A Body Without a Home

 

 

 

A Body Without a Home was a site-specific performance that concentrated on the idea that the Lincoln Grandstand was planned to be a mortuary during World War II. It was never confirmed that the Grandstand was in fact converted into a makeshift mortuary; however the blueprints for the mortuary are maintained in the Lincolnshire archives, and as such must be considered a valid point in the Grandstand’s history. Govan, Nicholson and Normington describe “Ben Harrison not site-specific but site-sensitive” (Govan 2007, p. 119) this was partially what A Body Without a Home was based on. Naturally we required the piece to be site-specific, but we also wanted the piece to be site-sensitive. We did this by adding a mosque element into our piece, as the Grandstand is used to hold mosque services. However it was difficult to add the mosque element into the piece without linking it too heavily with the death of the mortuary, so our piece also had to be site-sensitive. The performance was a durational performance that lasted for three hours. It involved using shoes to represent dead bodies in a mortuary, but also used empty shoes to symbolise the removal of shoes before entering a mosque. The piece involved over two hundred and fifty shoes, initially they began scattered along a “drop off point” however as performers we lifted a shoe each and took it to the back of the grandstand, symbolising the moving of the dead from the streets of Lincoln to the mortuary itself. The fact the shoes started disorganised represented the massive death toll during the war, the figure being over 65,000 non-military personnel killed on the British Isles. However when we moved the shoes and placed them around chalk outlines of our bodies this represented the organisation of the dead within a mortuary. We began the piece standing sombrely above the scattered shoes as if we were watching the dead. Then we carried the shoes to the mortuary area, firstly one by one, then at a more fast pace, showing the increasing death rates during the war and the increased work load on the mortuary workers. We then lay in our chalk body outlines and each member of the group recited a piece about a mortuary, apart from one who spoke of the Grandstands use as a mosque. After these pieces had been recited for around half an hour each group member collected a pair of shoes and took it back to the drop off point. However at the end of the piece the shoes were paired and lined up in an orderly fashion, much like they would be at a mosque service. This was used to show the transition from death to life, an idea that Muslim ideology is based on.

Devising Process

In the early stages of performance development our group was planning on producing several installations to create a timeline of the Grandstands history. “my impulse is to concentrate on the yard: to work with moments from its history” (Pearson 2006, p. 75) this is what we decided to work on as a group, the piece needed to reflect on the Grandstands history, and as such would be specific to the site itself. Our idea began when we went to visit the Lincolnshire life museum. At the museum we encountered the first tank ever to be built. “Flirt” was created and tested in Lincoln and we decided to create an installation around this part of the history. To show the tank in the installation, it was decided that the group would use tables and chairs from the Grandstand to represent the tank. This was used to symbolise the past through the present, another way of showing the Grandstands history on a timeline as we were using materials present at the Grandstand now to represent a part of its history.

 

 

 

 

Chair Tank

 

However, we decided this one installation was not enough to justify an entire performance. As such we decided that doing several different installations would be beneficial to the performance as a whole. So after more research we found that the Royal Air Force used to train pilots on the west common near the Grandstand; they would use a chalk circle to train pilots to land their planes accurately. To represent this we decided to have the audience create their own paper aeroplane, and throw it into a chalk circle we had drawn out on the Grandstand. We also researched names of squadron’s who flew from Lincoln in the war itself, with the intention of writing a squadron name on each of the pieces of paper, as to add to the authenticity of the piece. But these squadron names were hard to come by, and as a group we decided that we could not be fully factual if we pursued this idea. So we decided to just use plain paper aeroplanes.

As our piece started to revolve around a war theme we had an idea of a third installation, an obstacle course. As soldiers were trench trained at the Grandstand during World War One. This obstacle course involved the audience actually taking the obstacle course as the group barked orders at them from the side wall. The obstacle course involved exercises that both mimicked military training regime, but also could be seen as quite equestrian movements, showing a link between the Grandstand and its horse racing history.

Obstacle Course

 

Our final installation was set to be placed on the grass just outside the Grandstand. The group planned to use overturned chairs and shoes scattered across the floor to represent devastation during war time. We intended to get an accurate figure of the death toll in Britain during World War Two and use shoes to represent a large percentage of the dead with each individual shoe. The shoes also were used to represent a powerful image during World War Two itself, of the piled shoes in Auschwitz during the holocaust.

As the piece progressed the idea seemed to become more and more convoluted. The piece felt as though there were too many ideas going on at one time. On top of this, each individual idea had its own flaw. The tank that we build did not look like a tank at all, the tables and chairs merely looked like stacked tables and chairs, without clear explanation the audience would not have been able to relate the installation to a tank. The paper aeroplane idea relied heavily on the weather, if it was too windy or if it rained on the performance day complications would arise, the paper aeroplanes would not fly, nor would the audience be interested in going out in the rain just to throw a paper aeroplane. The obstacle course relied heavily on audience participation; something which the group could not ensure would happen on performance day. Without this participation the installation would have been pointless. With the chairs on the grass the group decided the image was not strong enough. It was not a clear scene of devastation and would appear to the audience as just chairs scattered on the floor, and as for the Auschwitz image, this could not be considered site-specific as it had nothing to do with the Grandstand itself. As such the group decided that the idea of creating a historic timeline was not convincing enough to an audience and too overcomplicated.

Shoes

The group did decide to keep one idea from the initial devising process, the shoes. We believed that the shoes were a very powerful image as shoes without ownership is an intriguing prospect, making one wonder about the owners of the shoes and why they are separated. As a group we decided one part of the Grandstands history that had been overlooked was its proposed mortuary status during the war. Due to the dead having their shoes removed in a mortuary we decided to use a magnitude of shoes to represent death within a mortuary.

The shoes were clearly the most important part of the performance and we decided that we wanted to inhabit our space by completely filling it with shoes. This meant we had to gain access to as many shoes as we could. We used many different methods of gaining this access, including charity shops, friends and family. As a group we all went out and purchased pairs of shoes from shops, went to charity shops and asked for their shoes under the promise of their return, and we placed a box in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre for any unwanted shoes to be placed to aid our performance. By the end of this vigorous process the group managed to gain access to over 300 shoes to use in the piece. This helped to make the image far more concrete.

Our initial idea in the process was to just have the shoes scattered all over our space and have chalk outlines in between them to represent the death within the mortuary, however when we first tried this it was apparent that we did not have enough shoes to make this image powerful enough to stand alone. We wanted to invoke emotions within our piece somehow, so we gathered more shoes to fill the space and decided to place our bodies within the chalk, to offer an element of realism in the piece, the motionless people within these mounds of unclaimed shoes was a powerful image in itself.

We ran this installation numerous times but it still felt like something was missing, it did not invoke enough emotion to satisfy the group. It was due to this that we decided the piece needed some sort of speech to give the image even more power. We decided that the piece, despite being powerful did not immediately represent a mortuary, as such we decided as a group to all find a speech about a mortuary and recite it over and over again. All speaking over each other at once at differing levels meant the audience had to get closer to one group member individually to hear what they were saying. This closeness was intentional to create a bond between the audience member and the individual, and as such make the piece stronger as the audience does not only see bodies on the floor, but creates an intimate relationship with the performer in that moment.

The Poem

As an individual I decided to use a poem about a mortuary to recite during our performance. Poetry is a brilliant way to portray emotions as it uses symbolism to invoke an emotion that the poet desires.

Mortuary Lullaby

Sing to me, as I’m drifting off the sleep
Faded charts beside my feet
I don’t want to die alone

Close your eyes, as my body is being lit
Buried in an iron casket
Flying too high for the embers to glow

I’m too scared to land
Please hold me by the hand
I think I am drifting away

Please hold my tight
Where I am there is no light
To comfort me as I begin to dream

And if you can’t hear breathing
Don’t worry about a pulse that isn’t there
Don’t hold on however much you care

Just don’t stop singing
We can always sleep
Another day

Sing with me, I’ve drifted off to sleep
Name tag tied to my feet
I do not want to die alone

Sing with me
I’ve drifted off to sleep
And I do not want to die alone

(Hau, 2014)

 

This poem shows a person’s thoughts within a mortuary, it show the fear of being alone, the fear of death and the longing for comfort. Everyone has encountered death at some point, but the fact that this poem is from the narrative of the person dying makes it much more powerful. It is this idea of death that I wanted the audience to empathise with; I wanted them to understand my loneliness as the character and connect emotionally with my character, creating a stronger image within the space. I chose to almost whisper the poem as to almost force the audience member to get closer to me, not only physically but also emotionally.

 

The Mosque

Another aspect of the Grandstands history which had been overlooked overall within the site was its current state. Regularly the Grandstand is used as a place of worship for the Muslim community. As our image used shoes, we wanted to link this with the Muslim tradition of removing their shoes as they enter the building, as to link the death and pessimism of the past with the life and belief of the present. To do this we decided we decided we would organise the shoes into pairs and straighten them out, to represent the Muslim community removing their shoes and also to show that the unorganised death had been converted into organised life.

 

Organised shoes.

 

The Drop Off Point

During the final rehearsal our group discovered a part of the Grandstand car park labeled the “drop off point” which we thought we could place our shoes in initially. This would be the first thing the audience would see and we decided to stand over them in funeral clothes as to provoke intrigue. So the disorganised shoes had been moved in the final rehearsal from our actual performance space to the “drop off point”. “Waiting for take-off. While newspapers were being distributed, he glanced through the company’s in-flight magazine and ran his finger along the imagined route of the journey.” (Augé 1995, p.3) Marc Augé’s description of a journey interested the group. The fact that that he made a journey on a flight so interesting and extensive inspired the group to use the Drop off zone to greater effect, the walk from there to the actual performance piece could be seen as a performance in itself.

 

 

 

Drop off point.

 

The Final Performance

The final performance took place in three stages, the initially disorganised piling of shoes in the drop off point, from which we each individually grabbed a random shoe and took it to our performance space in the back of the Grandstand which already had chalk outlines of our bodies, around which we placed the shoes in a semi-organised fashion. As this stage of the performance progressed to the hour mark, we increased the pace of the shoe gathering, as to represent the increased stress and workload placed upon the mortuary as the death toll increased.

When all the shoes had been removed from their initial resting place the group laid down within their chalk outline. When there they recited their individual speeches for around forty-five minutes, enough time for the audience to witness the speeches several times and become more and more enticed.

 

Finally the third stage of the performance was taking the shoes back to their initial space, but this time they were placed in an organised fashion, in pairs, as to represent the removal of shoes within Muslim culture.

 

Post-Performance

On the whole the performance seemed a success, with a satisfactory amount of audience members to witness each stage of our performance. The audience seemed very involved in all three stages of our performance. Watching with intrigue at the initial removal stage. Getting close to the performers during the recital period. And even following the performers to see where the shoes ended their journey. “Rising and falling in response to weather conditions or tidal flow, prone to breaching the boundaries imposed by human” (Donald 2012 p.213) Despite being based on a site-specific performance based on a river, the concept of weather interested the group. Despite it raining on the performance day, we thought it added to the bleak atmosphere of the performance and as such made the piece even more effective. The shoes definitely were used to full effect; they portrayed a powerful image of loss, an image that the performers wanted the piece to show. If the performance could be repeated, I would have wanted the group to start removing the shoes quicker sooner as to leave more time for the recital period as it seemed as though an hour of recital would have been very interesting and challenging for the performers. The performance however opened my eyes to an original way of performance. Performing in a non-traditional venue mad the performance so much more interesting. Having a keen interest in historical context it was a very enjoyable process on the whole. Having to do hours of research into the history of the Grandstand, as a performer you seem to create a bond with the space. It is as though you are creating part of your own history within this already historical venue. I felt as though the space we inhabited over the eight weeks was our space, we claimed ownership over that space, a feeling you rarely feel in a traditional theatre atmosphere. As such I believe the performance was stronger due to the bond we created with the site.

Works Cited:

Augé, Marc, 1995, Non-Place Introduction to an Anthropology and Supermodernity, Verso. P.1-7.

Donald, Minty, 2012, The Urban River and Site-Specific Performance, Routledge. P.213- 223.

Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Normington, 2007, Making a Performance, Routledge. P.114-119.

Hao, Kenneth, 2014, Mortuary Lullaby. Poem.

Pearson, Mike, 2006, In Comes I, University of Exeter Press. P.75-79.