As in last week’s lesson we explored the moutrey room we decided to continue to look at the history from the Second World War when we visited Lincoln archives. At the archives we found information about a young girl named Mary Elaine Marriott who sadly passed away on the 11th June 1943 in her home whilst doing her homework. Her death was caused by a bombing planes wing tipping onto a telegraph pole; this caused an explosion and hit 3 houses on her street including hers. We found this story about Margret interesting as the grandstand was going to be or was a mourtrey during the second world war and therefore Margaret’s body would have been taken to the grandstand, which inspired us to think about creating a performance which could reflect Margret’s story, ‘both acheology and performance involve the documentation of practices and experiences’ (Pearson, 2001, p55).
After our visit to Lincoln Archives we were then able to write a response letter to the grandstand explaining what we had found out. As an ensemble we read our letters out and played with tones, volume and speed, we then walked around the room and listened to how it sounded. I felt that hearing all these voices speaking on top of each other created a busy and chaotic atmosphere. I also felt it sounded like prayers being read. As the main room that we use on a Friday morning is the room that was supposed to be a mourtrey i had an inspiration that our performance needed to be busy and have a lot going off in order to recreate the chaotic atmosphere that would have been in the grandstand during world war 2, ‘performance can enable integrations of academic research procedures and professional , aesthetic practices, in combinations of the creative and the scholarly’ (Pearson, 2011)

Pearson, M. Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archaeology. Clondon; Routledge.