance Group’s “[p]roductions such as Dionysus in 69 (1968-69) avoided end-on perspectives [and] put the audience closer to and often in the action” ((Allan, P. and Harvie, J. (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. Oxon and New York: Routledge. P149)) We then covered the rest of the floor with the newspaper. We did come across a problem whilst we were setting up, as we were performing in the daytime and it was quite a sunny day, the room would not be dark enough to see the projection of Muybridge’s moving horse. To combat this we started to cover the windows with newspaper to try to black them out, this worked to an extent- it did not make it dark, but made it dim enough to be able to see the projection. The room no longer looked empty; in fact it looked incredibly busy with it being almost completely covered in newspaper!

Due to the TANK group performing in the same room as us, we needed to find a way to distinguish between their performance time/space and ours. Around the room were heaters fixed up on the wall, when they were turned on they glowed red and cast a red light around the space, we decided that we would turn these on when it was time for our performance that way there would be a change in atmosphere.

Soon it was performance time.
We had a fair sized audience, and the box we had drawn on the floor for them to stand in was actually a little too small. But this wasn’t such a problem, as we were able to walk around them. We created a really great atmosphere when we were shouting out the odds of different horses, the music worked really well underneath too; it felt exciting and slightly chaotic, which was what we were after. At the end of this section we threw large handfuls of the betting slips into the air above the audience and they showered down upon them, they seemed to really enjoy this and looked in awe as the slips scattered around them. The only thing that didn’t work so well in performance was when we all lined up in front of the projection and held up copies of the Racing Post to allow the projection to be projected onto the newspapers instead of the wall. In doing this we were too far to one side of the projection, so it obscured the view of the video slightly.

As we swept away the newspaper on the floor I could hear members of the audience asking each other what the black tape on the floor was, and then as the final pages of newspaper were pushed aside I could hear them gasp as they realised and acknowledged that it was a horse. When we brought out the plate of Tesco meat, a few members of the audience laughed as they made the connection to the scandal.

All in all I think the performance went brilliantly. I believe we effectively brought the Grandstand back to life, we made it stand out and become noticed and we helped to, as Mike Pearson states, “enhance public appreciation and understanding” ((Pearson, M. (2011) Why Performance? http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_67088_1%26url%3D)) of this site. Many of the audience may have arrived with very little knowledge or idea about the Grandstand, but I am confident that they left with a much better picture of how things would have been and felt in its many histories.

In the most recent works of Tim Etchells and company, they ‘always began the performance by building the set, or ended by dismantling them. Always now this work of construction and destruction – letting no thing simply ‘be’- seeing everything instead as a product, as the fruit of some labour, some desire, some ideology.’ ((Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. Routledge: London p78)) We decided to do something similar, however our performance is going to begin completely set up already, and then following the idea of Tim Etchells of dismantling the set, completely tidy away the whole set and make this part of the performance. We already tear off the newspaper which we will be dressed in, but now we are expanding this to include tearing down the newspaper off the walls and floor, and also to sweep up all the scattered betting slips. So that when we are finished, after all the excitement, there is nothing left. This concept is also echoed in the poem we have chosen to use- ‘the horse that I am riding’ by Ric Bastasa, which ends with the line ‘the horse gets nothing’. We are building up these layers of ‘nothing’ to replicate the sad reality that the Grandstand has been left with nothing.
As the newspaper gets pulled down and is swept away, an outline of a horse made from black duct tape is revealed:

This is similar to the outline of a dead body that would be found at a crime scene, and brings about the idea of death- the death of horse-racing at the Lincoln Racecourse, and the death of the Grandstand as it once was. The performance ends as all the newspaper is packed into boxes and all the tape is pulled up, the projection is turned off and the Grandstand goes back to how it was before we arrived there. This allows the audience to witness the actuality of the current situation of the Grandstand. We want the audience to see the contrast between what this grand building once was, and what it has become today; a ghostly echo of an incredible story. Although the overpowering feeling of loss and deterioration is difficult to shake off, ‘site-related work has become an established practice where an artist’s intervention offers spectators new perspectives upon a particular site or set of sites.’ ((Govan, E. (2007) Making a Performance. Routledge: Oxon and New York p121)) We bring the building to life through our performance; we cover the Grandstand’s walls with newspaper to give it an exciting atmosphere; we echo the past by covering the floor with hundreds of betting slips; we bring back the noise and sounds that may have once resonated through its rooms and grounds.

Another layer we want to add to our piece is the recent horse meat scandal that has hit TESCO. A few months ago at the time of the scandal, the Independent reported the following: “Horsemeat has been discovered in beefburgers sold by the supermarket giants Tesco and Iceland, it emerged tonight. Investigators said that in Tesco’s Everyday Value burgers, horsemeat accounted for almost one third of the meat content.” ((Masters, S. (2013) The Independent. Online: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/horsemeat-discovered-in-beefburgers-on-sale-at-tesco-and-iceland-8453040.html)) As this has been all over the news recently, we thought it would create a small moment of dark humour within the piece. We only want to touch on it slightly as it’s not strictly specific to our site, so we plan to get some mincemeat from Tesco and have it placed on a plate, with the Tesco label below it. After we have swept the newspaper across the floor to reveal the outline of the horse, we will announce to the audience the Lincolnshire Handicap winner of 2013 and present to them the plate of mincemeat.

‘Performance can illuminate the historically and culturally diverse ways in which a particular landscape has been made, used, reused and interpreted; and help make sense of the multiplicity of meanings that resonate from it’ ((Pearson, M. (2011) Why Performance? http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_67088_1%26url%3D))
The Grandstand contains many histories and potential histories, some of which are being explored by the other groups within our site-specific performance. Each piece transitions smoothly into the next with the audience being taken on a guided tour of the Grandstand, intertwining the different histories to shine a new light on this forgotten gateway to Lincoln. This is similar to the aims of theatre company Talking Birds, who’s site-specific and site responsive works use ‘places which have interesting features, histories and former uses… which are on the brink of slipping from living memory’ ((Talking Birds, (2013) Site-specific and site-responsive works. Online: http://www.talkingbirds.co.uk/pages/sitespecific.asp)) We want to reawaken the memory of the Grandstand, and to stop it from becoming forgotten.

My group has decided to focus on the Grandstand’s most prominent and well known history of being a venue for horse-racing. In previous sessions and rehearsals we have experimented with covering the walls and also ourselves in newspaper, making pages from the ‘Racing Post’ the most obvious, and then also reciting the poem ‘the horse that I am riding’. These ideas are working really well, but take a lot of time to set up and prepare. So it is now time to focus on making our piece more of a journey, and to look more at the theme of betting and loss as this was where our idea initially developed from. The original idea was to have post-it notes covering our mouths and silently rip them off and drop them on the floor replicating the notion of discarded betting tickets. This is something we want to bring back into our piece, so we managed to get hundreds of used betting slips and use this idea of littering them on the floor. As we ‘discard’ them we walk around the audience (who are stood within a drawn out box on the floor) reciting names of horses with betting odds, therefore introducing the theme of betting and gambling, which as quoted from the William Hill website is “ingrained in our culture.” ((William Hill (2013) History, Online: http://www.williamhillplc.com/media/history.aspx)) Everywhere we look now there are adverts for gambling, betting and online casinos. It has become completely socially acceptable in our culture today, compared to what it was like around 100 years ago where “most gambling was done behind closed doors” ((William Hill (2013) History, Online: http://www.williamhillplc.com/media/history.aspx)) We each picked two or three names of horses from out of the Racing Post, so that we were using real horse names- I chose ‘Midnight Whisper’, ‘One night Only’ and ‘Charlie Bucket’. The reciting then becomes quicker and quicker and more chaotic, replicating the chaos and excitement that there would have been during the races in the past. Then we fall silent, and all that is left is the litter of losing betting tickets, which have been discarded, abandoned and forgotten.

During the entire performance we are planning on having a projection of the first ever moving horse film by Eadweard Muybridge, projected into an alcove that we are not currently using. This film will be on a loop and will be in silence. However at one stage of our performance, we all line up in front of the projection with copies of the racing post under our arms, as if we were queuing up to place bets. In rehearsal we started to make tapping noises with our feet, and realised that this sounded like the noise of horse hooves when trotting on hard ground. So we worked more to further emphasise this.

To many passers-by the Grandstand goes unnoticed, it fades into the background, it becomes hidden in plain sight. So as we think that the Grandstand has lost its identity, we want to bring it back to life and to bring back its former glory. So taking the idea of something being hidden in plain sight we looked at the idea of filling a wall or even an entire room with newspaper pages, and then also completely wrapping ourselves in the newspaper too- in order for us to blend in with the background, to become camouflaged, and to ‘lose our identity’. We looked at a couple of other artists who use a similar concept before trying it out for ourselves. We had seen the idea be used recently in a music video for Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to know’, where the singers had their bodies painted to match the background behind them. The artist who helped design this was called Emma Hack, who explores the notion of camouflage in her work, and was inspired and influenced by the work of Veruschka (an artist who camouflaged herself into rustic walls and environmental settings in the 1960s and 70s). Looking more closely at artists who use this same concept but for site-specific performance, we found Christo and Jeanne-Claude. This couple have done similar pieces of art but instead of using camouflage, they wrapped items, people and buildings in material to draw attention to and to create intrigue and mystery of the wrapped piece. By wrapping the building it “compel[s] us to look anew at our everyday surroundings” ((Allain, P. and Harvie, J. (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. Oxon and New York: Routledge. P36)) and as quoted on the Christo and Jeanne-Claude website “The concealment caused by the fabric challenges the viewer to reappraise the objects beneath and the space in which it exists” ((Blackbourn, A. 2011, www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wrapped-objects-statues-and-women?view=info)). We want the spectator to see the Grandstand properly, as opposed to just letting it fade into the background as they drive past.

The following photos show an example of Emma Hack’s work, and also our first attempt at using newspaper to camouflage a person, in this case me.

Emma Hack’s work. ((Emma Hack, Wallpaper 2008 Collection. http://www.emmahackartist.com.au/emma_art/emma_wallpaper08.html))

Our work.

Whereas Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap the outside of buildings, we have reversed this and will be wrapping the inside of the building. And whereas they use plastic to wrap the buildings, we have chosen to use newspaper. We chose to use newspaper for the reason that it creates a link to the media which constantly broadcasts adverts for gambling and betting, and also covers the horse racing when it takes place. Another reason we chose to use the newspaper, was because of an old article we found. As part of our research we took a visit to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, and here we found an old newspaper article that was about some riots that had taken place at the Grandstand back when it was open. The article detailed numerous pick-pocketing incidents that had eventually led into full scale riots. The article was written in a very poetic style, and we really like the idea of including it somehow in our performance. We also liked the fact that it brings in the theme of loss, something of which we have spoken about in my group. Spectators at the Grandstand would have lost money when placing bets, they lost money through being pick-pocketed, and then the Grandstand lost its purpose altogether. This is a theme which we would like to recur throughout our piece.

Alongside this camouflage idea, and working to a similar theme of ‘loss’, we have been looking at using a poem called ‘the horse that I am riding’ written by Ric S. Bastasa. The short poem is written from the jockey’s point of view, and ends with the line “the horse gets nothing”, which we liked as it links to the Grandstand which now is nothing compared to what it was 70+ years ago. The poem creates a direct link with the site, as it revives the grandstand’s original purpose of being a ground for horse racing events. We played around with different ways of delivering the poem- having one person speak it, having us all speak it in unison, and lastly us all speaking it in canon. The last way we felt worked the best, as we realised it almost replicated the sound of galloping horses in a race.

In an exercise we have done recently, we stuck post-it notes over our mouths with words describing the ‘lost’ nature of the present grandstand written on them. We then slowly tore them off and dropped them to the floor. This action became almost reminiscent of the old betting slips that would have been thrown to the floor when they hadn’t won at the races. This, we thought, was really simple but powerful and we endeavoured to include it in our piece. So we decided that whilst we were reciting the aforementioned poem, we would drop ripped up bits of newspapers and possibly betting slips on to the floor. So that the floor would end being littered with scraps of paper, in the same way that it would have been littered with betting slips in the past.

We have also had the idea of projecting the first moving picture, which was of a horse and was created by Eadweard Muybridge, on top of us whilst we are camouflaged in the newspaper and whilst we are reciting the poem. However this idea still needs to be put into practise to see how well it works, and will be explored over the coming weeks.