Uncategorized – Lincoln Drill Hall Project

Final Blog Post- Faye Brammah

Faye Alison Brammah / May 13, 2016 / Faye Brammah, Uncategorized

“Site- specific performance may appropriate a pre-existing spatial configuration, annexing the architectural features of site to distribute its audience – staircases, balconies or the terraces of a sales ring, providing prospects unfamiliar or impossible to conspire in the auditorium.” (Pearson, 2010, 176)

“The Third Beam” is a site specific piece and installation and performance by three young women which took place at Lincoln Drill Hall. The Drill Hall was first opened to Monday, May the 26^th 1890. The piece took place Wednesday 4^th May 2016 beginning the installation at 12 which went on for five hours. Our performance was five hours long. Two hours were just being specific installation times, another three beginning at 14:00pm with the installation still being run behind the performance. It only involved 8 separate, one- to- one performances. The pilgrimage, installation and performance gives the public a brief encounter with the death of a 17 year old school girl during in her gym class. Her name was Rosamond Acworth. We chose to look at her death as it was unusual occurrence.

Our piece was held in the main auditorium, under the third beam where Rosalyn “did not fall” to her death. “Whilst the auditorium often locates performance ‘over there’, necessitating projection and a particular economy of vocal and physical rhetoric, site- specific performance many be ‘just here’, ‘up close’.” (Pearson, 2010, 176). The installations and pieces were placed approximately where we believe her death took place. From a visual of the pilgrimage we made from Lincoln Christ Hospital School, along with a 1900’s gym class being played behind the installation, you can see Rosamond’s ‘possible’ final journey from her school to the Drill Hall. We do not know if this is the actual route she took, but we took it upon ourselves to recreate her final journey. Our video showed us, walking, with a length of rope, down from the school and in to the Drill Hall. This ran for a few minutes and was developed whilst our performance took place.

From the first instance, when we delved in to the history of the place I looked for anything dark and slightly mysterious, but coming across a young girls death in the building came as quite a surprise to me. The location itself being a drill hall you’ll have expect the obvious, soldiers training and war time memories but not that it would have been used as a hospital, a saw mill, a gentleman’s club, a gymnasium, a place to hold to ballot papers for elections, or even a concert and performance venue.

Site specific was an extremely difficult module for me. At first when I entered the class I had no idea what it was about or what to expect. I didn’t know it was live art, installations, the history of a building, performances etc. Site has helped developed my outlook on ‘performing’ as a whole as it’s not just learning by script and developing character. It is fully comprehending and understanding the area’s history and how to re-enact a short period of a realpersons life.

The Process

“Our chief anxiety here might be of disorder, for no one seems to be in control” (125, Pearson)
Our process began when we began to look at the differing histories of the Drill Halls use. With so many to choose from it was always going to be a lengthy process. Once we had discovered that a young girl had died there, we knew we wanted to do something for her memory. We didn’t know what we we’re going to focus on but when we discovered there were different articles from old newspapers relating to her passing. We began to gather as much information as possible from divers source material concerning the actualities as to what had happened to Rosamond and began to look in to her cause of death. Finding out this information we discovered that she had died taking part in a gym class she didn’t normally attend.

Our trip to the local archives greatly assisted us in discovering the newspaper article which encapsulated the facts. We took a great deal from this. We originally decided to have the newspaper article being read over headphones for members of the public to listen to as they watched some video footage about Rosamond but that was later altered. This was changed as we didn’t have the time, nor the equipment to carry this on to its full potential. Changing this helped us figure out our idea for a performance piece and the installation.

Our process soon changed in to an installation and performance when we saw and chose the space we wanted to work in. We wanted to utilise the rope in our work, as it’s what she slid down during her cardiac arrest which lead to her death. We wanted to involve the everyday things Rosamond loved in our piece. That she was a librarian influenced our piece greatly. From this information you can begin to build a profile of a person, which we did. We decided to look at filling the room with as many books as possible. We came to the conclusion that we should use a book for every year of her life, leading to us using 17 books to commemorate her.

We decided to work out just where Rosamond “did not fall”. We found a square section under the third beam where it had been explained in the newspaper article, that she was 3ft up the rope before descending. The words “she did not fall” kept becoming prominent to us within the article as they we’re repeated.

We had to change multiple bits of our piece as they weren’t as fitting for as we thought they would have been. We didn’t want to make anything seem in any form offensive as we were working with death, which is an emotive subject and people can become easily offended or emotional upset by the information shared. Many of the public had no prior knowledge of Rosamond and there are no memorials to her in Lincoln, other than a stained glass window at the Cathedral, a prayer desk and a book case in her old school, Lincoln Christ Hospital School.

There were many different challenges we faced in site. One being the performance side. We couldn’t work out a way to have a performance with the installation. The performance side of the piece came much later in the process. We then began encountered problems in accessing information. Most people didn’t know anything about Rosamond until we began asking questions and gathering our information. The only source we gained information from we’re the archives, which gave us some history and clarity, such as the newspaper article, which helped our performance greatly, as it was a big part of our installation. The information from it was used to inform the audience, with correct facts about Rosamond. We originally had four members of our group, which quickly became three as a member wanted to focus on another project within the Drill Hall.

Our ideas which worked well were our installation, performance and pilgrimage. Our installation piece wasn’t originally a component part out our process as we were going to create a video of a pilgrimage, keep that on loop and just let the audience watch that whilst we read aloud the newspaper article. Changing that idea we decided to incorporate the 17 books. We decided to remove the pages from the books and write on them. What we would write would come later, but this would add to our secondary school girl aesthetic. For our performance, to have a time slot sheet, so members got a complete 1- to- 1 experience. Meaning they would get a completely new feel and almost be enveloped in a segment of Rosamond’s life. “What I find most exciting about One to One performance is the opportunity it affords the spectator to immerse themselves in the performance framework set out by the practitioner. This can be a seductive / scary / liberating / boring / intimate prospect and an even more intensive experience.” (Zerihan, 2007) The process would involve members of the public being brought in by one of us, having them having follow instructions including, closing their eyes – almost like a trust exercise. They would then be asked to kneel, whilst still having their eyes closed, and then asked to lay on their backs for the full experience of being. Meanwhile the spot light beamed down upon them. After they had heard Rosamond’s story, they were then asked to open their eyes and would be laid directly under the rope and the spot where “she did not fall”. This would be a personal experience for some participants. After they had been asked to opened their eyes and looked at the rope, they we’re then asked to stand and watch our pilgrimage, which would have been – perhaps – the last route Rosamond ever took from her school. Since we didn’t know the exact route we began at the school, walking down Wragby Road, then Lindum Road finally joining Broadgate to make our way to the Drill Hall. Our pilgrimage from her school became our pre and post-performance, followed by our installation and 1-to – 1. We walked from the Drill Hall back to the school to lay the lilies from our performance at her school gate. We also left a memorial piece at the Drill Hall, with 3 pages, 1 that each of us had written on during the performance and a photo of Rosamond, to enable more people to have an awareness of her.

We had a lot of work we had to scrap within the piece. We we’re originally going to use headphones and a sounds scape to accompany our video. We ran our piece with both and concluded that we enjoyed the silence best with the piece as it gave a more personal and daunting experience instead of having sound which can make you less in touch with your other senses. Another piece we changed was where we we’re going to invite members of the audience to follow us up to the school and experience the walk. This was changed due to it being personal to us. Another piece of work that was changed but was left in the piece was the audience laying lilies within the spot light. These we’re intended to be a gift for Rosamond as a thank you from us for her story. We moved these to the school gates as we didn’t want audience members to end up having to lay within the lilies. We thought it would be a nicer gesture for Rosamond for us to take them to her school so she could ‘see’ that we and other people are still thinking about her all these years later.

Our inspirations were taken quite quickly after watching, ‘The Many Headed Monsters ‘slides and presentations. “The Many Headed Monster is an original and inventive resource for anyone interested in contemporary performance practices and their relationships with audiences.” (Sofaer, 2010)
During The Many Headed Monster video clips and presentations we came across William L. Pope. William L. Pope does many visual and public performances in the name of art. He is best known for a pilgrimage he did called “The Great White Way.” His crawl was 22 miles long and went on for 5 years. He was equipped with a skateboard and a superman costume. This piece influences used a lot for our pre and post- performance. It gave us a clear indication that we wanted to do a pilgrimage but not in such severe circumstances.
Another site performer who influenced us a lot, was our very own, Michael Pinchbeck. His piece “The Long and Winding Road” influenced our use of speech and text in the sense of everything was complete truth. We would have a direct conversation with a singular audience member but not make much eye contact with them as they were told to follow our instructions and keep their eyes closed for a lot of it. “In 2004, Michael embarked on a five- year live art project. He packed a car with the belonging of his brother and drove to Liverpool where he died in an accident in 1988.” (Pinchbeck, 2009)

Reflection

We had 8 members of the public to sign up to participate with our performance piece about Rosamond, but freely let members of the public walk through the auditorium so they could see what was happening during our performance if they didn’t have the chance to sign up. A clear estimation of the audience members walking through and around throughout the day would be about 40 members of the public. The estimation made, I would say all of them learnt new information about the Drill Hall and the incidents that had taken place there.
Our group got a lot of praise from the audience. Their involvement was all much appreciated even with the problems we encountered with one woman not being able to participate in the laying on the floor part. She could not do this due to disability, but we worked around it and she was extremely thankful to us for involving her and making Rosamond’s life known in hers. Every reaction was different, the first audience member seemed quite shocked about the information we were telling him but the rest of the audience seemed intrigued and thankful that we had made her life known.
The final performance for me as an individual did not trigger new ideas. I thought our performance was well rehearsed and worked incredibly well with the installations. Our performance worked particularly well because it gave Rosamond a new lease of life. More people have learnt about her life, even though it was short. The public has learnt how clever Rosamond was as a teen and how her death has affected our three lives differently. Our performance worked well because it shared information and history about the Drill Hall that members of the public would never have known.
Our final performance could have been improved by having more performance time and less installation time, so more members of the audience could have witnessed what happened to Rosamond. We could have shared her experience with many other people. If we could do our performance again I would suggest improving it by using the sound scape and keeping it fully as an installation and use our recorded voices to read the newspaper article.

Finally my engagement with Site Specific theory and practice has completely changed my understanding of where you can perform. As we we’re supposed to be looking at anon- traditional venue we did find this difficult as we we’re actually in the auditorium area. We also learnt how to use the venue differently though. We used it differently as instead of performing like you would on a stage in an auditorium space we decided to use all the space we could. The floor was our stage. Our piece was specifically focused on making the area look as less of an auditorium space as possible.

Our site specific piece, placed in an auditorium, made in to a-non theatrical space signifying a young girl’s death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P5i2rGZqI8- Pre Performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7p3yRC6vcQ- Post Performance

Bibliography

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

Pinchbeck, M (2009) The Long and Winding Road. Available from: http://michaelpinchbeck.co.uk/long-winding-road/ [assessed May 4^th 2016]

Sofaer, J. (2010) Live Art Development Agency. The Many Headed Monster. Avaliable from: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/publishing/access-all-areas-is-a-combination-of-artists-writings-creative-dialogues-cr [accessed May 6^th 2016]

Zerihan, R. (2016) Live Art Development Agency. Available from : https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1155911-dt-content-rid-2084614_2/courses/DRA2035M-1516/DRA2035M-1516_ImportedContent_20150807123831/DRA2035M-1415_ImportedContent_20141103010200/One-to-one%20Performance.pdf

On the Significance of the Third Beam

Emily Wood / April 4, 2016 / Uncategorized

‘To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Rosamund, only daughter of HS Acworth, Vicar of Chobham. She died in Lincoln Gymnasium April 6^th 1899 aged 17’ (extract from the plaque underneath the stain glass window dedicated to Rosamund within the Cathedral)

Almost to the day, it has been 117 years since Rosamund made the trip to the Drill Hall for a gymnastics lesson.

Research

The finding of a newspaper article in the Lincolnshire Library gave us the majority of the information used within the piece, as well as an article that can be found at the following link –

http://www.christs-hospital.lincs.sch.uk/joomla35/index.php/our-school/lchs-history/school-archive/165-occasional-paper-no-1-a-memorial-to-rosamond-acworth .

This link not only gives an overview of the events of 6^th April, but also outlines all of the memorials left for Rosamund in the Lincolnshire. The facts gathered from both these articles have helped to outline our piece.

We will be including some of the memorials, and elements of the memorials within the piece. During the pre-performance we will be placing a PE kit in memory of Rosamund within the cathedral under the window that has been dedicated to her. This memorial window is entitled ‘Birth, Death and Resurrection’ and can be found on the South side of the Cathedral. In addition, we will be placing lilies outside of her school as part of our post performance. We have decided on lilies due to a prayer desk that can be found in her school. This desk is dedicated to Rosamund and is engraved with the schools symbol as well as a pattern of lilies. Both of the memorials mentioned can be seen below.

Stained window lilies

Pictured on the left – ‘Birth, death and resurrection’ situated in the Cathedral, dedicated to the death of Rosamund.

Pictured on the right – the intricate lily design carved into the prayer desk that is situated within Rosamund’s school.

Influences

We have been influenced greatly by the ‘Friendliest Black guy in America ©’, William Pope L. Within The Great White Way, Pope L. makes a pilgrimage along the length of Broadway. We have decided to include a pilgrimage in both our pre-performance and post-performance. We will be performing the pre-performance on April 8^th, and will record our travels from the site of Rosamund’s school, to the Cathedral to lay the PE kit, and finally to the Drill Hall. The footage that is captured will then be intertwined with the oldest gymnastics video that can be found at this link –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6RK0M6-GUg

In addition, once we have finished the instillation and performances (the details of which are still being clarified, and will be explained at a further date) we will be taking a bunch of lilies up to Rosamund’s school and leaving them at the gates in memorial to her.

In addition, we have been influenced by Taking Birds and their use of projections to tell a story. Throughout the creation of our instillation will we have the pilgrimage from the school playing on repeat for passers-by to view.

On the development of our performance

Jamie Avison / March 24, 2016 / Uncategorized

Our original concept was an immersion-based experience in the room off the Cosker suite, utilising the unique layout of the room to create a more believable environment. Our piece was centred on immersing the audience in this war-time environment and introducing them to three VC winning soldiers who had ties to Lincoln and the Drill Hall. The design for the room was set to be a trench, of sorts, with a table and lamp to the back of the room to draw the audience in to the trench. Posters and newspaper articles from the war era were going to be hung around the room to deliver information and context to the audience members.

Owing to shortcomings in our idea to re-create a trench we have pursued a different type of performance in the hope of better utilising the space available to us. We have chosen to develop a performance based on lost and found items, memories and emotions. We have decided these performances shall be one to one, so our group of three will have the same room, with the same overall contents, but will base their performance around the items that suit their performance. Owing to the Drill Hall’s past as a concert venue a potential avenue I am looking to explore would be to include music in my one to one performances, playing songs that were once played live on an old guitar to bring the history of the Drill Hall to life.

The new performance model unfortunately didn’t allow us to extrapolate much relevant research information from our previous idea owing to the fact that it was mainly Military based research on a few individuals, however the names and stories of these people are still relevant to the history of the Drill Hall, and as such could potentially have left an object that could tie in to our performance.

Although our piece has changed drastically I do not personally feel that we have taken any steps backwards, we already have ideas for room design, stories to incorporate, and how we intend to present our performance overall.

Heroism

Adam Cockerill / March 16, 2016March 22, 2016 / Uncategorized

Our original idea for our piece, which we had titled Heroism was a based performance designed to dismiss the members of the audience from the balcony room and escort them to a World War I trench. The idea was inspired by the two memorial stones laid on the forecourt of The Drill Hall and we wanted to recreate an authentic scenario based on these heroes. In order to gain further research, we went to The Archives which led to us realizing there was a toffee endorsement by one of the soldiers (James Upton). “Macintosh’s Toffee De Luxe to the Troops and the great sailors. It gives them great pleasure, it helps them to forget danger, it passes away many a tedious hour, it sustains their stamina” (The Lincolnshire Chronicle, 1915) this inspired us to include this into our performance as it was an interesting and distinctive link to the site itself.

History Of Our Piece

During World War I (1914-1918), there were two soldiers named Leonard Keyworth and James Upton. After the assault on the German position by the 24th Battalion, efforts were made by that Unit to follow up their success by a bomb attack, during the progress of which 58 men out of a total 75 became casualties. During this very fierce encounter, Keyworth stood fully exposed for 2 hours on the top of the enemy’s parapet and threw about 150 bombs amongst the Germans, who were only a few yards away. (London Gazette, 2 July 1915).

On the 9th May 1915 at Rouges Bancs, France, Corporal Upton rescued the wounded while exposed to rifle and artillery fire, going close to the enemy’s parapet. One wounded man was killed by a shell while the corporal was carrying him. When not actually carrying the wounded he was engaged in dressing and bandaging the serious cases in front of our parapet. (Wikipedia, 2016).

Changing Our Idea

This idea spawned debate within the group and we decided to pursue an idea where the three of us lead 1 to 1 performances with audience members based on telling the stories of lost items from what was found in the balcony room.

An idea that stemmed from this was the potential use of the toffee as one of the items related to The Drill Hall, and that our research into the soldiers would not be lost as a result of this drastic change in style of performance. Expanding on that idea was a suggestion from Michael that music could be a part of the performance, a ‘lost’ instrument could be used to play one of the songs that were played at the drill Hall during the venues time as a music-based venue.

Expanding on that idea was a suggestion from Michael that music could be a part of the performance, a ‘lost’ instrument could be used to play one of the songs that were played at The Drill Hall during the venues time as a music-based venue. We all suggested putting our talents into the Performance such as Jaimie playing a guitar and myself singing.

Our piece is now moving more towards being a more intimate and personal performance, designed to use the natural ambience of the room to give our piece a surreal atmosphere.

History of our piece

Zara Cain / March 12, 2016March 12, 2016 / Uncategorized

The history of our piece

In the 1850’s there was a famous factory called the Ruston’s factory which you will now know as semen’s, this organisation was ran by an industrial manufacture called Joseph Ruston. The company was known for manufacturing narrow and standard gauge, locomotives and steam shovels. They became Ruston practor and company in 1857 when Joseph Ruston joined them. From 1866 they build a number of six coupled tank locomotives one of which was sent to the Paris exhibition in 1867.

Whilst the Ruston’s factory was making profit in 1859 Joseph Ruston had the idea of building the drill hall. The drill hall took 31 years to build and was not completed until 1890. £10.000 was spent in these years making sure that it was accessible to the general public.

The factory workers at the Ruston’s factory wanted a pay rise whilst the Drill Hall was being built but Ruston refused this by stating “Don’t deprive me of my bread and cheese.” From then on the Drill hall to the workers was none as the bread and cheese hall and it was a mockery to them.

During the First World War, Ruston assisted in war effort, producing some of the very first tanks and a number of aircraft. The drill Hall was also a war unit where solders were trained for battle around 4000 men attended this unit and out of that 4000 423 died.

Using the history that we have found out about the drill hall me and my group came up with an idea. Knowing that the drill hall was a mockery to the Ruston factory workers back in the 1800’s, stating it the ‘bread and cheese hall’, we though that creating a version of the drill hall out of bread and cheese would be an interesting concept. We will also take into account the soldiers that attended the drill hall in World war 1 and how many died who attended this unit, making sure that the resources we do use have a meaning behind them. Throughout 0ur process we will be finding ways to link our use of bread with the soldiers.

Rustons

Our influences

Site Specific performance focuses primarily on place and the history behind that place but there are many fragments to Site Specific performance. Mike Pearson in his article displays that “Performance and archaeology favour body, object, place, activity and context” (Pearson, 2001). With our piece we want to create theatre that uses senses, objects and the body, using these will help us with our narrative.

My group and I from the beginning were interested in using senses. Janet Cardiff’s piece ‘The forty part motet’ creates a sound scape using speakers. Forty Separately recorded voices are played back through forty speakers strategically placed throughout the space. The sounds that the audience can here are from a 40-part choral performance of English composer Thomas Tallis’s 16th century composition sung by the salisbury cathedral choir. As you can see in the picture bellow this would create an emotional evocative sound sculpture that would feel intimate even with in a public space. These emotions are felt through the senses of hearing, we thought we could use some of Janet’s ideas of senses in our piece.

We were also influenced by bobby baker with her use of natural resources in her piece ‘Mad gyms and kitchens’. This piece is bobby demonstrating how she achieves the ultimate ‘well being factor’. Throughout the piece Bobby will use vegetables and different types of foods and throw them at walls letting all of her anger out. From reading up on this it was interesting to see how you can use food in different ways. The smells that you get with using food can enhance a piece by picking up on the audiences senses, by doing this the audience can feel certain emotions for the piece by relating the memories they have with the food to the piece of theatre. Lyne Gardner from the Guardian states ‘Like all of of Bakers work you leave feeling better than when you came in. Its not a show but a priceless gift wrapped in theatrical box of tricks’ (Guardian, 2004)

Our process to are final performance

At the beginning of our process my group and I found a birds eye planned view of the drill hall. Are main aim was to build a three dimensional version of the drill hall but through practice with other resources such as paper and blocks we found this unsuccessful. Looking at the floor plan of the drill hall we came to a decision that not only would it be easier building it in this way but we could also use the bread in an interesting way. Using whole pieces would be difficult so my group and I experimented by using paper.

In the example bellow we cut up the paper into small rectangles, we created a miniature version of the drill hall. By getting up and creating it we found it easier to recognise what worked and what did not work. We knew that cutting the bread up had a positive effect on our piece and we realised that they represented bread soldiers that you would have with a dippy egg. Knowing that the Drill hall used to be a war unit for soldiers in world war 1 it seemed appropriate to incorporate this into our work.

4,000 men served at the Lincoln drill hall and out of the 4,000 who served 423 men died in battle from the Lincoln unit. Each bread solider that we use in our piece will represent one solider that served at the Drill Hall in the first world war. We worked out that in each loaf of bread you can create 70 bread soldiers. My group and I will have to source 57 loafs of bread which will hopefully create a planned view of the drill hall as large as the green room where we will be performing our piece, at the end when it is created we will place a layer of cheese onto each bread solider.