Although I have questioned my feelings for SSP frequently throughout the progression of this module, I understand its uniqueness and now am able to appreciate the distinctive qualities that some SSP’s have. In retrospect to the process, I am astounded at my new and growing knowledge for the subject and am satisfied that I have come to terms with a topic that at first sights seemed somewhat overwhelming.

Having never created a film before, I felt added pressure to a module that I also had never encountered. However, I feel this was no hindrance as I wanted to use SSP in a way I felt it was meant for. Due to its distinctness, I was compelled to learn the ways of SSP through a medium that would highlight its qualities and for my chosen ‘performance’ film was the obvious choice.

With hindsight, an element of the film that I would now rethink is the assistance of music alongside the story telling. At times I feel it distracts the audience whilst restricting certain stories from coming across in the way they should have done.

Overall, I am pleased with my effort and feel I have portrayed a worthy SSP through a medium that was brand new to me.

After making slight changes to our piece, we felt it best to start by piecing together the stories we had already collected and began by filming the footage to assist them. I was pleasantly surprised at first sight as we had not lost as many stories as I had first worried we would have. Having gathered the stories and footage together we found our film so far to be just less than ten minutes, giving us a half finished film. Taking to the streets once more we gathered our last stories, incorporating the filming alongside this as our deadline was fast approaching.

I was pleased with the stories we had so far collected however, many of our stories were short snippets into personal insights so taking it upon myself, I emailed my lecturers in the hope of interviewing a number of them to assist our piece. Having heard back from one I was happy to find out which place his story referred to and eager to incorporate this into our film. His story was our most detailed and included great personal reflection amongst its historical context, however we had to condense his narrative as he gave us over twelve minutes of audio. We managed to cut this to eight minutes although in reflection, I feel this could have been shorter. I suggested to my group that as it is our longest story, we break it up into three sections, starting with it, having its detail in the middle and finish with it as one of our last pieces. Although this may have detracted from some of its detail, I feel there was enough of it to be appreciated and relevant to our film. My group however, did not agree and we left the film in one piece.

After piecing our stories together and seeing them play through our film, my appreciation for SSP has grown.

One concern I have had throughout the process of our piece is whether it is Site Specific enough. Although our idea’s and actions have meanings and the stories we have uncovered are interesting and relate to Lincoln, relating these back to sites was something I wasn’t sure our piece oozed at first glance. Nick Kaye suggests that Site Specific Performance is a way to “articulate exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined” (Kaye, 2000, p.g.1). We therefore made the decision to rearrange our piece, cutting down on elements that were there because we liked them apposed to them being crucially relevant, and added new and subtle activities that would relate our piece well to the credentials of SSP.

One aspect of our initial idea that we have abandoned is the use of Physical Theatre. Although we all have passion for this, in reality we have not had the time to incorporate it within our piece and due to us not including it so far, it will not dishearten our film in anyway.

Secondly, we have chosen to banish our postcards and canvas. Although initially this is what our piece stemmed from, we have found that often the stories we were learning were very much reliant on the history of Lincoln, when in order to feel like ‘you have not been here before’ we want to focus on stories with a greater personal touch. We also found that when asking members of the public to write down their stories, they were sometimes more hesitant than when we asked them to speak to us. We didn’t want to alarm the public in any way and feel that erasing any obstacle that at first sight is problematic put us at ease as well as our participants.

Our piece now is purely a film, showing us (myself and the other members of my group) standing in the specific sites of the stories we have collected, whilst the stories we have collected are played on an audio track. Although this sounds drastically different to our original idea, it is just merely a simplistic angle to allow us to create a steady Site Specific Performance. Having cut down our piece we have been able to eliminate stories that revolve around student living or the history ofLincolnitself, and uncover stories that are personal to individuals of Lincoln’s community.

Works Cited
Kaye Nick, (2000), Site-Specific Art, Performance, Place and Documentation, Routledge Publishers.

To ensure our idea is grounded well within the criteria, it is important that each step we take with our piece remains to be Site Specific, therefore changing our title slightly seemed appropriate. We now ask the community to ‘Tell us a story about a place in Lincoln’, ensuring that all stories we collect are relevant to us.

I have found that referring to the space within our performance and our site and how the performance challenges the space between audience and performer relationship to be an interesting one due to the audience effectively becoming the performers once we ask for their stories. Like the rehearsal process of many performances their is a quality of the unknown and due to us being reliant of the community of Lincoln the effectiveness of our rehearsals comes down to their willingness and their stories.

Referring to space within performance, I then began to think about the city itself and whether its design aspect restricts our performance in any way: “Architecture controls and limits physical movement and sight-lines; it can stage and frame those who inhabit its spaces” (Pearson, 2010, p.g.21). I found this interesting as I am not sure that we consider this enough when in the space ourselves. As a society I think we are so used to having a conscience of personal space and becoming agitated when we feel this space being intruded. Bringing this back to the idea of architecture and how it perhaps restricts the space for performance, I thought into why new buildings are built and whether this shows representation of our economy and environment. Whether or not it does, quite often buildings tower over our picturesque city, however Site Specific Performance gives us the opportunity to explore these sites inside and out.

Works Cited
Pearson Mike, (2010), Site Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan.

In our second attempt at filming, we had with us our canvas which gave us a lot more confidence when approaching people and the opportunity for us and our audience to see our work coming together.

Unplanned, we kept meeting people we knew, mainly fellow students but also, one of our lecturers, who happened to be our first real story of the day. He knew nothing about our performance but was intrigued and proud to see us bringing our work to the streets.

For the first time in our process we had a group of people approach us. As a group, we were all so inspired by their willingness to be involved.