In Reflection

Sophie Jane Bullivant / / Women of War

The Women of War characters were a prominent part of the beginning of our performance, Safe Bet. We performed a repetitive sequence in front of the wall, next to the Weighing Room. The four hooks on the wall symbolised a mirror for each woman, and we continuously moved down the line of hooks, applying different make-up at each mirror. For example, I applied powder at the first hook and then moved to the next hook, passing the object to another woman, whilst also receiving the lipstick. The sequence continued while the audience were greeted by the sound of the megaphone.

The first performances took place in a rotation format, and the audience went to the different performances in small groups. During the rotation, the audience returned to the seating area in the Weighing Room, to await the next performance/activity. We, the Women of War, remained in the corner of the room, and applied make-up and styled our hair. We also dabbed tea onto our legs and drew black lines onto our calves, which was a popular act of women during the war, to create the illusion that they were wearing silk stockings. Thus, the scent of tea and sweet perfume drifted through the room, for the audience to feel absorbed in the piece, as their senses were heightened. The action of waiting was also a chance for the audience to reflect on what they had experienced so far. Wolfgang Iser states that “Social communication […] arises out of the fact that people cannot experience how others experience” ((Iser, Wolfgang (2001) ‘Interaction between Text and Reader’ in Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf (ed.) Performance Analysis, London: Routledge.)). As a result, the ‘waiting in limbo’ space that was created was an opportunity for the audience to briefly share opinions.

After the application of make-up, we (as the women) stood proudly in front of the audience. We wanted the audience to see the women as merely being on display, as they were during the pre-war period. Thus, we highlighted our smart, feminine attire and pristine make-up by posing in a row. Our position was a direct contrast to the factory scene that occurred later, where the women had a true purpose and an important role in Britain’s success in the war. Our journey and the transformation of the women throughout the performance is represented through the large cloth that we hung above the length of the Weighing Room ceiling. The cloth also symbolised the aeroplane wings that the Women of War sewed in the factories, and the fact that we used unwanted clothing of our fellow group members also emphasised our strong theme of community.

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The Women of War’s main piece of the performance was the factory sewing scene, in the kitchen/shower room. The scene can be regarded as an exhibition and a piece of ‘Museum Theatre’. Catherine Hughes states:

In this age of deconstruction, the new focus on education has rattled the foundations of museums by bringing up questions about how we view knowledge, how we perceive the learning process, and how we determine whose point of view is dominant ((Hughes, Catherine (1998) ‘The Nature of Museums and Theatre’, Museum Theatre, Portsmouth: Heinemann.)).

Thus, the audiences’ reactions made each of us realise how thought provoking our scene had been. For example, my role was to greet the audience and invite a maximum of five people into the kitchen space. Ironically, the audience members that I chose were all male, yet this happened at random. However, a member of the audience later stated that he found the close proximity of the male audience highly poignant, as it highlighted the contrast between the genders, and suggested that the women’s hard work was, in contrast, overlooked by the men during the war. I informed the audience member that this was unintentional, yet the selection of the five males had created a new perspective of our scene. Another unexpected audience reaction that occurred during the scene was when the audience had their tea swiftly taken off them and poured down the urinals. There were many sighs of disappointment and reluctance, which highlighted the happiness and comfort that people feel with a cup of tea. Furthermore, the reactions emphasised the important message of the scene, which consisted of the tea representing community, and how community is literally being ‘poured down the drain’. Also metaphorically, the removal of the tea signifies how the Grandstand site is currently wasted and discarded. Cathy Turner reflects on such an occurrence, believing that “each occupation, or traversal, or transgression of space offers a reinterpretation of it, even a rewriting” ((Turner, Cathy (2004) ‘Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance, New Theatre Quarterly, XX (4) pp. 373-390.)), and personally, the opportunity for a plethora of meanings and audience interpretations, is the essence of site-specific performance.

The T.A.N.K: Performance Reflection

Ben Middleton / / T.A.N.K

One of the highlights of the tank group’s performance I think was the atmosphere we created the moment the audience walked into the room; with the rumble of the tank sound effect in the background with the monotonous chant of ‘From the blood, through the mud, to the green fields beyond.’ We created a sense of unease and tension within the audience since they did not really understand what was so far happening.  Also, with the audience being cramped in right at the beginning it heightened the atmosphere because it gave them a sense of being trapped. Moreover the use of the chairs and netting, although ambiguous at first the audience soon got the idea of what we were creating, plus with the use of the netting whilst the audience would get the claustrophobic feeling we wanted, the netting still gave them some source of viewing, yet, I would have liked to experiment with restricting the audience’s view because the view inside a real tank was limited.

Moreover, the fact we used diary entries from soldiers who were in the tanks during the first world war brought a different sense of atmosphere to the performance ‘narratives provides coherence, a process of emplotment which configures these actions into a meaningful, comprehensible interpretation’ (( Postlewait, T. (1992) ‘History, Hermeneutics, and Narrativity’ in J.G Reinelt and J.R Roach (eds) Critical Theory and Performance University of Michigan Press  pp. 356-368)) By using the diary entries we were bringing the piece back to the community and giving a voice back to the tank which would have otherwise not been there, plus the fact that one of the main aims of the whole safe-bet performance was to bring back the community and the voice to the grandstand. The narratives created by the use of diary entries are self-explanatory and not closed ‘but flexible and dynamic social practices, and this means that the experience of belonging to community always represents a partial account of experience’ ((Govan, Emma; Nicholson, Helen and Normington, Katie (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices London: Routledge)) which shows how the audience would have understood the diary entries for actual experience and would have been able to empathetically imagine the happenings, in addition to this, the fact we used German diary extracts as well as English diary entries, we gave a balanced view point of the tank from both the victor and the victim.

However, one of the performances weaknesses was that we were still shaky with our lines, which caused some minor confusion and some delay which stopped the performance flowing fluidly. For me personally I kept rushing my lines from nerves of not fully knowing them and so I continually tripped over my lines which stopped the flow of the performance.  We could have overcome this problem by rehearsing our lines more often so we could memorise them easier to make them flow better, on the other hand, we had to change our lines on the day of the performance since one of us almost did not make it due to serious illness, we had to change our lines round in order to fit this change and so on the performance we got muddled with the lines that had been cut and the new lines that had been introduced.

Another minor problem with our performance I believe was the chairs, although we had practiced placing them perfectly, the chairs can still be unpredictable and in one of our three performances one of the chairs did fall down. We could have tackled this problem by once again, practicing with the chairs more thoroughly or even choreographed the chair sequence so as to move and place the chairs perfectly so as to not let them fall down.

Another issue I think we should have addressed before the performance was the moving of the audience and the flow of the piece, the movement and scene changes were quite slow and I think we lost the energy during the scene changes as we re-positioned the audience for the next bit, also, I believe that in one scene, the  dialogue was slow on delivery between us performers and it also lost some of our energy, this could also be contributed to the fact we had recently changed our lines and were still new to the new lines. We could have combated the lack of energy whilst moving the audience by maybe having some lines to say whilst the audience moved or even we could have started the different scenes earlier in order to counteract this lack of energy in the scene changes.

If we were given more time I would have liked to experiment with more ideas relating to the tank. For instance we wanted to experiment with messing with the audience’s senses. ‘The noise is horrific and the heat was very considerable, and the smell of cordite and engine exhaust fumes was pretty nasty’ ((Mark Dillon (2010) What was is like in a WWI tank? Online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/what-was-it-like-in-a-ww1-tank/12726.html (accessed 6th May 2013) )) although we had the sound effect of the tank playing throughout to give them the sense of the sound level, we only had this on low so the audience could hear our dialogue over it. We had, alternatively looked at the smell and feeling of being in a tank, we wanted to create the smell of a tank and its fumes which were not properly vented, we looked at the smell of petrol but we could not replicate the smell without using a highly flammable substance which we believed to be too dangerous. We looked at the idea of having a rag sprayed with WD40 in the corner, on the contrary we decided against this because WD40 is still highly flammable and the rag in the corner might have confused the audience to its use being there.

Furthermore, if we had more time I think we could have looked at making the audience more involved within the project, by possibly making them help us build the tank. They could have gotten a sense they were part of the creation process and understood what we were doing more closely; on the other hand, this would have taken a lot of careful planning since the chairs were tricky to place and even in our final performance one of the chairs slipped causing the tanks to collapse, if we had gotten the audience to build the tank maybe the chairs would have been more likely to collapse and we could not take that risk. Alternatively, we could have made them more involved by maybe getting them to dismantle the tank at the end, unfortunately, due to time restrictions we could not do this because we needed to get the audience back into the main room so they could see the other two performances that were similarly going on at the time.

Post-Performance Evaluation

Daniel Ridealgh / / A Restoration

On Wednesday 1st May 2013, we presented to the audience our restoration project.  Having set up the two plans, and attached the two hundred suggestions collected earlier in the process, we allowed the audience time to explore what we had presented.  As we had expected the audiences spent time looking at the ideas of others before attaching their own.  New suggestions were added from what had previously been collected including: a school, nursery, health clinic, interactive exhibit, gardens and a play park.    What was not expected was that the audience felt they needed to comment on the suggestions of others.  An example of this would be that on some of the 37 ‘demolish’ attachments we found people had crossed some out, drawn disapproving faces or added the words ‘no’ or ‘don’t’.  This provides the project with an essence of debate, having audiences interact and disagree with each other, although not foreseen it is still welcomed.

The second part to Wednesday’s performance was the return to the high street.  This was not as successful as we’d have hoped because of the time of day.  As we had not set up our display until after 5pm, the town centre was not as busy as first anticipated, with most passers-by en-route to return home from their work/school, the majority did not stop to look at the work.  Those who did, listened to a brief description of  the project and gave us some more ideas.  The responses from this demographic of people, centred around evening entertainment facilities, such as bars, clubs and hotels.  This for us as a group highlighted the versatility of the site because of it’s size and location.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC_E1lUh_h0&feature=youtu.be

In reflection finding an end point to this project was difficult.  The section presented to the audience during Wednesday’s performance  was part of the process, not an end result.  Afterwards it was then walked back into the high street, where it continued.  We did not want it to just finish here, so instead we decided on a  fitting finish for the project.  The company which built the Grandstand in 1856, Porter & co, had a factory in Lincoln which has now been demolished, and the site is used as a car-park.  We will be taking the completed length of twine and suggestions, placing it at the location responsible for the Grandstand’s very existence.  After which, once complete correspondences have been made with the Lincolnshire archives, we would hope to present them with this twine, as the archive building is conveniently located across the street from the old Porter & co factory.  This is where we would hope to leave our contribution to the legacy of the Grandstand.  An artistic research group called Wrights & Sites created a similar scaled project in 2007 called Possible Forests.  This involved the group embarking on a series of reconnaissance drifts through the forest with specialists in diverse fields  discussing ways of experiencing, re-imagining and planning the forest landscape.  The exhibition documented these dialogues through maps, texts and video, and gave the public the opportunity to contribute their own ‘possible forests’ to the collection.   Wrights & Sites explored new ways of interacting with the space around them, and sought after ideas for the future of the forest, just as we did with our project.

As we shared similarities, there is also a correlation with criticisms.  Cathy Turner analysed Possible Forests in the Contemporary Theatre Review, in which she examined the relationship between architecture and dramaturgy.  “Despite my stress on the provisional and imaginary nature of the architectures proposed by this project it is a small step from here to the production of new architectures” ((Turner, Cathy(2012) ‘Mis-Guidance and Spatial Planning: Dramaturgies of Public Space’, Contemporary Theatre Review vol. 20(2) p.149-161)), which may also be true for our piece.   The legislation involved with any reconstruction efforts on a listed building will take local councils a great deal of time to complete.  Therefore even if our project convinced the council to begin restoring the Grandstand immediately, it could be years before any changes are put into effect.   We can not however, let this dismiss the importance of our work as a potential ignition for change.  As well as this we also finished with a great number of suggestions, as did Possible Forests, and this is a positive of both.  Turner in the same article writes, ‘despite its open-ended nature, concrete proposals were made’.  The idea’s our audiences contributed ranged from practical transformations, to ones that would involve a great investment to change.  It is likely that some of the suggestions (i.e. the museum) would have already been thought of by stakeholders of the grandstand, whom hold interested in it’s future.

Retrospectively having more time with the project would have been ideal.  Extensive work could have been carried to raise awareness to a larger majority of Lincoln about the Grandstand.  Being able to have contact with the council and perhaps the local media, such as the Lincolnshire Echo newspaper, would have enabled for this raise in awareness.  Fundamentally the infrastructure is in place  for the Grandstand site to operate in any new or past usage, meaning that financial investment would not be as substantial as constructing on empty land.  For Lincoln economically, there are incentives to restoring the Grandstand by implementing the suggestions that this project has uncovered.

Wall-Paper

Eloise Fitt / / The Odds Are Stacked

Idea for covering the walls of the room in newspaper came to us from more than one source. The First idea came from the works of Chisto and his wrapping art. However, our idea seemed to be more of a reverse of Christo’s work for while he was wrapping the outside of buildings we wanted to cover the inside of a building and from this idea we discovered a new inspiration.
The Artist Emma Hack is a body artist who paints bodies and then camouflages them against walls that are painted exactly the same. From further research It was discovered that Emma had been given permission by signature prints to use the designs of Florence Broadhurst, and iconic wallpaper designer, and was using these designs and incorporating them into her own work. After looking at Emma Hacks work we got the idea to cover ourselves in newspaper as this would allow us to be camouflaged into the wall and would allow us to almost break out of the wall, as if we were breaking out of the wall to draw more attention to the grandstand as the grandstand cant draw attention to itself.
Our original idea was to use copies of the racing post with which to cover the room and ourselves with. However, after some discussion we decided that we should use more than just the one paper. Although using the racing post would be very specific to the site seeing as it used to be used for horse racing we could also relate the performance to each of us by using paper from all different places. For example, we used some of the Student papers that featured the universities slogan on it as it related to all of the people in the group as we are all students of the university and the whole project had been brought to our attention due to it. We also used a lot of Lincolnshire papers and looked out for anything that had stories about the grandstand or about the history of Lincoln itself.
According to Emma Hacks website, ‘The reaction new viewers have to Emma’s work is usually one of intrigue,’ ((http://www.emmahackartist.com.au/emma_art/the_artist.html)) and we hoped that the reaction of our audience would also be one of intrigue and that our performance would pique the interest of our audience and they would want to find out more about the site itself. We also hoped that the use of paper would intrigue an audience and that they would pay attention to the papers we used as they did indicate a deeper meaning as outlined in a previous post.

Wrapping-Paper

Eloise Fitt / / The Odds Are Stacked

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have become well known names in the art world due to their projects in which they ‘wrap’ famous monuments, Trees and even coast lines. Perhaps one of the best known of these projects came from 1995 when they wrapped the Reichstag in Germany. Christo and Jeanne Claude state on their website that “the work is more about altering an environment than wrapping,” ((http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/faq)) and this quote really resonated with our group and has helped to influence the progression of our piece.
The grandstand has been sat without a purpose for so many years that it seems to be in a disused environment. The horse stables across the road in the common is an everyday reminder that could be said to signify the grandstands previous grand purpose but, more often that not, the grandstand is completely ignored. Within our piece we wanted to draw attention to how easy it is to blend into your environment and how it is possible to break out of it and alter your environment, much like how Christo believes that his wrapping work helps to alter environments. We covered half the room on wall newspaper to try and draw attention to that part of the room but it also allowed a backdrop with which to camouflage ourselves. To create the sense of taking an audience on a journey through our piece, we felt the changing of the environment was essential. In order to achieve this it was important to show a progression and this was achieved by having a series of parts to our performance. The first part where we were dressed in newspaper and were standing up against the wall of newspaper signified the way in which the grandstand often goes unnoticed and the poem we recited was reminiscent of the grandstands history. The second part with the betting slips was a comment on society and to try and make an audience think about maybe the darker side of the grandstands history. Then the Horse projection. This was important to our piece, as the horse image was the first moving picture ever produced. We felt that this was not only relevant to the grandstands history of horse racing but also solidified the horses place in history and shows that it was an important animal to all generations. Then in contrast to this we then wanted to show how the Horse as an animal has lost some of its grandeur, much like how the grandstand has lost some of its grandeur. The last part of the Performance incorporated the latest horse news and we touched on the horse meat scandal and then related it to the Grandstand by naming the mince after the Lincoln Handicap Winner.
Throughout the entire process we found that the performance took on a lot of new meaning for each member of the group. As we developed our performance further we added a lot of new elements that we felt related directly to the grandstand and also were indicative of the environment that the grandstand would have been, in such as the use of the betting slips. The betting slips were indicative of a time when the grandstand was used for the horse racing that we had based our performance on. The betting slips we used to try and give a different element to the performance and to show a theme of loss and how fickle gambling can be. By throwing up the betting slips at the end we wanted to try and show an ending to the grandstand and that there was an ending of life happening there.
Donald Brook states on Christo’s work that ‘A function of art, is perhaps, to provoke life out of its closed circuits and dying ritual,’ ((Donald Brook – The Little bay Affair – Art and Australia – December 1969 Volume 7 Number 3)) and I feel that by using the grandstand as our Site we helped give life back to a place that’s had its only purpose die.