Farewell Grandstand – Final Blog Post

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Kieren Davies

Site Specific Performance is a term used to describe theatre that is related to a certain location. In that aspect to the word “perform’ what does the actor feel when performing in a place not familiar. The challenges approaching The Grandstand Project were something that, as students of theatre, would find difficult. When Michael asked the group about what we thought of The Grandstand our reactions were one of a simultaneous blank stares and wide eyes topped with small shrugs of “I don’t know”. This in itself was the first problem we encountered as a class. How can our finished and polished pieces of work bring relevance to a site that, no harm intended, was a place that Lincoln has seemed to forgotten about? Of course now looking back on this original mindset I must have been in a pessimistic state of mind but at the time the real challenge was to inject life into this empty shell of a building that seemed to have fallen from grace. Another issue was the lack of knowledge of the history of the site. With no resources at first we seemed to have been thrown into the deep, but only our eagerness and hunger to delve into with this project. Of course this situation was nothing that a little digging couldn’t fix however. I think once I got over the self imposed idea that I was going to struggle with working in this site I was actually able to really understand The Grandstand. With the seminars we were given by Michael we explored more realms of performance within a site, from idea like “drifting”, mythgeography and live art. I was extremely interested and coveted by the idea of live art, as the process of developing it seemed innovative and seemed to fit in with the site real well. As someone who is obsessed with performance art in any sense it just seemed to relate to me. By these seminars taking place I was able to go off on a tangent of ideas and thoughts that I could use for both of the pieces I was in. For the EXPO’69 performance it was the main principles to make sure the audience have fun and notice the space, and to also bring life into the site. For the Tragedy at Highfeild Avenue group we made it our goal to remember the 3 children that had died in a fatal accident at the street of the same name, and we played on the fact The Grandstand originally had plans to be a mortuary a very cautious issue that we had to handle with care and sensitivity as they were real. I aim to show the ideas and developments of both the Tragedy at Highfeild Avenue as well as the EXPO’69 pieces and try to express the concepts, those we used and those that were supposed to be underlying in the general message of our performances and the relation to them both of the site of The Grandstand. On the first visit to the site we were told to keep a open mind and to let ourselves explore. My first reactions were one of a mixed response. I greatly was interested in the fact it looked very disused and run down from the outside. I also realised just how alone the building was from the rest of Lincoln. Initial thoughts were to make something celebrating the fact it is so alone and as I phrased it “dead”. I didn’t know how to bring these dark, macabre elements into a building like this however.

The first visit for me was more of me trying to get a feel of the atmosphere of the space, and I feel like these dark ideas were stemming from the dark clouds and bad weather as well as the rusted fence near it. Still with no concrete idea for a performance the next few days of drafting up some creative thinking came to no fruition. It seems that I was trying to think of something to stage there without really understanding The Grandstand. We were placed into groups of 4’s. I was with Katherine, Adam and Kent and we asked to explore a allotted space and use our bodies in a way to highlight this area. Very similar to the works of Willi Dorner who used brightly clothed people and filled spaces. We used our bodies to hang from the back of the fencing and in the process we put our arms around the back of the cold steel to form shapes like crucifixes and such. The following task was to then actually actually put this piece of work into a main room of the site. We then proceeded to go to the back room with steel pillars, and draped our arms around these imposing structures within the room. The fireplace was a main focal point for our planning. In the week’s seminar we were asked to look into the aspect of “drifting”. Our piece was to actually now incorporate the rules given to us in The Handbook Of Drifting. One rule I was particularly interested in was “picking a theme” and sticking to it. In our piece we looked for sharp angles, then pausing to reflect on the room, and then proceeding to let our body do the work. We didn’t think about the routine to stick to we just decided on a route to go to and then went down said route. It was actually a really interesting exercise to do, as I felt that it made me more connected to the actual site. Another rule I liked was ‘don’t be satisfied with irony – insist on double inauthenticity (Smith, 2010 p.120) This spoke to me purely because it says to not conform to what is comfortable to you in a performance aspect. To merely be satisfied with how you think rationally and not to think outside the box on a project this big is foolish, in my own opinion. By having a degree of inautenticity however was it fair to argue that by using this rule we deceive our audience? Producing a fake piece of art in a sense? In that sense as well what would be the point in producing a work of performance devoid of any substance and relevance. It was a brief passing thought then made me think about how little I actually knew about The Grandstand itself. Of course after doing the performance I hadn’t actually realised what I did. It took me until yesterday to truly feel like I had build the foundation to make a connect with the site building itself. A very vague thought I understand, but in a piece where you don’t speak and only allow yourself to walk and think you do gets you to think and react.I also, upon first gaze have completely became enamoured with this stunning fireplace in the room we did our performance. “Per Ardua Ad Astra”, a rough translation apparently is “through adversity to the stars” which is the RAF’s motto is written over the main fireplace, and upon further questioning Michael informed us of the RAF past that the Grandstand actually had. I thought I was excited when I found out a morgue was planned to be build at the Grandstand but the military past it has is outstanding .

The week after the drifting exercise we went to the Lincoln Archives, as a class, to learn more about the history of the site. We were given a range of things relating to The Grandstand. After browsing through a few articles I found one particular piece of paper really caught my eye. This document entailed about a event called the Lincolnshire EXPO held in 1969. Me, Samantha and Sam immediately became keen on collaborating to make a installation piece. The event was held to celebrate local business and entrepreneurs in their respected field of work. The festival had musical acts such as Dennis Wooden Trio and Edmundo Ros. For some offbeat reason as soon as I saw Edmundo Ros’ portrait and managed to find his music online I strangely became fixated on him. The fact that a Trinadian vocalist, along with his Latin American orchestra, performed at such a local event was quite obscure to me, for instance why was no local talent drafted into the setlist? However perhaps having someone of international success playing their most recent hit “Hair” from their album “Hair Goes Latin” released by Decca records could be a good enough draw to the show. My obsession with this man may have been a little, as blatant as it was, harrowing however the music he is said to have played that I listened to on the album was just enthralling. Perhaps the dull, slow beats produced hypnotised me into some kind of trance but I knew I was hooked. It also arose that The Grandstand was actually not a huge part of these celebrations and a degree of sadness took over me. The site we had must have felt like a outsider, someone who watched everyone else have fun from across the field, and to me that is heart wrenching.

Another article that made me think was a newspaper article about a bomb that killed a schoolgirl on her way home. The reason this made me think was due to the proposed plans for the Grandstand to be a mortuary. If this had taken place then her body would have been brought her before being laid to rest. Some ideas began to circulate now in my head about how to bring the carnival and festivities to a place which is being placed and named by people, including me, a dead and quiet area. I felt that instead of dwell on how dark and macabre the place is we actually insert some life and space into it. As for the idea of Margaret myself, Ashleigh and Poppy wanted to commemorate her and pay our respects to a young life cut short. In our want to research more about the tragic story of Margaret we set a time to revisit the archives to further our research on this little girl. In regards to finding about one death of a schoolgirl we went into the achieves feeling skeptical, for instance we still had to make the strong link to The Grandstand and at the fact we still had no idea about who this girl was.. We arrived and was given access to a folder in which we crowded around. Whilst flicking through the various pieces of paper and old new’s articles preserved in the filing one article just spilled every detail we needed to do this. Entitled “Tragedy at Highfield Avenue” it told of an event that occurred on the 11th June 1943 at 25 Highfield Avenue at approximately 5pm. It told of the death of 12 year old Margaret Elaine Marriott after the Lancaster MK III bomber, Code UGS, No.Ed 833 of the 1654 heavy construction unit tipped it’s wing on a telegraph pole on the street and crashed and blew into flames whilst it was on a training flight exercise practicing three engined flight over Lincoln. It hit 22 – 24 Highfield Avenue but caused further damage on the aforementioned road and Dixon Street. Her parent’s were working at their allotment at the time of the accident. We also found about Anthony Thacker and Laurence Thacker, 2 boys who also perished in the accident. If that wasn’t specific enough the article also went on to give us further information involving Margaret. She attended South Park high school, and was reportedly popular with her classmates as the article says her classmates were visibly upset she had died. She was also buried at St. Helen’s Churchyard here in Lincoln, written on her grave was “Theres a friend for little children”. Given this new information we had obtained it was safe to say our creative cogs were turning. This girl now had a name, a address and wasn’t just some nameless enigma who we were clinging on to in hope of finding some relevant information. And in us looking out for her she brought along 2 other children for us to pay our respects too. After the visit, and with both the project now in development due to the research we obtained, I looked into the idea of installation art. Both of the pieces fall under a category of this branch in a sense as we are leaving something in the site for a length of time.After our visit to the archives we were able now to try to find the graves of the unfortunate victims of a accident. We then set about on making a film to use for our final performance detailing our journey to the street the children were at to the churchyard they are buried in and then The Grandstand made the journey to St Helen’s Churchyard. We started at Highfeild Avenue and found the houses the children lived in quickly.

This is the home of Margaret Elaine Marriott

The path we took was through a park, where a children’s playground sat quite near to the actual grave. We searched for a good length of time in the churchyard and managed to find the 3 graves of Anthony, Laurence and Margaret. We paid our respects to the site and departed quickly to not disturb the area.

After filming we not set up another meeting to discuss the plans of action needed to take place before the performance. We now find ourselves trying to counter the topic of relevance. Essentially we are working on a juxtaposition in a sense and the proposal for the Grandstand to be turned into a morgue during World War 2. So, hypothetically, if the plans did go through the bodies would have been taken here. In the 3 of us chronicling the journey to the Grandstand we want to keep the children’s memory alive, and pay our respects. Our idea’s have come to fruition by using Poppy as a “vessel” in a sense to channel Margaret, and me and Ashleigh as Laurence and Anthony respectively. We shall highlight around the body using tape, symbolising a typical crime scene. We aimed to incorporate flowers, and white sheets to show the area as a clean, clinical space. Along with this happening with that Tragedy At Highfeild Avenue group the EXPO group was now starting to come into fruition. We settled on making the space in the front foyer a carnival, or a party in a sense. The preliminary aspects we had to achieve were all last minute, so the food, decorations and other miscellaneous items we used were to be brought on the day. After the progress on both works I looked into the idea of installation art and found the book “Installation art: A Critical History” by Claire Bishop. In this was the quote “Installation art is a term that loosely refers to the type of art into which the viewers physically enters and is often described as theatrical, immersive or experimental”(p.6). From this I gathered that our audience could be a crutial part in both works. The Grandstand Project in my view did actually manage to bring forth a reasonable size audience, from students and lecturers. For the first hour I was greeting people into the EXPO’69 piece, offering them food, drink or even make them dance to the music being played. It was a fairly tame piece, as most of the actual performance was them entering the building, surveying the area and then leaving to watch the other performances. I saw the EXPO more as a live art piece, in which the audience was encouraged to look and take in the space but then leave. It was also quite interesting to see the Shoe group interact with the space as they walked through the foyer from outside, avoiding the people inside. It was quite hard to keep a fun atmosphere when not a lot of people came to the site, however those that did went to the laminated paper detailing our site piece, they may have also taken fancy to a cake slice or some elderflower and then proceed into the main room. I believe the main goal of the EXPO was achieved, as people seemed to enjoy the time they had there. The Tragedy at Highfield Avenue group piece was to last 2 hours. We had written down what times we were supposed to have and what was meant to happen at those times, making the piece ritualistic. As it was a long piece which was slow paced our audience numbers were a mixture of those who watched intently for minutes at a time and those who passed by on journeys to another piece. I was actually noticing that people come back and they notice the changes in scene, so for instance they would be watching me and Ashleigh tape around Poppy at first but then when they come back from watching other pieces they see a body on the ground wrapped in sheets and a taped body on the ground. I feel that from that perspective it would have been compelling to come back again to witness what else has happened upon the audiences absence. The only weaknesses I could have seen with this piece was the time we had to do everything in. We had to lose the open cupboard idea, and instead go with a idea given to us from Michael, by using a picture of his child on the cupboard to represent the fact how the Grandstand is also now used for a playgroup. We wanted the open door to symbolise the toys the kids use and perhaps a suggested space for our “vessels” the deceased kids to play with however we had to compromise as we were not allowed to open it. In Why performance it states how we are in a way ‘enabling the site to speak for itself’. we are challenging the juxtaposition of the now children’s centre and playing on the mortuary idea.

In conclusion I believe that the module has been good. Different, due to the thin veil of actor and audience and it has still left me questioning if I was acting during the performance. It’s peculiar for a actor to feel as tho he is not performing despite being part of a show. The void I feel is not due to me not having done a performance, it’s actually due to me not realising that I have just performed and thats a amazing, yet daunting, feeling for a actor to experience.

Works cited:

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

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

Claire Bishop (2005). Installation Art: A critical history. London: London Tate Publishing. 6-10.

Pearson, M. (2011) Why Performance? Available at: <http://www.landscape.ac.uk/landscape/impactfellowship/peforminggeographieswarplands/toolkit.aspx> [ 15 May 2014]

Davies, K (2014) Pictures taken at the Lincolnshire Archives.

Final Blog Submission – Present or Past?

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Kento Ochi

Framing Statement

The Grandstand project, which is what we worked on since last January. ‘A body without a home’ was our performance piece that we mainly inspired from the idea of our module tutor mentioned and the idea is focused on to the Grandstand as a mortuary and we overlapped with the fact of Grandstand is a venue of Mosque services. The performance was involve with a pile of shoes and it is an images of ‘Holocaust’ for mortuary side and Mosques services are not allowing to pray with shoes on and this is why we chosen to put those different theme together. On the other hand, we tried to not create severe point because talk about something religion and death is has got some risks of to make feeling of shock and anxious to other people. For the actually performance piece, we used the ‘drop off point’ in first part and after wards we moved down to courtyards which located at behind the back entrance of Grandstand which is close to golf field and there was a fence in between Grandstand building and the field. The space of courtyard had got a big and long empty space to we were able to lie down, stretches ourselves and it was enough wideness to put the amount of shoes.

The duration of this performance was throughout three hours and performances are included following elements. The images of shoes in outside of the Grandstand’s ‘Drop off point’ area were for make a sense of the fact of majority of people’s existence and mosque prayers. In courtyard the shoes represent that people who passed away in both present and past especially in war time. The monologues we spoken were for to create an atmosphere of silence, the sense of different time period of the Grandstand. Also this is for throughout some questions for audiences about what can you see in your personal view. When the shoes are carried by pairs and individually, this was for to create the sense of dead body which was able to find out and did not find out. The visual images of missing were difficult to describe without a specific bodies but the shoes are normally in pairs and if it has missed by any chance it is also telling us to the idea of something must happened to the owner.

For the side of influenced, I personally found an interesting case which still connecting to the idea of in between shoes and war time such as from the article of South China Morning Post reported on 26, February 2014. The article is about the wartime compensation issues of Chinese forced labourers who worked in Japan and passed away during the World War II and there was a 6,830 pairs of cloth shoes forced labourers in Chinese park. According to this fact, war is a general historic event for most of people and almost every one is taking some damages and pain from it. A member of the class-action suit Zhang Shan said; “As there is no way to get justice in Japan, the Chinese victims of forced labour and their families are determined to sue in China the Japanese companies which did them harm,” (South-China Morning Post, 2014)

(South-China Morning Post, [Image]avaliable at http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1435587/chinese-workers-forced-wartime-labour-sue-japan-firms-damages [accessed on 3 April, 2014])

Development process

As an idea of this performance piece in the beginning, we originally thinking about to the idea of ‘time archaeologist of the war time’ which means we as an archaeologists of create some symbols of war time by using of materials which is Grandstand has got (chairs, tables etc) already. For example, to create a horse, tank, battle plaine and trench. This is because the fact of we found when we visited the Lincoln Archives and there was an evidence of the Grandstad was involved in world war as a factory of battle plaine. In addition, I researched about the war horse that also involved during the war time and I looked at the side of emotions of war horses rather than how we used them during the war. From the previous blog post that I posted on 12 of March, I mentioned the one of a book which written about war horses and author General Jack Seely illustrated that:

‘People who do not understand the realities of warfare think that horses are not required on modern battlefields. They think that all battles will be conducted by mechanical means. So they will be for the first few days, then it will be the horse. Truly the horse might cry out more loudly than any other creature, “Give peace in our time, O Lord.”‘
(Selly, 2011, p114)

and I thought this could be a good element for our piece because live art is the piece which create an impact for audience but the only problem is if it is not good enough to present, people will not understand anything from it. Throughout this development process, a module tutor of site-specific performance gave some ideas of ‘shoes’ and ‘mortuary’ which is we found more interesting therefore we changed the whole structures of the performance. Also the idea was very powerful and thoughtful rather than our original idea and that is another reason of why we changed our whole idea.
In the inside of meaning of shoes in our piece (and view points in a different way), shoes are represent a death of the owner in a war time and numbers of shoes are simply presents how many could have involved to the war. On the other hand, pair shoes presented the people who found out after the war but individual shoes are for someone who had not has been found since after the war. In addition, the pile of shoes as a visual sense it presents a scene of when people come to a mosques services of Grandstand. In a mosque services, people will take off their shoes to enter the venue for pray and might be there were a similarities as a ‘pile of shoes’ for both circumstances. However, it was too dangerous to connect each other because both of them are something severe and some people would not like to hear about these. In addition, shoes are material that really hard to vanish from our life and it also can be meaning of the shoes can present human being. By this I mean, shoes tells about us the life background of the person with evidences of how long has been used or the reasons for any damages that we could find on it but basically shoes are ‘signs of sensuousness, comfort, luxury and pleasure.’ (Rozovsky, 1943)

For development process of actual piece, we consider to use the space of ‘drop off point’ which located at front of Grandstand as simple meaning of the place as for drop something. After that, we decided to carry out all shoes to the courtyard of Grandstand which is still outside but much more limited space but it also create a different atmosphere rather than open space. On the ground of the courtyard, we drown around my body by using of a chalk which is present the dead body.

For this scene, we wrote some monologues that something about mentions mortuary, dead body and mosque as a grammatical sense. It was from poem, academic report and definition. For example my monologue was from the definition of mosque pray and BBC religious described it most:

‘Outside every mosque, or just inside the entrance, is a place where worshippers can remove and leave their shoes. There is also a place where they can carry out the ritual washing required before prayer.
The main hall of a mosque is a bare room largely devoid of furniture. There are no pictures or statues. Muslims believe these are blasphemous, since there can be no image of Allah, who is wholly spirit.
Everyone sits on the floor and everywhere in the mosque is equal in status.’
(BBC Religious, 2009, Online)

And my actual monologue was a:

‘Here, the Grandstand, is also open for local mosque services. The majority of people come here everyday and some people come to a big assembly on Friday called ‘Jammat’. They would leave their shoes outside similar to that which you see today in front of you.
During the service, everyone is the same status except in gender but no matter who you are, where you come from or how old you are. We are all going to the same place; cradle to the grave.
The shoes you see in front of you today could belong to living people, but if you go back over 70 years ago these shoes represent the dead. The space you are in, look around, take it in because this could have been where dead bodies lay, bodies without homes. These shoes could have been removed to pray, but also remove from the dead. Which do you see; the past, or the present?’

For additional performance piece that I inspired from, I looked at the piece called Walk a Mile in My shoes by Bedwyr Williams. The piece is about the shoes which Bedwyr Williams bought from second hand shop and he recommends to audience to have some walk with these shoes. All shoes have got a tag on it with some notes about the shoes and some of there are modern, gender mixed and ruined. The very concrete ideas of this piece, the report of Saatchi Gallery stated that

‘Walk A Mile in My Shoes celebrates diversity, inclusion, and community; through the simple practicalities of footwear, Williams extols the values of tolerance and individual difference’ (Saatchi Gallery, 2006).

In my personal view this piece is present the importance of owners’ existence and how shoes describe our history of our life. However, the Saatchi Gallery also reported that ‘The importance that each pair of shoes was purchased second hand underlies the key themes of Williams’s piece’ (Saatchi Gallery, 2006) thus this article is also mentioned that the relationships in between us and other people are also important.

(Bedwyr Williams, Walk A Mile in My Shoes, [Images]avaliable at https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/bedwyr_williams.htm?section_name=shape_of_things2 [accessed on 29 April, 2014])

For tiny bit of we developed during our piece, we were thinking of to perform just in courtyard but I looked at following article which director of Forced Entertainment Theatre Company, Tim Etchells stated that:

‘The old dialectical separations between inside and outside, fiction and reality, self and other, audience and performer, were here exploited and blurred, leaving the strange sense that the city and oneself were now almost the same thing, a shifting network of narratives, places, touches, voices, lost puns, myths and intimacies’
(Etchells as quoted in Nick Kaye, 2003)

After I looked at this article, I recognised that the movement of us can explore the atmosphere of our piece and even this is able to guide the audience to the different scenes. It is true to say that, when we feel something there is some element around us: When, Where, Who (either with), What and as a visual sense the place actually we were in is very essential to memorise and people to recognise like flashback but it is difficult if it has got a big time gaps. The other part of we developed is the very last scene such as to carry out all shoes in pairs rather than transfer individually and this could made a sense of the number of people who found and have not found at all. However, if we do an exactly same movement as we done in first part, it is just take a while to do and will not make any sense at all (because initially we coming back from zero point) and it means also we distract the impact of that we could make in first part an second part. In the first part, we carry out shoes individually and in last part we changed to carry out shoe with pairs which means we as a finder of dead body and we place them to ‘drop off point’ again. However, in the last part all shoes are organised and it makes more sense to proper image of people who came to mosque service. In addition, in a fragmental way of we changed our piece we managed to finish off with a silence which is to present the sense of one minutes silence at the funeral. This kind of atmosphere is have been already presented during the piece but if we put on purpose, that is a more specific image to end of and the image also reminds that the entire cycle is never end (or the things we are always doing).

Performance Evaluation

For our actual performance, the bodies without home, we were able to engage some audience members throughout the whole piece. The first an hour was a bit of luck because of the beginning of the performance visitors (audience) were not alive yet but our piece takes nearly all 3 hours to complete and I think there was much more opportunity to encourage the audience some point. The audience reaction I could see clearly was when we lay down to the floor of courtyard with pile of shoes around us, I could hear some one was talking ‘this is very good’ and I could also hear shutter sound of cameras. In addition, during the first part which is we carried out all shoes from ‘Drop off point’ that located at front of Grandstand, some people were following us behind the back and it was great circumstances that audience was watching our piece via us but also it could be a guiding of direction to the performance venue for them. I personally believe that our performance could become an influence of work with Grandstand for our (or my personal) further performance in the future. By this I mean this time, we focused on to dead people as a historic context and mosque as a present context but if we slightly changed the focus point such as the people who lived during the war time like soldiers, nurses or people who has have been waiting the return of their important person etc.

For analysis of our final performance, the main point that we have to mention is we could collect enough shoes to perform. If this is not enough the whole impact of images very small. Also I think we were able to work out the time very well. This is because in first part of the performance we decided to carry out all shoes by first an hour but we recognised it took a long while to do it during the actual performance. According to this problem, we tried to change the numbers of shoe we carry out each time such as the first 20 minute we carried a shoe individually (one by one and when a person came back to the drop off point, next person get start to carry out) then after that we made the pace more quicker like as soon as the previous person could see the person comes back to the person get start to carry out even the previous person has not return to original position. The numbers of shoes we actually we carried out is also has changed to random 2 shoes to 3 but we were able to carry out all shoes during the first an hour. The second point that really worked well is again, the visual impact of when we lay down at the courtyard with a lot of shoes around us. This was also completely luck of the amount of shoes we could collect but we could encourage more audience members rather than first part. If we could improve this performance piece, I think we have to make sure everything is have to be sort out from ages before. This is because we took so much time to collect the shoes and the actual movement (to require some shoes donation) that we could get start to make was only 3-4days before of performance date and of course we have to think about time management more specifically. Also if we could change this piece something new, I would like to work on with idea of foot prints of shoes and someone who organising missing peoples’ list.

8/5/2014 from our A Body Without a Home (photos taken by one of a group member Lauren Brook)

The whole idea and theory of Site-specific performance was an essence of work with the venue even if the place is non-traditional in a modern style. Site-specific performance was all about how you feel about the place and how you look at the sense, atmosphere and materials which belong to the place from different angle. For the case of Grandstand, even the venue is non-traditional, we were able to find out some key elements which link to the Grandstand itself and we could develop the ideas of our piece from the facts.

Work Cited

BBC Religious (2009) Mosque, Online:http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/prayer/mosque.shtml [accessed on 27 April, 2014]

Brook, L. (2014) A Body Without a Home.

General Seely, Jack. (2011) WARRIOR:THE AMAZING STORY OF A REAL WAR HORSE, 2011, p.114, Racing Post, the UK.

Kaye, Nick. (2003) site-specific art: performance, place, and documentation, Routledge, London / the UK and New York/the USA.

Rozovsky, Lorne E. (1943) Jews and Shoes, Online: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/407510/jewish/Jews-and-Shoes.htm [accessed on 19 April, 2014]

SAATCHI GALLERY (2006) BEDWYR WILLIAMS: SELECTED WORKS BY BEDWYR WILLIAMS, Online: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/bedwyr_williams.htm?section_name=shape_of_things2 [accessed on 29 April, 2014]

South China Morning post (2014) Chinese workers forced into wartime labour sue Japan firms for damages, Online:http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1435587/chinese-workers-forced-wartime-labour-sue-japan-firms-damages [accessed on 3 April, 2014]

History at Heart: Final Blog Submission- The Waiting Room and EXPO ’69

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Samantha Milne

Found and Fabricated: A Framing Statement

Within The Grandstand Project, I have been involved in two separate group ideas, both which explore, delve and confront the site’s past life and previous purposes in a variety of ways. Firstly, by focusing on the idea that the Grandstand is longing and waiting a purpose, ‘The Waiting Room’ is a durational performance which exploits the notion of waiting and the passing of time.

This was performed in the ‘Waiting Room’, a room within the Grandstand that is illustrated as this on a blueprint for a proposed mortuary, which also inspired the name of the performance. Influenced by several examples of interactive performance such as Rotozazza’s ‘Ettiquette’, ‘The Waiting Room’ operates on direct audience participation through use of instructions and dialogue, given to audience members in envelopes. The whole piece relies on the audience as partakers rather than observers; each audience member has a purpose. With the room set out as a typical waiting room, each chair has an individual clock and envelope with a specific time to open it which will belong to the audience member who chooses to sit there. In the envelopes, there is either an instruction to follow or a narrative to read out. By gathering responses from our questionnaires, each of these narratives are intertwined with examples of how the specific room was used, what the public are waiting for and what they think the Grandstand is waiting for.

The duration of the piece changed many times but we decided on a interactive fifteen minute piece which is repeated four times every half an hour from 2.15pm to 3.45pm; with the remaining 15 minutes in between performances used to reset for the room. Throughout the performance, we gather materials such as several opened envelopes and their contents to put into a time capsule to later bury. This is to represent the remembrance of the site’s purposes, after years of being on the edge of the map and forgotten.

The Grandstand on the Map- 13 February 2014- Lincolnshire Archives

(Dale, 2014)

In the form of an installation, EXPO ’69 is my second contribution to the overall project. This installation is held in the entrance porch of the Grandstand and re-visits the events of EXPO ’69. This was a week-long festival that took over the Lincolnshire County nearly 45 years ago, with its main event being held in the West Common- which is directly opposite the site of the Grandstand.

By gathering factual information from the Lincolnshire Archives, our aim was to build re-creations of the food, music, colours and events of the original EXPO for audiences to embrace and enjoy throughout the performance afternoon. Our aim was to infuse the past into the present by retrieving back the character and fun to a site where the words ‘abandon’ ‘cold’ and ‘empty’ are presently used to describe it. This event isn’t directly linked to the site but we have connected it by humanising the Grandstand, bringing a lease of life back to the site who would’ve watched over the event as a lonely spectator.

Infusion of the Past and Present: Analysis of Process

The Grandstand emanated coldness and emptiness upon first arrival, however exploring the building’s components I came to realise that the site spoke a thousand words and had a lot more worth and personality than its initial exterior. Our visit to the Lincolnshire Archives was the first step in the process of both pieces, allowing myself to embrace the substance within a site, understanding that site’s like the Grandstand ‘do not have locations, but histories’ (Ingold, 2000, p. 219) to that we can use to construct from.

Exterior of Grandstand – 24 January 2014- The Lincoln Grandstand

Before visiting the Archives, our work on site was solely based on presumptions of what we found in and around the site. Roms (2008, p 115) stated that it wasn’t just the location that provides a performance with ‘a sense of identity’ but it is the memories and historic associations that mean a great deal (Pearson, 2010, p. 9) so it was important to us that our research and knowledge gathered in the Archives fully engaged us with the Grandstand’s glory days and ‘the site as a symbol, site as a story-teller’ (Wilkie, 2002, p. 150). Our discovery of blueprints for a proposed mortuary was the first step towards the development of ‘The Waiting Room’.

Blueprint of proposed Mortuary- 14 February 2014- The Lincolnshire Archives

What I now refer to as the ‘RAF room’, due to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) insignia mural on the wall was illustrated on these plans as a ‘Waiting Room’.

RFC insignia mural – 24 January 2014- The Lincoln Grandstand

We presumed this would be where family members would have waited to view their lost loved ones during the wars; we were clarified that this was the case if the mortuary plans succeeded. Additionally, we were informed that the particular room was and still is used as a waiting room for several other reasons, including waiting to test places and giving blood.

Before researching further in the Archives, I was drawn to the particular room as I felt it radiated a lot of character compared to the rest of the site. I think this was the addition of the RFC insignia in the room and also my fascination of the Latin phrases within the insignia. I discovered that ‘Per Ardua ad Astra’ translated as ‘Through adversity to the stars’ which I later discovered is the present RFC motto. This was a part of my discoveries that I wanted to look more into within the process. Taking what we had learnt in the Archives, the concept of recreating the room as a Waiting Room in terms of style, look and atmosphere was our next part in the development process. This took action in our first rehearsal after the Archives visit where we created this style by simply set out the chairs stacked in the room into a box just in front of the fireplace.

Copley, K (2014) Photograph taken at the site. 8 May 2014

There are many aspects of the overall concept that have adapted throughout the process but the style of the room alongside the use of audience participation has been our primary focus continually.

We felt creating a typical waiting room style as audience seating would be a dynamic concept to our piece. This idea will essentially make the audience in the midst of the action, creating a sense of participation rather than observation. We wanted audience members as ‘waiting’ participants in the room but it was important to figure out how to develop an interactive piece that essentially relied on the audience without it risking the quality of the performance and experience. It was further research into the manipulation of human senses within site specific that we looked further into Rotozaza’s Ettiquette. Similar to our concept, Etiquette uses the participants as the entire basis for the performance. The 30 minute ‘experience’ is an example of how auditory given tasks challenge the audience members by exposing ‘human communication at both its rawest and most delicate’ (Rotozaza, 2007) through the use of headphones.

Etiquette in Buenos Aires, photo Nicolas Goldberg
[Available from http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/etiquette2.html]

‘The line between audience and performer seems blurred, Rotozaza’s ‘Etiquette’ erases it entirely’ (2007) which inspired the development of the audience interaction concepts and technicalities. We were motivated by Rotozaza’s use of audio to communicate with an audience; however we felt the use of envelopes would create a much more personal experience for participants. We experimented with this idea with the rest of the group with the aim of getting them to consciously think about their senses through instructions on the front and within the envelopes.

Milne, S. [image online] Available at https://sitespecific2014mpi.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2014/03/10/talking-sense/

Examples such as ‘put the kettle on, make a coffee’ and ‘Cry audibly’ would be written in envelopes which had specific opening times. Using envelopes alongside the addition of individual clocks allowed us to be in control of the piece and directly see how the notion of ‘senses’ could be an interesting part of the ‘Waiting Room’.

8 May 2014- Use of clocks- The Lincoln Archives

The role of the audience has transformed through time as well as through genre, within more contemporary theatre practices such as site specific. Traditionally, the audience are observers, merely watching the action in front of them however ‘audience may find themselves having to participate in other, tangible ways, often acting as an actor ‘substitute’, or even an agent to propel the action forward’ (Tompkins, 2012, pg 10) when experiencing contemporary practice. The function and result of active participants has been debated. Some say that this type of involvement ‘dislocates’ (2012, pg. 10) the audience from the site and therefore the experience; whereas it can also be said to enforce a dynamic experience, providing ‘the opportunity to embody the site’, (2012, pg. 10) In our development, creating a unique experience where the audience are as involved as us is an important factor that we aimed to radiate within our piece; an experience where the audience and we as performers are equal participants.

By Week 7 of performance development and site research, we had organised preparations for set and audience purposes but it was the actual substance and material within the performance that we were struggling to develop. During the early weeks of research, a member of our group, Katherine set up a public questionnaire to gain inspiration to create narratives and dialogue about the site. After showing our progress to tutors and members of the group in the last week of term, we were given a lot of feedback to improve our piece, including more material for participating audiences.

We had already created a few narratives that we read out during the performance but it was later suggested that these narratives (and a lot more) were read out by potential audience members. This would give the audience more purpose as well as a sense of identity within the piece. Using the feedback from the questionnaire as well as information about the site and particular room, we each created several narratives and dialogue for participants to read out…’Whether site-specific performance is interactive or downright confronting, audiences are rarely able to participate passively’ (2012, pg 10). The narratives that were written all link to the several uses of the space including topics such as waiting to give blood, waiting to test planes and waiting to view a dead loved one. A variety of texts to place in envelopes allowed for more extensive symbolic substance which further connected to the site; producing a strong combination of narrative and instruction for audience members to participate in.

The introduction of narrative encouraged the audience’s involvement concept to physically partake and interact with others in the performance as it happens; whether they know it or not, our piece is as interactive (and risky) as it can get. In our final performance, we had a maximum of 8 narratives to use depending how many audience members we had participating and a couple of these were not just written by us but performed as well.

The narrative was created in the form of a list to be read out at end and conclude the 15 minute performances. For example ‘waiting to revive, waiting for salvation, waiting for happiness’.The list was inspired by narratives that we had previously written as well as the performance text of Forced Entertainment’s project ‘First Time’. When pitching this idea, it was suggested to us to make it a lot longer and write it during the performance time to enhance the concept of passing time. Similarly, First Time features a repetitive text, re-using ‘Try not’ in every sentence… ‘Try not to think about anything outside of this room. Anything at all. Try to forget about cars, and meetings, cigarettes, and road accidents’ which continues for a considerable amount of time during the beginning of the piece (Forced Entertainment, 2001). This motivated me to write more to create a longer and more effective text which would link all narratives used and enhance our main focus of time.

A focus on narrative was also evident during the process of developing the EXPO ’69 installation. It was only till near the end of our process however the group felt that the installation was aesthetically appealing but again, it needed more contextual substance. We all agreed on this however it had to be something that we didn’t have to perform but could be seen. A written narrative presented in the room was later created as a way of tackling this issue. By portraying further our idea of humanising the Grandstand, we each wrote an emotive letter from the site that was later combined by Sam so we individually had the opportunity to write.

‘I watch, I’ve always watched. It used to be the case that I enjoyed watching, especially on race day, on race day I came to life. I think it was the chatter of conversation and the swelling of the atmosphere, bounding and echoing between my walls that I enjoyed more than anything. 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. It’s quiet now, quiet and cold.’

We felt to present this in the installation was a useful and effective component as it would reflect a creative response to the site and event whilst informing audiences of the installations context. Even though these were two separate ideas, the initial idea and development of the EXPO ’69 installation was again, motivated by our visit to the Archives. Although this event isn’t directly connected to the site, the documents in the Archive taught us that EXPO 69 was a carnival like event held on the West Common area (on the fields parallel to the front of the Grandstand). Concerts and fashions shows took place at EXPO with local Lincolnshire businesses such as ‘Curtis’ providing food and drink for the event.

Dale, A (2014) Newspaper extract of EXPO. Taken 13 February 2014 [Accessed 16 May 2014]

We were extremely intrigued and excited about this discovery as it was different and fun in comparison to the stories of war and death that surrounded the site. This is where the idea of recreating the colourful EXPO event in the form of an installation arose, we all felt that the Grandstand had lost its shine and character; it needed a lease of life.

I wanted to replicate specific events of the EXPO as close as we could so we arranged another trip to the Archives to widen our knowledge before we started gathering and hand making materials to create the installation.One of the main events represented was the fashion show, which motivated me to re-produce the original and infamous stainless steel dress.

Davies, K (2014) The Lincolnshire Archives. 13 February 2014

Within 2 weeks, I created the dress out of cotton and foil which became one of the focal points in our EXPO.

By making the dress as well as other props by scratch, it emanates the production of the original EXPO by reflecting the integrating and juxtaposition of the past and present. Before creating the installation in the main entrance on the Grandstand, I originally wanted to use one of the small storage cupboards in the site. I wanted to construct a condensed representation of the EXPO event which would portray a heightened version of the original components and presumed atmosphere. However when considering the amount of space needed and its specific location within the structure, we found several difficulties and flaws with this idea. The specific cupboard I wanted to use, located at the end of a long corridor was extremely small. This would’ve been completely impractical for audience members to experience as well as the added task of taking out the storage and trying to fit in our materials. It also would have hindered other performances taking places in the same proximity. The decision of changing location close to the performance day concerned me as having the correct measurements for materials to fill the room was extremely important. We looked in and around the site, from bigger cupboards and even outside areas but it was my suggestion of relocating to the entrance porch which spurred our creative processes and designs.

I came to the realisation that this was the ideal place to set the installation as it was parallel to the original EXPO site. The location seamlessly concluded our concept of infusing the past and present as well as introducing the idea of turning our backs on the past; just like the audience would do as they enter the Grandstand.

Pinpointing History: Performance Evaluation

After constantly worrying about ‘The Waiting Room’ and the risks we were taking, it was more successful than we first anticipated. When thinking about the pressure and the unpredictability that could’ve affected the overall quality of the performance, we tackled this and achieved creating a strong interactive experience that emitted themes of tense and time. We were unable to partake in the first scheduled performance due to lack of audience members. Even though we had a back-up plan for every possible outcome, we appreciated this as the second scheduled performance was our strongest due to the having a maximum amount of audience participants involved. It wasn’t a surprise to us that the less audience members there were, the less dynamic and flow the piece had which is what we experienced with 2 other performances, consisting of 3 and 2 audience members. Even with this difficulty, the audience’s interaction with the envelopes worked extremely well for the most part. Some audience members found it difficult to respond to the instructions as well as some narratives being read out late but in general, a nice continuity was achieved with connections intertwined throughout the performances.

Although the combination between narrative and instruction were effective, this type of performance with an undefined outcome created a lot of stress. I was continually worried throughout the day about timings and organisation of correct material as any mistakes would ruin the whole piece. If we were to perform again, I would’ve wanted to allow more time to reset the room; the 15 minute set time manifested a tense and panicked atmosphere which slightly affected my personal concentration during the beginning of the performances. ‘Site may be directly suggestive of a subject-matter, theme, dramatic structure’ and by taking historical purposes of the building, I believe we achieved producing an interactive performance which fully connected to the site. In relation to the EXPO ’69, I definitely feel we achieved in giving the site a lease of life. The use of colour and set up that we created allowed each audience member to absorb the hidden character and potential of the building.

The combination of the dress being presented with the food and music was inviting whilst context within the narrative encouraged the audience to understand and interact with the installation.I didn’t anticipate how long it would take to set up the room initially so if I could go back, I would allow for more time to perfect the overall aesthetic of the room.

8 May 2014- EXPO ’69- The Lincoln Grandstand

Although seeing people enjoy the handmade decorations that we had made and presented was extremely satisfying, I felt it could’ve looked a lot more professional if we had been more organised and aware of the time. Before engaging with this module, I didn’t fully understand or appreciate contemporary practice of this kind as I preferred the comforts of a traditional theatre. I was reluctant as I didn’t find non-traditional venue performance particularly appealing however I began to enjoy the difference in working in a space that contributes creatively to and within a performance. The combination of applying the ‘factual with the fictional, event with imagination, history with story, narrative with fragment, past with present’ (Heddon, 2008, p.9) within the module was intriguing and inspiring. Although the module was difficult, it allowed me to look past first impressions and explore the potentials of theatre within non-traditional settings.

Word Count: 3,011

Bibliography

Copely, K (2014) Pictures taken on site [Accessed 16 May 2014]

Dale, A (2014) ‘The Waiting Room’ Time Capsule (Post Performance) [online video] Available from : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHRYiH8IqM8 [Accessed 16 May 2014]

Davies, K (2014) Pictures taken at the Lincolnshire Archives [Accessed 16 May 2014]

Forced Entertainment (2001) First Time. [online] Forced Entertainment Ltd. Available from http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/144/First-Night/92 [Accessed 11 May 2014]

Heddon, D (2008) Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian

Ingold, T (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Rouledge

Kaye, N. (2000). Site-Specific Art. 1st ed. London: Routledge.

Milne, S (2014) The Grandstand Project- Site Specific Module Blog. [multiple blog entries] 3 Feb 2014- 7 May 2014. Available from: https://sitespecific2014mpi.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Roms, H. (2008) Staging an Urban Nation. In: Holdsworth, N. and Luckhurt, M. (ed) Contemporary British and Irish Drama. Oxford: Blackwell.

Rotozaza (2007) Etiquette- Rotozaza’s Micro/Autoteatro Work, Online: http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/etiquette2.html [Accessed 10 May 2014]

Pearson, M (2010) Site Specific Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.

Tompkins, Joanne (2012) The ‘Place’ and Practice of Site Specific Theatre and Performance. [online] London: Palgrave Macmillian. Available from http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/9780230364066.pdf [Accessed 9 April 2014]

Wilkie, F. (2002) Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-specific Performance in Britain. New Theatre Quarterly. 18 (2) 150.

Final blog submission – Second to Last.

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Charlotte Martin

Final blog submission – Second to Last.

Site specific had to start off by getting all of us introduced to what the meaning of what site specific actually is. Researching through the Site-Specific Performance by Mike Pearson book there is a definition by Patrice Pavis saying;

“This term refers to a staging and performance conceived on the basis of a place in the real world (ergo, outside the established theatre). A large part of the work has to do with researching a place, often an unusual one that is imbued with history or permeated with atmosphere…” (Pavis, 1998, 337-8)
The site chosen was the Grandstand which is located in Lincolnshire. I am from Lincoln and did not realise the true history of the Grandstand. People who do not know the Grandstand think it was used for just racing events which I did too; until we found out that they once wanted to turn it into a mortuary. The site was also used as a military camp and when researching on google and past blogs from other people outside of Lincoln I came across one explaining the world war two time;
“World War 2 marked the beginning of the end for Lincoln, as the track became a military camp. The Lincolnshire moved to Pontefract between 1942 and 1945, and although the first post war race run at its home attracted over 38,000 spectators, racing never fully re-established itself.” (IanS, 2013)

Progress started with a visit to the Archives in Lincoln, getting some extra research and also the Lincolnshire Life museum. The museum showed us that the track was used to build aircrafts; the aircrafts would be pulled from one end of Lincoln to the other. We also saw the blueprints for the mortuary and photos from the old war times. I liked knowing new things about the Grandstand but I was always interested in doing something about the horses and researching at the Archives was the best place to get information. I got to look at old betting books and jockey’s weights and researched when they closed the races which was 1964. They only had the second to last day recorded down in a betting book. Using the research from the Archives I looked online and found;

“In 1963 the Levy Board included Lincoln on its list of 12 courses from which it intended to remove its subsidy. The local council would not step in, and the following year Henry Brooke, the Home Secretary and final arbiter of the Levy Board proposals accepted them and signed the death knell for racing in Lincoln.” (Archives, 2014)

Researching made me see that the Grandstand was just gave up on, horse racing was such an important part and people from Lincoln and outside loved to come and watch. Going to the Lincoln Life museum I found out that they still had the end of the racing pole there, this pole was used for the end of the track. But what most people didn’t know about the racing is they tried to bring jump racing into the event, it never really brought as much attraction as the racing in 1843 but also finding out that the bookies help to secure a name in racing history through its handicap races in Lincoln. After using all the information about the Grandstand and outside research the idea was, why can’t we bring back the past with the present?

History within the site:

When starting to think about what is wanted one has to think about the information we already know. The information known is the Grandstand, racing began in 1773 but had already been around for 200 years in 1597 it had been recorded by the city registers. Then the races were moved to Doncaster in 1964. The grandstand attracted royalty such as, James 1st and George 1st. In 1916 the RAF Waddington set it up as a training station, the World War recruits gathered in the trenches behind the Grandstand for training. In 1770 when Eclipse won the cup is when the last meeting took place until 1773 when they did a three day meeting with one of the days having a race which created 200 more years of racing on the site. 1843 is when the jump racing was introduced but was not popular enough to keep going on at the site, this is also the year when the bookies made a secure name in history for the Handicap. In 1980 they used the history of the trenches and changed it into a golf course and then completely changed into the Carholme Golf Course. Using the information of what is known one should then look into how to use what we know;

“Site-specific performance can be especially powerful as a vehicle for remembering and forming a community for at least two reasons. First, its location can work as a potent mnemonic trigger, helping to evoke specific past times related to the place and time of performance and facilitating a negotiation between the meanings of those times.” (Pearson, 2010, 9) (From ibid., p. 42))

When researching the Site-Specific Performance book and coming across this quote it makes one understand that the history within the site is very important. Using the sites past times the first ideas was to look and use all the history of the war, planes, horses, etc and practice a piece in lesson. The history of the racing and the horses inspired me more than any other because it is what made the Grandstand and what people miss and remember about the site. Horses are still on the site today and put in the fields facing opposite the Grandstand entrance but they are not used for racing. The Grandstand used to have weighing rooms for the jockey’s and they would always get weighed two weeks before a race.

If the Grandstand was known for horse racing and the popular events why not bring it back to the site for one day? The last race to be recorded was on the 16^th March 1964 but the last ever race was the following day 17^th March, there was no recorded in the betting books at the Archives. Summer meetings was meant to take place on 20^th May, 21^st May, 16^th September and 17^th September 18^th but as the Grandstand closed before this it never took place.

Learning to use the body in a space:
Before starting research about the Grandstands horse racing and the history behind the racing should be try and practice the other parts of the history within the site. One of the first practical lessons, as a group using the Site-Specific Performance book using the statement;

“notable or overlooked landscape features (e.g. paths, gates, stiles, dykes and walls, flagstone steps, sheep pens, cattle grid, shooting butts, bus shelters, bothies, scarecrows, gang-huts). Such folk geographies of things-in-places would focus on narratives, tales, memories and material remains of the not-too-distant past”. (Pearson, 2010, 14-15 (From Lorimer, 2009))

Using our bodies around the site was unusual, bodies had to be fitted into the certain of the site from outside.

(Lincoln Grandstand – Charlie Hewitt and Charlotte Martin. Below, Charlotte Martin, Charlie Hewitt and Callum West. Exploring using the body.)

Using the ideas from the outside decisions were made to take this back inside and redesign the piece inside using chairs

“By referring to this body of work, one need not return to notions of either site or self as fixed or finite entities. One need not imply an unproblematic notion of a located self, or a resolution of the tension between conceptual and ‘real’ sites. One need not to make an absolute distinction between material and human objects. (Pearson, 2010, 11 (From ibid.)

One of the second practical lessons I worked with a group where we tried to show the side of the mortuary by placing chairs all over the front room. Throwing our shoes so they landed in completely random places and places ourselves on the floor. Carrying this on my group individual one after another stood up finding their shoes and putting them back on. Showing we were lost like the children, parents and elderly would have been. Then showing signs of how the mortuary would have been the group and I walked into the kitchen, lay down and got coats placed over the representation of dead bodies. This was carried on for two weeks trying to explore the history of what the Grandstand could have been.

Researched history put into practice:

After two weeks of trying something new the horse racing couldn’t be missed out of rehearsal time anymore. Getting a group together and preparing all the research to create something new each week.

The real research came from visiting the Archives when finding information out such as;

“The Carholme, 1914. The military were in occupation of the stables and buildings at the racecourse during the First World War. Horse racing had been carried on at the Carholme since the 18^th century and the famous and long established Lincolnshire handicap was held in March of each year. (Archives, 2014)

Using this information made the group and I realised the importance of the horse racing and decided at the start to use the history found within the site. At the start creation was made through using the horses names found at the Archives in old betting books, creating a race track on the floor with cello tape and writing horse’s names on pieces of paper with jockey’s weights underneath them. Progressing this the following week was with the use of stones, after watching videos in lesson and seeing that someone used rice to represent the population of places and people, the idea of using stones to represent weights came from this. It was not until two weeks before the performance the idea of using pound coins came into practice. The coins represent weights but also represent betting, using money and putting it out when performing gave a sense of bets in the old days. (Lincoln Grandstand – Starting process)

This was part of the beginning of our progress, starting out with stones and placing named horses on pieces of paper. The times of the races were recorded from the second to last day ever in Lincoln racehorse history, the last day was not recorded or any record found.

Racing back to the Grandstand:

Knowing there is a beginning to the progress already made one has to start thinking how to make an end. Times were scheduled already by recorded betting books. Starting at 1:50pm and ending at 4:25. Even though the race itself has a beginning and an end it would not seem enough for it just to show stones and names of horses.

‘Performance exists in and through time. It is usually scheduled, of certain duration, with beginning and end to its parenthesis. As a time-based art, it demonstrates its nature by playing with time: slowing down, speeding up, attenuating and intensifying norms of social practice, in combinations of simultaneous, sequential, folded, suspended and discontinuous activity’ (Pearson, 2010, 159)

The start begins with 1964 the last time to have races at the site too May 8^th 2014 with 60 years of history in between the time scale, how could we use this? In rehearsals looking at work by Mike Pearson Why Performance? Groups had to start asking what they want from their audience, do they want them to get involved? Or watching/viewing your piece? Or even being a part of the piece? The group and I decided to get the audience involved but also something for them to view. After weeks of setting up horse names and weights as a group the idea of bringing an old event back to site was put into place. Decisions were made to have a live race on the day this would hopefully make the audience use their imagination and feel like they are at the old Lincolnshire Handicap races. One lesson we had to use our senses around the site, so why not make the audience use theirs? Listening to the commentary from the television, Callum West would start by approaching the audience asking if they would like to join in on the race and then calling the winner of the race. Using their vision to see the old race names and jockey’s weights also with a little imagery of how the Grandstand use to look and how it has changed. This was to affect the audience so they could see the change of the Grandstand and how it’s lost everything it use to stand for.
After putting this idea into progress we practiced with setting up both sides like being at the bookies. No live bets are aloud at the Grandstand anymore so knowing this decision were made to make them gifts from the Grandstand to the audience. Chester races were presented on the 8^th May which made this convenient for us to use as a live race on the day. But because it was an actual event Sky Sports could not provide horse’s names or how many was racing until the day before the event. Site specific is all about taking risk and dealing with it, one problem was using wood to put the horse names on. The 1964 side put the names of horses and the weights of the jockey’s, the present side 2014 put the names of the horses and the bets. Only being able to use a certain amount of wood became difficult as we did not have enough for both sides, we solved this by shortening down the 1964 side it still had all the horses that raced that day and what event but just with less that actually raced on the day. Another problem was the amount of pound coins thinking £120 would be enough turned into too little, solution was to use just £1 coins on the last races. Another was the Chester race only showed on ITV for three races the solution was using the internet on a laptop to call the last races. Because the extension lead would not work on the television where it was first placed, the television ended up being moved onto a table near the door. This actually made it better as the audience could watch the race whilst others got the betting gifts of Callum and observed the 1964 part. The race times had time difference of only ten minutes but the third race on both sides was at 3:15pm which was the main race on both events. Throughout the times Callum called races on his side whilst I set out the weights of the jockey’s on my side. Horse racing newspapers were placed underneath the wood on both sides, the past side was all made to look old, the other side was the racing newspapers from that day with the bets on them, horses names and events taking place. Callum turned wood over on his side when races were over and placed the winning plank on top so at the end you could see all the winners. The past side ended 20 minutes before the present due to race times.

(Final performance – Lincoln Grandstand, Second to Last. Left: Start of the performance Right: The final look after the races. Winners: First race – Noble Misson. Second race – Orchestra. Third race – Legend Rising. Fourth race – Ballymore Castle. Last race – The Hooded Claw.)

Performance Evaluation:

The final performance attracted the right kind of audience, people loved getting involved in having ‘a day back at the races.’ On the present side it had in total 52 names which all got taken by audience members. Audience members got involved with gather around the television or listening to Callum call out the winners names, audience members cheered if they won or grunted if they lost exactly like it would be at the races. They made a bet and then would observe the past side, looking at the weights and looking at the photo to then make their way to the television for the racing.

Process when being in group with Callum West was always focused on the idea around horses it started with only wanting to use its history and stick to that, until the new idea of bringing a live race back to the Grandstand came into practice and made the piece work. What worked so well was having a past and present part to the piece, the piece would not have worked as well if it was only either the past or present on its own. The idea worked so well because people who knew about the Grandstand knew about the horse racing but they might not of had a chance to ever experience it so it was like bringing the past back for a day, whilst having past horse racing names next to it and using wooden boards and old looking newspaper to have an authentic feeling about it.
Personally to improve the 1964 side I would improve by placing more photos of what the Grandstand use to look like and some of the information found at the Archives to give more of an authentic feeling. If it was possible to perform this again it would be better to have a race that’s on the television all the way through as one weakness was losing the audience when it changed to the laptop, people didn’t want to stand around listening to nothing but the strength was they always came back to find out if they was a winner or not.
Working in a non-traditional venue was different and challenging because the venue already has history behind it your research has to be correct, using the history was hard as well as we couldn’t play a character we had to stay as ourselves throughout the performance and take risk instead of being scripted. Because my piece was set up at certain times I could view others performances to be supportive but it was like you was in a bubble, one minute your performing your piece and the next minute you’re an audience member for other people. The overall understanding of site specific was challenging as one is coming out of a comfort zone of being scripted or improvised in a theatre to being on a site and using past or present history to represent the place chosen.

Bibliography

Archives (2014) Questions and referencing. [interview] interviewed by Archives, 14 February.

IanS (2013) Lost racecourse 6 – Lincoln and the Lincolnshire Handicap. [online] London: geezgeez. Available from http://www.geegeez.co.uk/lost-racecourse-6-lincoln-and-the-lincolnshire-handicap/ [Assessed 6 May 2014].

Pavis, P., Carlson, M. and Shantz, C. (1998). Dictionary of the theatre. 1st ed. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press.

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

Pinchbeck, M. (2014) Why performance? By Mike Pearson. [seminar] SEMINAR B-MB1012, University of Lincoln, 24 February.

Adam ate the apple and my teeth still ache – Final Blog Submission

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Alice Saxton

The Apples in their Jars – Framing Statement

Adam ate the apple and our teeth still ache was performed at the Grandstand on the 8^th May, 2014 by two female performers. The piece was largely influenced by my own personal connection to the Grandstand, as well as its history and involvement in the community. The performance explored the decomposition of the Grandstand as the ‘core’ of a community, considering the past and present inhabitants of the space. We used apples to expose the Grandstands detachment and decay. The idea of apples originated from a gift I brought to the Grandstand; a perfume bottle shaped like an apple. I described how it was the apple a winning horse had bitten out of before winning a race, which, in hindsight created our direct link to the Grandstand itself.

The space itself was the ladies toilets. Access to the space was limited, having to walk through the RAF room and a small corridor to reach the entrance. A 15 minute rota coincided with other performers in the RAF room to ensure us a consistent flow of audience members. Audience members were encouraged to explore the space themselves in their own time. As it was a one to one performance, each performance was different and individual to the spectator. When entering the room, there was a narrow walkway with steps down to the sinks overflowing with apple slices. We lined the walls with jars, creating a pathway for audience members to follow. The left side, lined with apples cores, followed down the steps and round to the left into the toilet cubicle area. Tea lights in jars were then placed after every other jar as the space lacked natural light. There were four toilet cubicles containing a form of media. In the first, a speaker played Don’t sit under the apple tree by the Andrews Sisters. The second was plastered with images of my teeth, pictures of a set of teeth with the same condition, and horses’ teeth. The third had a speaker repeating an audio of a horse eating an apple, and the fourth included myself and the audio spiel Appletite. I was also wearing a cheek retractor and had my hands and feet tied, to physically depict my temptation to eat the apples. After every performance I placed the twine around my hands and feet, and the cotton wool protecting my mouth into jars, creating a compilation of evidence for each performance. The other side of the toilets, lead round to by jars of rotten apples, saw Verity surrounded by piles of holey apples and cores. Each audience member was asked to wash the holey apple, then to help Verity find the correct core to fit the hole.

02/05/14, Lincoln Grandstand. Cotton Wool buds and twine installation.

02/05/14, Lincoln Grandstand Verity’s apples and cores reunited.

We performed every 15 minutes, including 15 minute breaks for me to take out the retractor. The average length of each individual performance was 5 minutes, depending on the cooperation of the audience member. Audience members were encouraged to enter our space on their own accord.

Lingering Tenancies – Analysis of Process

But was it our space they were exploring? These toilets were for public use, a necessity within a communal building that many visitors would have used. As for the Grandstand itself, it had been inhabited by many others before us. So was it fair to claim it as ours? These kinds of questions really influenced our choice of space, and eventually became the sole focus of our performance installation. “Landscapes told as a distribution of stories and dramatic episodes, or as repertoires of lived practice, can be creatively recut, embroidered, and still sustain original narratological integrity” (Lorimer, 2006, 515), thus I began to have in depth thoughts surrounding the term ‘found’ itself. Is the site ‘found’ historically/geographically? Is ‘finding’ something an individual experience, or is it a collective effort? Can we argue that inspiration and/or objects ‘found’ on site are actually OURS as previously mentioned? I began to really think about the idea of people creating temporary tenancies in regular everyday life:

If we are, for example, to enter a train and sit down, naturally we allocate ourselves seats. If we then were to leave briefly, and return to find someone else sat in said seat, we claim that the seat is ours and that they are in fact intruding on our ‘site’, as it were. But we all know that the seat doesn’t actually belong to us. Yet this never stops us from setting down temporary roots.

These initial ideas spurred me to research further into previous inhabitants of the Grandstand, curious as to whose roots I was planting myself and my ideas onto.

When wandering around the Grandstand, there are visible remainders of previous ‘tenants’ everywhere. This is either suggested by objects left behind from more recent tenants (Children), or by parts of the building, such as memorials on the wall, from older tenants (RAF). Sadly, “it is possible to be in a place without realising its significance for the groups of people who have historically inhabited it” (Pearson, 2007, 24), so I refused to be ignorant, and delved further into who these tenants may have been, and the stories they have to tell. This research became the substance of our final piece, our need to restore the memories and history back into the life of the Grandstand.

The next step was trying to fill in the empty gaps in the Grandstand, literally. Influenced by Will Dorners Bodies in Urban Spaces (2007), which consisted of dancers using their bodies to fill spaces usually bypassed in everyday life, we looked around for spaces that we could draw attention to. Like Dorner, we used ourselves to fill these neglected ‘spaces’ within the grounds. We eventually came across a rusty, metal fence missing about six of its bars. A fallen down tree had, by chance, placed itself within the gap, almost attempting to fill the void – much like the process we were currently trying to follow. Upon moving inside to continue this exploration of filling a void and planting roots, we found ourselves purposely looking for the signs of decay and neglect within the recently refurbished building, “even when the scene of the crime is pristine we are forced to look at the dirt in the gaps” (Pearson, 2001, 62). We started to (accidentally) delve further into the multifaceted concept of ‘the fallen’ as a result.

We first attempted to photograph a piece of paper falling to the ground. We then discovered a small, high ledge in what seemed to be a neglected bathroom. This bathroom was a lot smaller than our ladies toilets used in the final piece, and it was completely disused. However, it gave us a true insight into just how neglected our performance site would have been before it was refurbished.

As Tuan states, “architectural space reveals and instructs” (1997, 114) and the discovery of this neglected bathroom only reinforced my exploration into the restoration of the Grandstand’s inhabitants. This idea of falling allowed me to research a wider range of material to find inspiration; the definitive fall of a horse in a race, the fear of a soldier falling at war, or merely the fall of a building that was once imperative to a community. A visit to the archives provided me with endless amounts of information on some of these topics, and revealed a lot of new and interesting information about the previous inhabitants of the Grandstand.

On one particular visit to the Grandstand, we were asked to bring the site a gift. I brought in a perfume in the shape of an apple, my thinking being that horses eat apples, and so my gift would nourish the memory of the Grandstand being a race track. I pretended the perfume was in fact the apple a winning horse of the Lincoln handicap had bitten before racing, claiming it was the freshest and juiciest apple of all time. But when thought about logically, the last race was over 50 years ago, so this apple would have deteriorated significantly and would no longer have its own substance. It would be a part of the earth the Grandstand was built on. A building that had, too, began to sink into the earth as it decayed over time.

The idea of having apples at the centre of our performance from then began to take root. Verity and I joined forces, as we were both extremely interested in overwhelming a space with a mass of objects after an extremely insightful trip to the Archives. We were directly influenced by two pieces of information found at the archives: the first was about 5000 leaflets being dropped over Lincoln during WW1 – the vast amount of paper falling from the sky all at once must have been visually incredible to encounter. The second was that the Grandstand had once been considered for the storage of casualties during WW1, acting as a mortuary – we immediately thought of the image portraying the huge pile of shoes left from the victims of Auschwitz. We wanted to recreate a similar image, but through the use of apples.

08/05/2014, Lincoln Grandstand Apple slices mimicking Auschwitz 4000 victims shoes.

Verity also mistook what was labelled as the ‘sluicing room’ as the slicing room on the mortuary plans. This small, slightly comedic detail became extremely important within the development of our performance, as we began to discuss ideas of slicing and de-coring apples. Apples have a core that is not eaten, whereas the rest of the apple is gradually eaten away; it serves its purpose, but doesn’t disappear completely. The Grandstand cannot be destroyed because of its pillars. Structurally they are the buildings core, “stag[ing] and fram[ing] those who inhabit its space” (Pearson, 2010, 21). Most hilariously, I am in fact unable to eat apples in their original state. Biting an apple risks me breaking my artificial teeth, therefore the only viable option is for me to slice them. From these two experiences, we quickly learnt that is was extremely important to laugh and “Play around with ideas…[otherwise] when you lose playfulness you lose inspiration” (Dorner, 2005); our most important and creative ideas were a direct result of playfulness.

We then came across a small, cold corridor that led off the RAF room in the Grandstand. One wall was lined with windows, the other with misted glass that looked through into another room. The window frames and wooden panels created a multitude of little ledges. Immediately we could picture these ledges lined with apple cores with tags on, acting almost like storage/shelves. The windows reminded us of a greenhouse, and we could picture jars of progressively rotting apples creating a pathway of decay down the corridor. Just off this corridor are the ladies toilets. After a while we felt that we were limited in ideas of performance in the corridor, so instead though about using it as an installation space. Using the sinks in the bathroom as a production line, we considered the idea of audience members coming in, washing the apples, de-coring them, and placing the core into a jar to add to the collection in the corridor. We then abandoned the corridor completely, deciding to fill the toilets with the apples instead.

Pearson suggests that “performance can provide a mechanism for enacting the intimate connection between personal biographies…and the biography of place” (2011, 2), so we decided to explore how my personal story about my teeth could be embedded in our space. We recorded me talking about my experiences at the dentist (Appletite), then played it from inside a closed cubicle. When writing this piece of text, I began to use words that were apple and horse related to describe my teeth or the process:

“…that was until the cores of my two most visible teeth decided to grow wrong. When I say wrong, I mean they grew through as if I were a baby vampire. From the ages of nine until eleven, I never smiled in pictures, and became reliant on eating with my molars. I found myself more tempted by foods that usually I had no interest in. After numerous trips to the orthodontist, it seemed my only option was to have the pips removed, and tracks of braces to fill in the gaps..”

It was very Moaning Myrtle-esque! We wanted to blur the disciplinary perceptions of a public toilet (Pearson, 2011, 2) by using the privacy associated with toilet cubicles to create an intrusive performance. We loved the idea of the audience having to explore each toilet cubicle, eventually reaching the end one to find me sitting with my teeth exposed whilst Appletite explained my story.

In keeping with wanting an intimate, intrusive performance, we decided to make our piece One to One. Although multiple audience members would have physically been able to fit into the space, we felt that large numbers would diminish the intimacy between the narrative and spectator, creating an exploitation of my personal response to the Grandstand, rather than an inclusion. A One to One experience however would seem more intrusive (physically represented by my space being a toilet cubical); the exposure of my teeth and binding of my hands and feet forcing a personal exposure, whether it is wanted or not. “The potential of One to One performance to enable a shared and intense desire to connect, engage and discover another elucidates something about the ephemeral liveness of what might lure us toward this close encounter” (Zerihan, 2009, p.4). Thus audience members had free will upon entering the site, encouraged by audios to ‘find’ me within the installation, with the choice to stay or not entirely down to them.

“One to One performances feel personal, and if we commit ourselves to them, they can affect us in a myriad of ways” (Zerihan, 2009, 3), especially when the performance pushes “the expressive capabilities and capacities of [its performers] body” (Pearson, 2010, 172).

In Mike Pearson’s In Comes I he states that there was no attempt to either emphasise previous functions of the building or to re-enact moments from its history when creating the performance Baroque (2001), and that the church’s architecture and atmosphere were revealed by what was brought to it (Pearson, 2006, 79). This creative process is similar to ours. We did not explore themes that explicitly relate to the Grandstand and its past inhabitants, but imported an idea (apples) that alludes to such context: horses eat apples → when apples are eaten their core (Grandstand) remains → exposure of the apple’s core results in faster decomposition (neglect). Without our site however, this set-up would become insignificant.

My teeth still ache – Performance Evaluation

Our final performance was physically and emotionally exhausting, although an amazing insight into performance art as opposed to acting. Our audience entered one at a time following instructions on the door, and were asked to turn the sign to ‘engaged’ to ensure it was a personal performance.

08/05/2014, Lincoln Grandstand
Entrance Door Signs

We were unsure at times whether the sign was being used, however if it was not, the audience members still waited patiently outside. We performed on a fifteen minute rota, with about five audience members per slot. Towards the end, groups were invited in, due to time constraints, so there were considerably more audience members in a given time slot. On entering the space, audience members were confronted with rows of jars and sinks overflowing with apples as originally planned. Although effective, with audience members gasping at the amount of apples, we would have loved to have had a larger mass of apples and apple cores in jars. Initially we wanted to have two rows of jars on either side of the walkway: one side all rotten apples, symbolising the decay of the grandstand and its status in the community, the other side, apple cores that signified the remains and the exposure of the listed building. However, with only two sets of hands it was difficult to prepare anything larger than what we achieved on the performance day. The sinks did, however, successfully overflow with apple slices. It would have been nice to have had more tea lights to light the space, maybe one every other jar all around the space to make the pathway of jars and their content more visible.

There were a variety of different reactions to both myself and Verity’s performances. Sat in the end toilet cubicle in the dark, surrounded by tea lights and wearing a cheek retractor whilst restrained created quite an ominous atmosphere. Audience members were shocked upon discovering me, most physically jumped at the sight. One audience member burst into laughter, then came back to laugh again. I expected a variety of reactions, nervous laughter maybe, but not hysterical! The reactions were, however really rewarding. It confirmed we had successfully created a foreboding atmosphere, much like how we felt upon discovering abandoned, decomposing rooms in the Grandstand. On the other hand, Verity received a more positive response to her performance. Audience members were very cooperative. One person did in fact start to help her search through the pile of cores, eager to reunite the substance of the apple with its centre. This reaction was particularly ironic, as the audience members themselves were acting then as the Grandstand’s substance, filling the empty core with their presence.

As our performance relied heavily on preparation, it is difficult to say what I as a performer would do differently if I were to perform again. The experience as a whole has however encouraged a more simplistic approach to performance and has opened my mind to the impact a site can have upon theatre. It is easy to forget the site in which you perform in. Yet when the site becomes the drama, performance gains more substance. The walls exude history and memories individual to each audience member, thus creating a a piece of art personal to all involved.

Word Count: 3000

Bibliography

Dorner, W. (2007) Bodies in Urban Spaces. [performance] 4 July.

Dorner, W. (2005) In: Pinchbeck, M. (2014) ‘Site Specific Peformance, Week 2: Practice’. Lecture, Seminar Room MB1008, Lincoln: University of Lincoln. 6 February.

Lorimer, H. (2006) Herding memories of humans and animals. Environment and Planning D:Society and Space.

Pearson, M (2010) Site specific performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pearson, M. (2006) White House Yard. In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape. Exeter:University of Exeter Press.

Pearson, M. (2011) Why Performance? [pdf] Available at: <http://www.landscape.ac.uk/landscape/impactfellowship/peforminggeographieswarplands/toolkit.aspx> [accessed 26 April 2014]

Pearson, M. and Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre Archaeology. London:Routledge.

Tuan, Y. (1997) Space and the place: The perspective of experience. In: Govan, E. Nicholson, H. and Normingtonm, K.(2007) Making a Performance. Coxon:Routledge.

Zerihan, R. (2009) Introduction. Study Room Guide: One to one performance.