I watch, I’ve always watched. It used to be the case that I enjoyed watching, especially on race day. I think it was the atmosphere that I enjoyed more than anything, bounding and echoing between my walls. I witnessed the making of many fortunes, as well as the loss of many pay packets. The words of description which seem to encapsulate a race day are those such as excitement, anticipation and emotion, coupled with the likes of disappointment, inadequacy and regret. Now that’s all over and they’re all long gone, the punters and the races. I was lonely after they went, and lonely I still am, but never have I been as lonely as I was in the week of the 24^th May 1969. The atmosphere that I had so longed to return to me had manifested itself not half a mile away over the West Common. I watched as a dome at least three times the size of my self was erected and I watched as revellers enjoyed days and night of fun and entertainment. The breeze carried distorted versions of swing numbers and echoes of compare’s telling jokes over to my terraces where the only echoes which previously resided were echoes of the past. I longed, then, for that past and for the attention and the importance and yet, they all passed me by without so much as a second glance. And now, (would you believe it?) all these years later, I am to host my own sample of EXPO69. So here is my plea to you, audience member; Imagine you are there, imagine the atmosphere, the excitement and the possibilities, smell the smells, hear the sounds and see the sights. Let me watch like I always have and see, for the first time in years, happiness, affection and appreciation.

Regards,

The Grandstand

When discussing ideas for the EXPO installation piece, it was suggested that we reverse a task that we did in a workshop session at the beginning of the course where we wrote a letter to the grandstand. Here is the result. Obviously I was writing with the EXPO in mind and, as a result of this task, have created a piece that could be used in a number of ways to enhance the installation, either by having it printed for the audience to read or as a voice over in amongst other written works belonging to other collaborators on the project.

This post was simply to share my process.

As at this point in our process we have our initial ‘performance’ piece in mind (the taping around the bodies) we then decided to research into who’s bodies we were actually taping around, ‘Performance can function as both an innovative mode of enquiry and a research output’, this influenced myself to have a look on a family tree online software and find out who actually died in the disaster including Margaret. Margaret’s story had been our inspiration but we now wanted to join the facts together and ensure we knew as much information about the disaster as possible. I found a newspaper article from the LINCOLNSHIRE ECHO JUNE 1943 that had commented on the event,
‘Ten people were killed and 3 seriously injured when a plane crashed on houses in Highfield Avenue, Lincoln, early last night.
8 people – 5 members of the crew of the plane and 3 civilians were killed instantly and another member of the air crew and a child died later in hospital.
Civilians killed were Margaret Marriot age 11 of 25 Highfield Avenue, Mrs. J. Thacker of 24 Highfield Ave and Miss Gwendoline Whitby age 42 of Hykeham Road, Lincoln. Laurie Thacker aged 4 who was admitted to hospital with burns died during the night.
The 3 injured who are detained in hospital are Harry Bishop of Highfield Ave., his wife Mrs. Esme Bishop and Anthony Thacker aged 3 also of Highfield Ave.
At hospital today, it was stated that all 3 were suffering from burns and are seriously ill.
A number of other people were injured but not detained in hospital.
4 houses, 2 on each side of the road Number 22, 24, 25, and 27 were totally wrecked. One house No. 23 was set on fire and burned out. No.27 was unoccupied.
From the wreckage of No. 24 the bodies of Mrs. Thacker and Miss Whitby were recovered. Miss Whitby, a friend of Mrs. Thacker was visiting Mrs. Thacker to look after her children. Of Mrs. Thacker’s 4 children, only the 2 boys were in the house. The two girls were away from home.
At No. 25 Margaret was in the house alone doing her homework. Her parents were at their allottment. Mr & Mrs Scrimshaw and their two young children along with Mr. & Mrs. Bishop were at home at 22 Highfield Ave. Mr. & Mrs Scrimshaw were injured but no detained in hospital.’

As a total of ten people were killed all together we wanted to ensure ten bodies were taped around during our performance, however what we found interesting was the fact that three of the ten were children and as there is three people in our group it made more sense to focus on the children, especially seen as Margaret our main focus was a child and also the fact the grandstand is now used as a play group centre for children we believe will create a strange juxtaposition.

We then visited Lincoln life Museum to discover what life was like during the 1940’s, we found a popular nursery song that children sung during this period called ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’

This song had lyrics such as ‘call the doctor quick, quick, quick’ which have connotations of illness, therefore we wanted to incorporate this into our performance. We are going to sing the song slowly in a low tone and emphasise words such as ‘sick’ ‘doctor’ and ‘quick’ which is a big difference to how the song is usually sang, high pitched, loud and cheery, this was ispired by Mike Pearsons idea to ‘involve dramaturgical structures that juxtapose text and narratives of different orders and in a variety of voices- personal, expert and popular.’ (Pearson, 2011)

Exploring senses had a huge input into the creation of our site specific performance, once we had decided to take the sense of sight away. We explored with blindfolds and tried to identify a body by touch. Guessing who’s body was laid on the floor by feeling their hair, hands and facial features was extremely interesting and made me think about the families who had visited the moutrey to identify the bodies of loved ones and how they may have also struggled in cases where bombs had caused injuries so brutal that faces became disfigured. This would have meant that these families would have had to try and identify the bodies using the rest of their senses if what they were seeing wasn’t useful in helping to identify.

After this had happened we decided to tape around a body the body that was laid on the floor (mine) as shown in the pictures below.

The marked out body made us think of a death/crime scene, we then added post-stick notes to the body labelling possible injuries people who were brought to the maurtey may have had. As Pearson stated that performance can ‘illuminate places that do not so easily reveal themselves but which have their own unique characteristics, qualities and attractions’ we believed that a performance with lots of bodies taped and post-stick notes of injuries would help an audience see the connection with the room as many people are unaware the grandstand had different purposes other than horse racing- ‘Performance can illuminate the historically and culturally diverse ways in which a particular landscape has been made, used, reused and interpreted; and help us make sense of the multiplicity that resonate from it’.

Pearson, M. (2011) why performance?

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.