Final Blog Submission: Human Regression-The Saddle On My Back

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Adam Joshua Robinson

The Human Beginning (Framing Statement)

Human Regression: The Saddle On My Back, Image Courtesy of Artist

Human Regression: The Saddle on my Back was the title of my devised performance using the Lincoln grandstand as a site of which to create this piece of site specific performance. I performed on the 8^th of May 2014 at the Lincoln grandstand from the hours of 2pm-5pm, throughout these three hours I had performed a 10 minute piece over and over again, I had covered myself in mud and hay, I had been in a close intimate space with my audience as I lock them in a cubicle with myself as I begin my narrative and then I exit maintaining eye contact with the audience and look at them through a mirror. I transformed into my horse with the narrative I had created and finally led them to the cubicle next door with myself fully nude, showing them myself in a stable created in that cubicle with lots of hay and a horse mask.

Development was a key part of my process, as it is in all devised pieces, however, what was key was the paradox of performance and concept, I had originally begun with the concept of decay, I had decided to represent the decay the grandstand had undergone “It foresees and prescribes what will happen without necessarily settling how” (Pearson, 2010, 149) This allowed me to play with so many different varieties of performance including, installation art, live art and one to one performance. However, once I had reached the conclusion of the one to one performance the performance began to have an effect on the concept, I began to see the concept develop as the performance developed “Performance may equally impose a concept on site, their relationship in congruent or paradoxical, including orders of material unusual…Despite their apparent dissimilarities, they begin to bleed into one another.” (Pearson, 2010, 149) My performance allowed me the idea of transformation, becoming a horse, the most relevant animal to the grandstand. It led me to displaying the decay of horses and how a human can decay into a horse, a mental and physical transformation.

The audience were part of my process, they were my influence, I wanted them to see what I could see, I wanted them to sympathise and free their minds to see the decay surrounding them. I locked them in a toilet cubicle with me, stared them in the eyes and never lost that contact because I wanted them to take this journey with me:

“The Host site is haunted for a brief time by a Ghost that the theatre makers create. Like all ghosts, it is transparent and Host can be seen through Ghost. Add into this a third term – the Witness – ie the audience, and we have a kind of Trinity that constitutes the Work… All three are active components in the bid to make site–specific work.” (McLucas, 2000, 128)

The ‘Trinity’ is a key idea to Site Specific and particularly mine; it is a unity of the three members the audience member, myself and more importantly the grandstand.

Embodying the Narrative (Process)

For many of us initial research was developed with the use of Mike Pearson’s Site-Specific Performance and the guide to first encountering a site “What are my objectives? How is my visit planned in advance?… How do I orientate myself? Do I seek out the traces.” (Pearson, 2010, 21) In focusing on the idea of objectives I thought about how I encounter the space, I walked around the outside and measured the length of the grandstand, it came to 23 Adam spans, an entirely made up unit of measurement but one that I felt helped me define myself around the grandstand. As a group we had objectives, one was to find something that looked out of place in the grandstand and so a variety of litter was found. I believe this was one of the initial starting points for my concept as it was the first sign of decay and as you encounter one sign you begin to encounter so many. I spent most of the session finding this decay and documenting it such as the fact that the windows at the back of the grandstand are not actually windows but rather painted on images to create an illusion. This concept of covering up what was decaying also began to cross my mind with the paint and the no entry stables possibly because the council do not want the public to see the grandstand in this state.

Robinson, A (2014)

The next session was discovering spaces within the grandstand, again as a group we looked at a wider variety of methods but the one that particularly stood out was the concept of drifting in Smith’s Mythogeography and how it allows us discover the site in a more intimate style. Many steps stood out such as the use of smells and senses yet one concept stood out to me most of all initially because I could not understand it, the derive. Smith refers to simply in his first step and does not explain it in great detail “Rites of passage…The derive lops off the last three and short-circuits flux straight back into separation.” (Smith, 2010, 118) Although, when he used the concept of rite of passage I saw it through the eyes of a religious ceremony such as Baptism or a Bah mitzvah this allowed me to understand that it was simply the beginning of a journey without an end, as one of my blog posts is entitled “An A With No B”(Robinson, 2014) This concept of not knowing where you are going seemed baffling at first yet seemed to reflect life itself when you first encounter anything new and complex:

“In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” (Debord, 1958)

I allowed myself to do this in various rooms within the grandstand in particular a room with RFC emblem painted above a mantel (Later research states this was a training room for the RFC) it led me to a corridor with doors that could not be opened and walls that had holes in them and began to crumble, this is where I had been lead, with a clear head I had been taken to through drifting to a small place with a unique smell but still a sense of decay.

Robinson, A. (2014) [Image online] Available from https://sitespecific2014mpi.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2014/02/13/an-a-with-no-b/ [Accessed 12th May 2014].

The next session I focused on a space I felt best represented the decay the grandstand had undergone and in a pursuit of the senses and the distraction of a cup of tea, I stumbled across the abandoned toilets through the kitchen that were used for merely storage space. The smell in this area was extraordinary and the walls were falling apart with stripped paint and toilets that no longer had running water. We were asked to devise a small 5 minute piece to present to the group and here is where I decided to begin, I had started with research into installation art as this would be an ideal space to create “A desire to activate the viewer – as opposed to the passivity of mass-media consumption – and to induce a critical vigilance towards the environments in which we find ourselves.” (Bishop, 2005) both pieces of research feature the idea of representing what was already there and that to me was decay, this theme that has reoccurred throughout this whole process and so I devised a short video of my documentation that began to explore my ideas of decay.

What use to be

I entitled the video ‘What use to be’ and presented it in the space on the cubicle seat using only the dim natural light of the blocked out skyline windows. This proved to me to be a huge leap in the understanding of Site Specific performance and that it is not about acting it is about representing the site in a way that is not usually perceived “Site-specific performance… reveals the complex two-way relationship between the person and the physical environment.” (Harrison, 2010) This is the main creation I have made, fusing people with the physical environment with the atmosphere of the space and the documentation showing what may have been missed.

When I presented the installation I had created in the toilet cubicles I realised a flaw that existed and that was the size of the space, too many people were trying to get in one tiny space. As I explored this difficulty I came to the realisation that people would have to enter the space one at a time, this led to me to doing research into the idea of one to one performance “One to One performance… affords the spectator to immerse themselves in the performance framework set out by the practitioner. This can be a seductive / scary / liberating / boring / intimate prospect and an even more intensive experience.” (Zerihan et al, 2009) However, I didn’t want this performance to become something I act in, I want it to become something more and so I begun to look at types of site performance that could be fused with one to one performance and the concept of live art stood out “Performance, in fact, is now where it’s at; it’s hard to think of much recent art that isn’t, at some level, performative.” (Searle, 2012) Art and performance aren’t just a fusion, they are in fact one of the same thing. Further research into one to one performance helped me to understand what I wanted to undertake to a greater extent “One to One performance foregrounds subjective personal narratives that define – and seek to redefine – who we are, what we believe and how we act and re-act.” (Zerihan, 2006) This lead me to another realisation that it was enough to just display pictures but to give voice, my own voice and narrative I needed to research and create for the intimacy of this performance. I researched into practitioners and Martina Von Holn, used one quote in her interview that particularly stuck in my head with reference to her piece Seal of Confession “What is essentially occurring is a making oneself vulnerable, the unpredictability of the audience… is an expression of that ‘disarming’ process. The negotiation of trust through taking risk lies necessarily at the heart of the encounter.” (Von Holn and Searle, 2009) I wanted to explore this, the concept that one to one performance is also about exploring your own vulnerabilities as well as the sites. I looked back through my research and began to understand that for this performance I personally wanted to embody that decay, I wanted to represent the decay of the site through a platform that could be accessed by the performer and the audience. I watched the video I had created previously What use to be and a theme that continuously appeared was a horse, a decay in the stables the horses were kept in, a decay in the grandstand of which they would be weighed in and I realised that this needed to be incorporated into my performance.

Documentation, movement and time spent around horses seemed the most appropriate way to go about developing a horse into my performance, I went to local stables and fields found horses and decided that I should fulfil the criteria I had set. I created a lot of documentation focusing around these horses and concentrated on there limbs and movements and the different living conditions they can appear in.

Robinson, A. (2014)

For example at the site itself some of the stables were abandoned when I first saw them with wildlife growing around and inside them, these aren’t fit for a horse, once again they represented the decay. Yet, they also led me to an idea, creating a stable inside the cubicles, presenting the decay of one cubicle and the creation of a stable in the other.

With the induction of a dual cubicle concept I was marking out my space, I had begun to explore the endless possibilities I could develop and so began to reimagine the concept of a horse and human, I developed more research that took me in the path of interspecies performance. “The animal is the latest figure to be enlisted in the ongoing exploration of identity that has defined progressive politics in the past several decades.” (Chaudhuri, 2004, 39) I had already developed a keen connection with horses and interspecies performance offered me the idea of human and horse as a performer not just an area to be marked out. Animals were in fact a fantastic way to define a message you are trying to send “Animals – ‘trapped in a place of endless misrecognition’… often been defined in terms of lack: of reason, memory, imagination, free will, conscience, language, and so on.” (Williams, 2000, 30) I wanted to show the strength of the horse, how it deserves more from homosapien than it has received. I wanted to show human decay and how we cause the majesty of a horse to decay.

I began to look at performances surrounding the horse and stumbled across Chasing Canada by Kimber Sider in which she undertook a journey with her horse as one entity and made their way across Canada only by using the directions of people they happened upon. This fusion of Horse and human continued to inspire me in directions I never thought imaginable.

Sider, K. (2008) [Image online] Available from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ridecanadawest/2924886383/in/set-72157635063339660 [accessed on 29 March 2014]

I decided that I also needed to understand the relationship between human and horses on a more intimate level and so I pulled out my finest suit and went to interview a horse, it did prove to be difficult due to the fact that horses don’t speak a terribly large amount of English. I persevered and decided to study the horses body language as I interviewed it as often most of their dialect is indirect speech.

Horsie Talk Reported by Adam Robinson

This gave me material to work with; I decided against using this in the actual performance, however, it has led me to want to understand the history behind horses. I began research into myths and legends surrounding equestrians and the decay they have felt throughout the world “Mud fever…affects horses living or working in wet, muddy conditions. The skin over the pasterns and heels becomes infected, resulting in scabby or exudative lesions which can be very painful.” (Devereux, 2007) These facts and myths were the beginnings of my narrative and helped me to expand ideas into actually performing. I use the mud reference I found for my narrative as it influenced me to perform an action, it was the trigger to begin to cover myself in mud as it perfectly represented the decay of horses through mistreatment. The other actions also began to develop with how Celts saw the horse and how Arthurian legend depicted them. The idea of chalk horses being drawn in fields and that horses with chalk on them are lucky in racing circles lead me to the action of drawing on myself and the space in chalk. Yet, the performance that offered the largest input to mine was Horse in which the performer was preceding believeing that she was a horse, but she wasn’t the horse she thought she was. I wanted people to beleive I wanted to be a horse and I wanted to push myself as a performer and so I wanted to show regression and decay through the loss of my clothes.

Undergoing the transformation. Robinson, A (2014)

All of this developed and expanded on a grander scale all leading up to the final rehearsal, I had littered my left cubicle with hay and left the right cubicle bare I had mud, chalk, hay and my mask. The last thing I had yet to do was to see if I could push myself as a performer to become naked, I asked a member of another group if they would be the respective audience member in my piece and they came in, I tied there wrist and it had all begun. This maybe one of the most peculiar experiences I have ever had due to the fact that once I had prepared myself and built up the courage to bring them in it was relatively easy. I had entered a focus, one I could not be disturbed on that allowed me to undergo this transformation I had been building up to, it came as second nature, as if I should always have been doing this. This is when I knew I was proud, the moment I had put off the longest was my shining glory, I had set a timer on a camera after to see the visual and even through a camera lens when I am tied to my stable the visual was something I could not have hoped would look better.

Becoming the Horse (Evaluation)

The Final Post. Robinson, A. (2014)

After performing at the Lincoln Grandstand on the 8th of May I have certainly encountered new experiences and developed as a performer, practitioner and human being. Audience members were regular and consistent; as soon as one had left another would be ready waiting at the door. The direction in the space worked well, when the audience were taken into the cubicle and locked in with me eye contact was maintained consistently, whilst it was hard to keep up I feel I did a good job and it served an essential role in creating the audience/performer relationship. I also feel the concept of eye contact maintained through the reflection of the mirror was fantastic as you never lose your audience, you always remind them of your presence and combined with the delivery of my narrative, that I did not rush through but rather took my time and enjoyed, the audience members seemed to be captivated.

In retrospect the items I put on my body (hay, mud, chalk etc..) went well, although, I feel I could have improved on this, I believed that I should have undergone more processes, such as horse-related consumption of one type or another. I also believe I could have had more hay on me, more mud smothered on my body, I believe I had the desired effect but I would have loved to really go over the top with this. Another improvement to be made would be the narrative, I wish instead of only removing my top when locked in the cubicle that I had created a narrative where I was entirely nude in the cubicle with the audience member. This does have its flaws in that it would make some audience members very uncomfortable but it would maintain that desired message that my clothes had decayed, humans had caused this decay, that direct eye contact when like that would have had a huge impact on the audience member.

If I were to create this performance again, I would want to spread it to a wider audience not just one to one, I would like to introduce more physical contact between the audience member and I such as allowing them to feed me, water me or pet me. I believe this would create a more definitive transformation from human to horse. I also would have used the decayed sinks more, I would like to have explored would I could have created in that space. Whilst it was a perfect representation of my whole piece I feel it needed something more just to create a more visual impact.

This is what I want to be. Robinson, A. (2014)

This process has taught me so much about myself and the varying degrees of performance and everyday life. It has taught me to appreciate the history of things you would normally seem irrelevant and it taught me that only when you are truly lost are you found.

Bibliography:

Performances Cited:

Leentje Van de Cruys: Horse (2010)

Kimber Sider: Chasing Canada (2008)

Martina Vol Holn: Seal of Confession (2007)

Publications Cited:

Bishop, C. (2005) But is it Installation Art? Tate Etc, 3 (Spring). [online] London: Tate. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/it-installation-art [Accessed 5 March 2014].

Chaudhuri, Una. “Animal Acts for Changing Times: When Does the Non-human Become More than a Metaphor on Stage?” American Theater 21.8 (2004): 36-9.

Debord, G. (1958). Theory of the Derive (Debord). [online] Available at: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.html [Accessed on 12 February 2014].

Devereux, S (2007) Mud fever: Recognise, treat and prevent it. Farmers Guardian [online] Available from: http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/equestrian/mud-fever-recognise-treat-and-prevent-it/6096.article [Accessed 25 April 2014].

Irish Museum of Modern Art (2012) What Is – Installation Art, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Harrison, B. (2010) Theatre Style: Site Specific Performance. [online] Scotland: Scottish Arts Council. Available from http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/artsinscotland/drama/features/archive/themesitespecifictheatre.aspx [Accessed 5 March 2014].

McLucas, C. (2000) Ten Feet and Three Quarters of an Inch of Theatre in Kaye, N. Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge, pp 125-137.

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Robinson, A. (2014) An A With No B. [blog entry] 13 February 2014. Lincoln: University of Lincoln. Available from https://sitespecific2014mpi.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2014/02/13/an-a-with-no-b/ [Accessed on 14 May 2014].

Searle, A. (2012) How Performance Art Took Over. [online] London: The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jul/03/performance-art-abramovic-tate-modern [Accessed 19 March 2014].

Smith. P. (2010). The Handbook Of Drifiting. Mythogeography : A Guide To Walking Sideways. 118- 121.

Williams, David. “The Right Horse, The Animal Eye – Bartabas and Théâtre Zingaro.” Performance Research 5.2 (2000): 29-40.

Zerihan, R., Ashery, O., B, F., Bartram, A., Dobkin, J., Freeman, D., Howells, A., Johnson, D., Kartsaki, E., Kela, L. Louise, B. Mendes-Silva, S. O’Reilly, K., Parthipan, J., Pinchbeck, M., Rose, S., Sweeting, S., Von Holn, M. (2009) Live Art Development Agency Study Room Guide on One to One Performance.

Zerihan, R. (2006) Intimate Inter-actions: Returning to the Body in One to One Performance. [online] Available from http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0601/rachelzerihan/home.html [Accessed 19 March 2014].

Alice Dale Final Blog Post…

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Alice Dale

“This process of making strange enables the artist to relate to the site in a way that may educate, inspire and politicise an audience” (Govan, 2007, 122).

The Waiting Room focuses on the passing of time and makes strange the idea of waiting. The site specific work created and performed at Lincoln Grandstand takes into consideration the many jobs that it has had and it’s place within the Lincoln community. With the help of public research the Grandstand becomes a time capsule of the last decade as we stop and look at what has happened with specific reference to one room within the building.

The Waiting Room is a performance that relies heavily on the co-operation of an active audience. The work “creates a sense of communion” (Govan, 2007, 114) between the actors and the spectators as the audience are seated with the actor and are a vital part of the performance. Inspiration is taken from practitioners and theatre companies such as Rotazaza and their work Etiquette and also the work on LIGNA and their Radio Ballet. Both of these pieces of work have a dependency on the audience/participants and encourage the use of audience participation in situations that audiences are very much familiar with. In The Waiting Room the use of audience participation is exploited as they are given envelopes as a way of instructing them what to do.

As previously stated, The Waiting Room focuses on the passing of time and how reliant we are as a culture on it. It also portrays how reliant the Grandstand is on time and how it has for many years now been waiting for something new. The passing of time has seen the Grandstand go from a thriving establishment to a place that no one of the younger generations has any knowledge of and our site specific work addresses these issues.

The Waiting Room takes the history of the Grandstand and ideas about waiting and structures them into a performance piece performed by the audience. The Waiting Room is a fifteen minute performance which is designed to accommodate up to eight participants at a time. Post performance a time capsule is collected with tokens from each performance that happened that day and then it is buried at the site. This symbolises the stopping of time which happens after each performance when the audience are asked to take the batteries out of their clocks and then leave the site. This is recorded and presented at a later date for those who could not witness the burial. The Waiting Room hopes to “educate, inspire and politicise” (Govan, 2007, 122) its audience and help them focus on the decaying effect that time has on everything.

We had been interested at first in many aspects of the Grandstand. We really loved the corridor at the back of the Grandstand which led to the toilets. We thought that the contrast of the old tiles and windows on one side to the newer windows on the other was beautiful. During the first week we developed a short piece of work here which also if developed more would have told the stories of the local community and their memories of the Grandstand. We were also drawn to a room that was off of this corridor. We were intrigued by the painting on the wall and wanted to know more about its origins. This is why for us visiting the archives was a break through point.

Image courtesy of artist, T. Webley.

We explored the archives, asking questions about what the Grandstand could have been used for. We noticed that the room we were interested in might have been used as a waiting room as there were plans to use the Grandstand as a mortuary during World War Two. Whether it was or not cannot be confirmed and all we found out is that this may have been a possibility.

As you can see on this picture of the plans we found at the Lincoln Archives, there is one room that is labelled office and waiting room. This is the room that we were first intrigued by. At an early stage in our process, we knew that the room was used for waiting in and we liked this idea of people waiting for something as the Grandstand has been waiting for years now.

We continued to explore what the Grandstand had been used for over the past few decades. We also knew that the Grandstand was used to test planes and to train pilots during WWII. This introduced another element of waiting. We started to see links between the Grandstand and waiting and wanted to research this further.

We also thought it was important to investigate other reasons for waiting. We thought the best way of doing this was through an online public survey in which we asked the public what they were waiting for and also what they thought the Grandstand was waiting for. We also went into the town centre of Lincoln and asked the general public the same questions. The idea of using public research in performance was inspired by John Newling’s work, Where A Places Becomes A Site. This work took place in Broadmarsh shopping centre in Nottingham, where a riddler jacket was hung from the ceiling and trailed along the floor. The audience were asked what they valued most and in return Newling gave them a question mark cut out from the jacket which was then pinned to their clothing. These values were then compiled into a script ready for live performance. This audience involvement makes the performance more relevant to the site. Newling asked people what they valued most in a place of material worth and by asking the people who frequent the location this makes the performance raw and unique.

(Nottingham Contemporary, 2013)

Newling’s performance was very much based on the public survey whereas we wanted to integrate this into our performance. The results from the survey gave us many varied answers. Later on in the devising process we decided that we wanted to combine the results from the survey and interviews into the narratives that would be performed by the audience members.

Here are some of the results…

What are you waiting for?

Waiting for a wedding.

Waiting to become a teacher.

Waiting for pay day.

Waiting for my dinner to go down so I can eat my Crunchie.

Waiting for a less stressful day at work.

Waiting to finish university, get married and have a family.

Waiting for summer.

Waiting to do a 12 hour lambing shift.

Waiting for the next chapter.

Waiting for happiness.

Waiting for my future to begin.

Waiting for my house to be built.

Waiting for my wife.

Waiting to be old enough to join the army.

What is the Grandstand waiting for?

A bulldozer.

Something new.

To be used again, like when the horse racing was there.

A new lease of life.

A grand event.

To be decorated.

A facelift.

A race.

A comeback.

To be noticed.

Rotazaza (2007) Etiquette [image online] Avaliable at http://www.pq.cz/en/rotozaza-etiquette.html [Accessed 3rd of March 2014.]

This level of participation is something that we were really interested in when developing our The Waiting Room. We looked at several pieces of work where the audience were the focus and carried out the performance through instructions given to them. We looked at Rotazaza’s work Etiquette (2007). In this work, which takes place in a public cafe, audience members are seated in pairs and given headphone over which they are both given different instructions. They describe the experience as “expos[ing] human communication at both its rawest and most delicate”(Rotazaza, 2007). They enforced human contact in a society that is consumed by technology.However it was ironic that they used technology to do this.

Another performance where the audience were controlled using instructions is Ligna’s Radio Ballet (2003). This performance consisted of audience members turning up to a location wearing headphones that were tuned to a certain radio station. Instructions were then given over the radio and the audience members completed the movements. This once again takes audience participation to a new level. The audience become the performers rather than an audience in the most basic form. The location for the Radio Ballet is usually a train station where “the system of control is designed to keep out every kind of deviant behaviour” (Ligna, 2003) and anyone behaving out of the ordinary is “detected immediately and instantly expelled” (Ligna, 2003). Therefore performing the Radio Ballet is a response to the site and how people are expected to behave in a strict manner without the chance for individuality and self-expression.

(Radiodispersion, 2008)

We were inspired by how the audience were instructed in both pieces and we also liked the idea of the audience wearing headphones. However, after doing some technical research we found that this would only be possible if we had an audience of two people. We wanted to have a bigger audience than this and this is when we decided on using the envelopes as the way of instructing. We also decided that we loved the simplicity of it. Instead of relying on technology we could create a performance by using the most basic form of communication- letters. This also meant that the audience were reliant on the time rather than having the information just given to them. As we wanted to focus on the passing of time, the use of envelopes was more effective. Nevertheless, both of these performances helped us to understand how we would control the audience.

We wanted to put an emphasis on the passing of time and how when you are waiting, time seems to pass at a slower pace. Therefore, we decided on putting times on the envelopes for when the participants should open them. We also did this by giving everyone a small clock so that they could be constantly watching the time. We liked the idea that everyone was waiting for the time to pass so that they could have a purpose. This was a key link to the Grandstand for us. After doing our audience research we found that many people thought that the Grandstand needed a purpose and was waiting to have a better purpose than for people to play carpet bowls in and for children’s play groups.

When developing our work, at first we decided that we wanted to have dialogue performed by us and this would be our purpose within the performance. However, after hearing feedback and group discussions, we decided that it would be best for the audience to speak the dialogue as it had a nicer effect than for us to speak it.

Examples of the narration written by me.

However, when we decided this, we encountered a dilemma as this meant that we would not be doing anything. This is when we decided that we would be introducing moments of intimacy between ourselves and audience members. These would be as simple as laying our heads on the shoulders of those next to us or holding their hand. This intimacy was inspired by Oreet Ashery’s one to one piece Say Cheese (2002) during which she dressed as a man and lay on a bed with the participant and spoke with them. This location first of all is very intimate but she made the situation more intimate by creating a therapy like session during which the audience members could confess to her.

Another performance where this intimacy is conveyed is Adrian Howell’s The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding (2011) during which he bathed, fed and comforted one participant over half an hour. This performance holds a lot more intimacy than we wanted to include in our performance but the idea of comforting the participants and in some cases making them feel awkward in the situation is something we wanted to achieve.

In Emma Govan’s chapter Inhabited Spaces she explores the work of the Reckless Sleepers in their piece Last Supper (2005). She stated that the sense of “evoking the invisible” (2007, 115) that the company creates through giving “voice to the voiceless” (2007, 115) is increased through the “directors encouragement of non-performing” (2007, 115). This was achieved through the use of the “reportage style” (Govan, 2007, 115) and the lack of emotions used within the performance. Another technique that they used to portray ‘non-performing’ is reading from the script. This is something we adopted into our performance as well as the lack of emotions. At the end of our performance, Samantha read the list of reasons for waiting from a script that she had typed during the performance. This was something that became unique to each performance as the list changed and altered slightly each time it was written. This sense of originality in the text as well her reading it from the paper showed non-performing. Also, throughout the rehearsals process and performance we always tried to be someone other than ourselves. This is the main portrayal of non-performing within our performance.

In Govan’s chapter she also states that “for a moment the spectators from the outside join a living moment with the actor who inhabit the inside space of the performance environment” (2007, 114). This is also something that we could apply when looking at The Waiting Room as we did create “a ‘lived-in’ space” (Govan, 2007, 114) as the piece raised issue of how the space was used. The performance combined the “present and past, and inside and outside” (Govan, 2007, 114). The audience left knowing more about the Grandstand and in particular the room we used.

Throughout the devising of our work we had toyed with the idea of creating an installation with the letters, airplanes and clocks that would be used within the performances. As we wanted to do several performances with gaps in between to reset the area we thought this time could also be spent building an installation. This meant that in every performance the installation would look different. After the performances had finished we would have had an allotted time in which people could look at and explore the installation. When looking at how we could structure the installation, we looked at work that was built using mainly paper. We discovered one piece of work that was constructed using paper airplanes.

'I fly like paper, get high like planes' by dawn ng (2009)

Ng, D. (2009) ‘Dawn Ng’ [image online] Available at http://www.dawn-ng.come/new/paperplanes/4.html [Accessed 3 May 2014].

This piece of work was very striking and we were inspired by how dynamic it looked. The idea of doing this with the airplanes flying away from the painting on the wall was one that we like a lot. However, after much deliberation we decided that this was not something we would be able to do in such a small space of time.

We then started to think what we had done at the Grandstand through the previous weeks. Near the beginning of the process, we were asked to take a gift to the Grandstand and we really liked the idea of leaving part of what we had created at the site. I then suggested that we bury a time capsule containing elements of our show and this process would also be documented.

We all agreed that this idea was one that we very much liked and decided to move forward with it. After a little more discussion, we decided that we would ask the other groups to add something into the capsule so it will be a collection of all of the performances took take place on the 8th of May 2014. We also decided that at the end of each performance we will ask the audience to take the batteries out of the individual clocks and place them in a jar. This image of stopping time and then burying it at the site is one that we thought was very fitting with our piece. Asking the audience to take out the batteries would be done using the poem ‘Stop The Clocks’ by W.H.Auden. We had wanted to use this poem since quite early in the process due to its links with our performance. The poem seemed to claim a worthy spot at the end of the performance as the audience left the site having stopped the clocks.

On the 8^th of May 2014, four performances of The Waiting Room took place and each one of them was different. We quickly found that the number of audience members really had an impact on the performance. The first performance had seven participants, the second had five, the third had two and the fourth had eight. Although all of the performances were successful we found that the ones which had more participants were more engaging as we did not have to take the places of the audience members. However, all audience members were co-operative and helped us to create work that was exciting and engaging.

Some audience members told us that they really enjoyed the piece and felt like the time, when they were taking part, passed slowly as they were constantly watching the clocks. One moment that was very effective is when one participant was asked to laugh hysterically and he did so proudly. Another participant was then asked to speak and because the laughter was still occurring, the second participant had to shout over it. The juxtaposition of the serious text and the laughter was something that in rehearsal we had never encountered and this is what made each performance special. The different participants each bought something to the performance. Some were uncomfortable when speaking so were quieter and spoke very differently to those who were more confident. No one person spoke the text or performed the actions in the same way and I think this is something we had underestimated but it really meant that each performance was unique. A weaker part was during the second time we performed when Samuel laughed at people that were in the audience. Although we did adopt the ideas of ‘non-performing’ there still needed to be an element of professionalism within the performance and I felt like the laughing broke this.

Here is the video of the burial of the time capsule which took part after all of the performances were complete.

(Alicedalemusic, 2014)

If we were to perform The Waiting Room again, I would ensure that we had five or more participants at all times. Although we had backup plans for any number of participants, as I said previously the ones with the most people were the more effective. I would also attempt to push more boundaries when it came to making the audience feel uncomfortable. I think we could have definitely made this part of the performance more experimental and really made them feel awkward in the room. After the process I feel like I have a better understanding of what site specific performance is and if I was to redo the process now it would result in a more experimental piece. However, I do believe that The Waiting Room showed a clear understanding of the Grandstand and was definitely relevant to the site. Our performance was influenced by the Grandstand and the history that has lived within its walls for the past century.

Performance pictures…

The time capsule box.

The clocks and letters on the chairs.

The jar before the batteries.

Katherine digging the hole for the time capsule.

The time capsule.

The Waiting Room.

Word Count- 3,201

References-

Alicedalemusic (2014) ‘The Waiting Room’ Time Capsule (Post Performance) [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHRYiH8IqM8 [Accessed 10 May 2014].

Govan, E., Nicholson, H. and Normington, K. (2007) Making a Performance. London and New York: Routledge.

Ligna (2003) Exercise in lingering not according to the rules [online] Available athttp://ligna.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/radio-ballet.html [Accessed 10 May 2014].

Ng, D. (2009) Dawn Ng. [online] Available at http://www.dawn-ng.com/new/paperplanes/4.html [Accessed 03 May 2014].

Nottingham Contemporary (2013) John Newling Where a Place becomes a site: Values- Participatory Performance. [online video] Avaliable from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxJC12KqZsQ [Accessed 05 May 2014].

Radiodispersion (2008) Radio Ballet Leipzig Main station Part 1 [online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI3pfa5QNZI [Accessed 11 May 2014].

Rotazaza (2007) Etiquette. [online] Avaliable from http://www.pq.cz/en/rotozaza-etiquette.html [Accessed 13th May 2014].

Shoes, shoes and more shoes!

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Tamsyn Webley

We performed our final piece Thursday for a duration of around two and half to three hours. Dressed in funeral attire we transported the shoes from the drop off zone to the back of the grandstand. Then we proceeded to lie amongst them whilst reciting texts we had memorised. After a period of time we rose up and then took the shoes back to the drop off zone but this time pairing them off and lining them up neatly. This allowed our group to show the grandstand’s use as a mosque as well as it’s possible use as a mortuary.

Some of the shoes we managed to collect for our piece.

Our poster advertising our piece.

The chalk outlines where we lay once all the shoes were in the space.

The end part of our piece. The shoes have been paired and lined up and the remaining shoes have been put in a pile.

The Final Post (Evaluation)

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Adam Joshua Robinson

After performing at the Lincoln Granstand on the 8th of May I have certainly encountered new experiences and developed as a performer, practitioner and human being. I believe my performance had many strengths but similarly there were weaknesses and definite points I could have improved on. Audience members were regular and consistent as soon as one had left another would be ready waiting at the door and all members played their role well without realising. My favourite audience members were the ones who did not know whether to laugh or cry, to smile or breakdown, the confusion on their face really fuels you as a performer, this is constantly the reaction I aim to achieve as it means you have made an impact. The direction in the space worked well, when the audience were taken into the cubicle and locked in with me eye contact was maintained consistently, whilst it was hard to keep up I feel I did a superb job and it served an essential role in creating the audience/performer relationship. I also feel the concept of eye contact maintained through the reflection of the mirror was fantastic as you never lose your audience, you always remind them of your presence and combined with the delivery of my narrative, that I did not rush through but rather took my time and enjoyed, the audience members seemed to be captivated.

Toothpaste

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Lauren Brook

Walking around the perimeter of the Grandstand in Lincoln, I stoop down under a tree to find an old, empty and slightly grubby tube of toothpaste. Why, you ask, am I spending my time rooting around under bushes to find used toiletries? Well this is site specific performance, and if a urinal can be art then so can a bottle of Colegate’s finest.

I am joking, of course, but my find did spark rather a lot of thinking once I had returned home from our morning exploring the Grandstand, its history and its architecture. A thriving racecourse before its demise in 1965, the space is steeped in history, and looking out across the green fields surrounding the building I can’t help but imagine hoards of men and women, clutching betting slips and intently watching the horses thunder across the track.

A road goes right through what would have been the track now, and while seeing many cars go past during the three hours we were at the site didn’t break the sense of nostalgia and history, the toothpaste certainly did. Its presence within the grounds of the Grandstand threw me off completely, as I was looking at such a representation of the modern day when the objects which used to litter the site would have been discarded betting slips and cigarette stubs.

The toothpaste was found as a result of a task we were set to find objects on the site of the Grandstand. While I wasn’t surprised to find it, it also made me think very clearly about the changes this place has gone through, and the changes many other places have to endure, as communities place pressure on these sites to be utilised as community centres or golf courses or other things our growing populations need.

The Grandstand is still a wonderful site, and I can’t wait to get to know it more as we get further through the process- but knowing that among the users of the golf course and visitors to the community centre there are also people who are using the space as a litter box for their 21^st Century toothpaste tubes, makes me a little sad and put out.

The Grandstand Project

A site specific performance at the Grandstand in Lincoln

Monthly Archives: May 2014