Name: Casey Wright
Email: 09172984@students.lincoln.ac.uk
Title of your Project: “Tell us a story about Lincoln”

Please describe your proposed work in no more than (50 words)
A site specific performance located in different areas of Lincoln, with the city of Lincoln itself and those residing in it as the theme of our piece.

Tell us what you plan to do and provide a sketch of the ideas behind the work (250 words)
We plan to interview members of the public of different ages, cultures and backgrounds to discover what Lincoln means to them through stories that are personal and meaningful of a place in Lincoln. We will use the tools of postcards to help us collect their ideas and carry a large canvas to display this information. We will also photograph willing members of the public holding their postcards. This information will be gathered by spreading across various areas of Lincoln for diversity including the high street and cathedral quarters.

All of this will be filmed and edited showing our process and we plan to incorporate physical theatre in to our work. The physical theatre will reflect the ideas of the public using our bodies to demonstrate movement and maybe even spell out some of the words they have used. This physical theatre will be performed in relatable locations of Lincoln, and included in our final film.

We plan to show our work in a public place for a communal feel. We then hope to encourage the audience to join in with the postcard idea at the end of our film, adding to our canvas which we will have brought with us.

We are also considering filming more footage on the day of the screening however this idea is a work in progress.

Tell us about your target audience, and how your work will interact with them (150 words)
Our target audience is a whole variety of the Lincoln Community, including an assortment of different ages, cultures, backgrounds and occupations.Our audience for the filming will range from locals to students and all the postcards will contain data of their age, occupation and where they are from. We feel this data will help us to get a wide range of material for our film and physical theatre and that their differences will make the film interesting.

As for interaction with the filmed public we will be gathering their ideas and filming/photographing them where applicable. Interaction with the viewers of the screening will involve collecting their thoughts to add to our canvas and perhaps including them in further filming.

When and where do you propose to present your work (location, date and time)
A public place that is accessible to both students and the general public, such as the Tower Bars or The Shed. We are yet to acknowledge the specific date and time as we are unaware of our groups allocated day/time for assessment.

Provide a project timetable detailing key targets and actions between now and the presentation of your work. Include Permissions, Materials, Health and Safety checks where applicable (250 words)
All day Monday’s and wherever possible throughout the week.
We need some footage to show by Monday (5th March).
We want all our filming to be completed before the Easter holidays.
When we return all editing will be completed in time for the performance.
All materials and equipment we need have already been bought.
We will require permission from our chosen venue for screening and are unaware of other permissions needed.
Health and Safety will consist of generally taking care while moving around the city centre. Choosing carefully physical theatre movements so that it does not surpass our skills or strength.

List the equipment and materials you will need to deliver your project (and how you will source them).
Canvas – To display postcards
Postcards – Cutting and printing the design on to them to be done.
Marker pens – For the public to fill in their postcards.
Camera – To film the public (when willing).

Give details of your project budget (though be aware that there is no Module budget so any expenses will, unfortunately, have to be borne by you alone).
We do not have a specific budget and will equally divide the cost of any equipment.

Audience suitability: is there anything in your work we may need to make audiences aware of (e.g. Swearing, nudity, flashing lights etc)?
We may have to warn the audience of swearing depending on the footage we capture of the public.

Include a brief artist’s statement that describes you and your work (100 words).
Our work is about seeing Lincoln through the eyes of a diverse public and what it means to them. It is about looking at Lincoln with fresh eyes and exploring great parts of the city. The public are a central piece of our performance and our direction to follow in terms of the physical theatre. The physical theatre is to highlight these thoughts and feelings and to add some excitement to the film. Our work is multi-disciplinary providing a combination of film, photography, physical theatre and documentary. We hope the viewing audience will question what Lincoln means to them.

As research, I asked my housemates to answer some questions that my tutor suggested we answer as realistically as possible. Although they all have common interests, I was surprised to see the answers varied throughout. The question’s asked were such as: ‘where is the best place in Lincoln to witness true beauty?’ By asking such questions, I was able to get a feel of how a variation of question’s that the public will more than likely never have been asked before will be responded too.

After presenting to our group again we came to realise that maybe our question of: ‘What does Lincoln mean to you?’ may be a little too broad to answer and will more than likely cut us off from expanding our ideas and findings. Therefore, we have changed our question to: ‘Tell us a story about Lincoln’, opening up as much or little information as our audience want to give us.

It is true to say that we were all slightly petrified on our first time filming. It is common knowledge that when people try to stop you in the street, you frequently want to turn the other way. For the first twenty minutes this was true as not one person wanted to hear about our piece, no matter how hard we tried. Finally a trio of 17 year old girls restored our faith. It surprised me how willing they were to talk about the City they lived in, and it was plain to see that whether they admit it frequently or not, they appreciate Lincoln and are more than happy with what it offers them.

Our next participant told us a fascinating story of an old fishmonger’s shop, ‘Macfisheries’ that was situated where The Carphone Warehouse now is. Her story was not covered in history but held personal relevance which we were grateful for.

After presenting our idea for SSP, we received positive feedback in particular being how our research and performance link directly with one another. Our presentation spurred us to think about the element of film, and how it could be interesting have an ‘unfinished’ film until the showing, where it could cut to us live finishing our research with the audience, adding the final pieces to our canvas.

Having decided on the question: ‘What does Lincoln mean to you?’ we set to making our postcards. Although this question can be seen as a broad and daunting one, we hope that sticking with it to begin our process will help us when developing our idea, having collected our information.

I wanted to discover what it is to perform, what should and is considered performance and how we should go about distinguishing between what is art and what is not a subject I personally feel to be over analysed. Every person, in one way or another is a performer, whether they are conscious of the fact or not. This however, does not mean that every task you carry out in everyday life should be classed as a performance, and praised as a piece of art when all it really is, is reality. In my opinion, performing is when I am conscious of the fact that I am doing something, and want to impress other people by doing so. This often sparks me performing for myself because I want to do well, but when pleasing others or being praised for your work, is when I feel something should be considered performance.

Site Specific Performance then, I find hard to place within this perspective. Although in one sense it can be exactly as it reads, it can also be seen as a whirlwind of confusion and unappreciated due to its unusual nature. The reasoning behind SSP however, is to honor the ordinary by making it the unordinary. By taking performance out of the theatre and moving it to a space that is representational in a less than obvious manner, brings a new light to the experience, both for audience and actors. Every performance, no matter what, or where it is, is different. Nothing can be exactly as it was before, because lightning does not strike in the same place twice. You may then question film, and how that can change from one showing to the next. I appreciate, that the film itself, remains exactly the same, however the showing of the film is the performance, which changes every viewing. This reflects back to my mentioning of John Cage, each showing of his ‘Experimental Music’ would have created new and different sounds, therefore creating a new performance each time it was performed. Although I think this to be slightly pretentious, I see the meanings behind it, and why it is considered art.

Having decided on our performance to begin our research we will take to the streets of Lincoln asking the community what Lincoln means to them. We will give each member of the public we speak to a postcard, in which they will be asked to answer the question in no more than a few words or a small diagram. Once they have done so, they (if co-operative) will have their picture taken whilst holding up the postcard. Whilst doing this, we will make a video of our process, inviting the public to take part, if they so wish. We do however, anticipate the response to be more negative than positive, and will therefore act on behalf of our extended cast. Once we have collected this data, we will devise a piece of Physical Theatre to represent this, which we will also film and edit into what we will present as our final piece. Our performance then, being a video of Lincoln and what it means to us and our local community and our chosen site being many areas of Lincoln, surrounding the city centre where we will find a variation of the public. We are desperate to incorporate a wide variety of age groups, classes and cultures, as we were surprised enough to all have different views, considering we are all of similar ages and interests.

We found our next step to be the discussion of our findings in link with our individual research, shaping our performance ideas. One practitioner from this I found interesting was John Cage and his lecture on ‘Experimental Music’. One of Cage’s famous performances is his solo piece of a man and his piano, sitting in complete silence for minutes on end. His percussion and music would then come from the confused audience, using everything from coughing and sneezing to audience members asking and discussing what was happening. This piece of music frustrated people so much, they often left. Cage, at first, did not understand this and once said: “It seemed to me that composers knew what they were doing, and that the experiments that had been made had taken place prior to the finished works, just as sketches are made before paintings and rehearsals precede performances” (1958, p.g.1). As music changed, he came to realise that having his music classed as experimental, was not a bad thing, and used it instead to describe the music he was interested in and passionate about. He said: “I have become a listener and the music has become something to hear” (1958, p.g.1).

An audio tour I came across with an interesting performer/audience barrier was located in a shopping mall. Each person involved in this performance was unaware of who else in the mall was listening to the tape, and when they were instructed to work together, the results were very successful. The atmosphere within the mall changed considerably and due to the unusual circumstances, the performance was definitely one of a kind. This type of Site Specific Performance ensured that the audience were involved and gave all types of people the opportunity to take part of such a dramatic experience. Although direct instructions were given, the boundaries were pushed back in that the audience could not just sit, watch and take in the performers on stage but be a part of the act and add to its specified nature.

Works Cited
Cage John, (1958), Experimental Theatre, Accessed Online: http://www.kimcohen.com/sethtexts/artmusictheorytexts/Cage%20Experimental%20Music.pdf
Date Viewed: 09.02.12