Author: Daniel James Arnold

Audience response to the performance are hard to record as the majority of the audience were members of the public, unaware they were going to be witnessing a performance, there reactions to our presence contributes to other peoples interaction and response to our performance. As Mike Pearson explains:

Audience need not be categorized, or even consider themselves, as ‘audience’, as a collective with common attributes. All three sets of relationship, performer/performer, performer/spectator, spectator/spectator become part of an active matrix of interaction and available for negotiation: momentary and durable, individual and collective. (2010, P.175)

Our audience have experienced interaction momentary, durable, individual and collective. The momentary interaction is caused in part through the layout of the shop floor. Shelving blocking the view of performance has both positive and negative contributions on the impact of performance. An audience reaction to suddenly being greeted with our performance, on turning an isle corner, will of course be a different reaction to that of a performance capable of being viewed for the entire duration.

Audience not needing to consider themselves ‘audience’ (2010, P.175′) is an important aspect of the intentions of our performance as the public will not have considered themselves an audience therefore notions of a ‘collective with common attributes’ (2010, P.175) should have been forgotten. This created freedom from the attributes of an audience, importantly for the public, a freedom to discuss the performance without fear of disrupting performance, be those discussions away from the performance or not. Any discussion of our performance allowed that member of the audience to transcend the three performer/spectator relationships Pearson has described.

Attempts to record the performance were made through photographs. One of which will be published in an internal magazine for the staff of the company. Another means of recording the performance would be to obtain the close circuit television recordings of that day. An interesting idea this may have also captured the public’s reaction to the performance. However this idea is complicated as obtaining security footage from a large corporation, even for private use, would involve certain procedures and approvals from different people within different departments of the company.

Works cited

Pearson, Mike. Site-Specific Performance, 2010, Palgrave MacMillan: Hampshire.

During the rehearsal process consideration of St. Marks train station would be a difficult aspect of the sites history to incorporate into performance. Firstly, using hand signals in the performance incorporated the train station into our piece as this method of signalling is now obsolete though would have been used in the early stages of the stations history. The second means of communicating the train stations existence is through the performer’s physicality. This concept led to influence being drawn from Vsevolod Meyerhold’s work on biomechanics. A representation of a physical objects impact on culture and society is difficult to present. As Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright describe Meyerhold’s work as:

A style of acting in which theatre rhetoric was replaced with a ‘light and unforced’ delivery- ‘the exterior calm that conceals volcanic emotions’- and by mime and improvisation; character and relationships were established not by words alone but by ‘gestures, poses, glances and silences’, with speech and movement not necessarily coinciding.(2001, P.347)

Our performance relied heavily on the physical presentation of the performers, with several schools of thought and aspects of history needing to be portrayed, a minimal amount of speech had to be employed. As giving verbal explanation to one aspect of the research would require the same level of expression devoted to other aspects of the sites history or the overall meaning may have been lost. If speech is used evenly to communicate all the historical research discovered about the site the performance would result in being to reliant on that speech, resulting in a performance closer to a lecture on the sites history than a performance, therefore a choice few lines and the dates of historical changes on the site were the only verbal communications used in performance.

This consideration furthered the importance of Meyerhold’s use of gestures and posses to establish characters and relationships. The physicality of ritual and religion proved easy enough to begin rehearsing but the representation of the train station was a harder task. A method of physically representing the train station that seemed effective was to break down the body’s movements into ‘mechanical’ sections. Reducing simple or complicated tasks to separate stages of movement presented the complexities of the human body’s construction. This was in effort of creating a parallel to the complex machinery required to construct a train or the large turntables that were located in the same space as Homebase.

Works Cited

Eyre, Richard. Wright, Nicholas. Changing Stages, A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century, 2001.Bloomsbury Publishing:London.

The Friary had been demolished in 1539 during the rein of King Henry the Eighth. The King’s dissolve of several aspects of the Christian church were enforced personally the decline of religious buildings within Lincoln may have been implemented with more subtlety. The collection money from the friaries services would have been there main source of income. During King Henry’s rein this income and the friary became property of Bishop Robert of St. Mary’s church. As Jeff Hill writes:

Bishop Robert obtained from Henry a very special writ by which Henry gave God and the Church of St. Mary of Lincoln and Bishop Robert all the Churches in the Borough of Lincoln, within and without, which the priests held there king, any customary payments to the king being reserved. The effect of this grant being presumably was that if it could be proved that the priest held of an individual Lord then the Lords rights would be undisturbed, but if not, then in the church then the Priest was deemed to hold the king and under the royal grant the Church passed to the Bishop. (1965, P.2)

So it became the task of Bishop Roberts to collect all the money generated by Churches in Lincoln and then to distribute that wealth throughout the borough. Naturally the Bishop would favour his own Church, St. Mary’s, over other Churches. However the position Bishop Roberts had obtained places himself under the kings ruling meaning he would have to adhere to the Kings decisions. If King Henry decided he wanted to withdraw funding from any Churches in the Lincoln area he would simply have to inform Bishop Roberts who would be unable to argue. Meaning that funds would have been greatly reduced, if not completely withdrawn, from the Friary. There are interesting parallels between this grant and the operations of a chain such as Homebase. Revenue is generated by the individual stores and staff all of those takings generate profit for the heads of the company, whose wages are presumably far greater than the staff on the shop floor, and there task, among other things, is to decide where to redistribute funding throughout the company and country. When put in such simple terms the similarities between Bishop Roberts control of Churches in the Lincoln borough and the structure of large companies, such as Homebase and all the shops in the St. Marks shopping centre, becomes clear. The presence of our performance will cause a disruption to the expected experience of shoppers within Homebase. While shoppers first questions will be what are they doing and why hopefully our actions of religious rituals will get the public to consider how our presence has disrupted there expectations and what this means about there expectations. The specific research around the Friary and St.Marks Church will probably not become clear but the connotations of ritual and religion will be clear. Hopefully this will make our audience consider the rituals of a shopping experience through our disruption of that experience.

An extensive amount of repair work was needed for St. Marks church as James Williamson’s book details ‘Erected from the design of Mr. Watkins, Of Lincoln, to replace a very diminutive and mean edifice, patched up in 1786 from the ruins of the ancient Church, which fell into decay during the civil wars.’ (1890, P.2) Again it is interesting to consider the different treatments of two religious buildings, one fallen into disuse and another being refurbished, why one religious building rises up in height with the build of a new spire while the other is put to bed. Using this information and the juxtaposition of these buildings we decided to take two aspects of both sections of Christianity and perform them one immediately after the other. The line ‘We thank you for thousands of years of sustaining and transforming us’ (The British Province of Carmelites, 2012) was taken from a Carmalite prayer because it highlighted the length of time there cell of Christianity had been in existence and the words ‘sustaining and transforming’ have particular significance in the context of a site that has experienced the demolition of a Carmelite building. The interesting thing about this quote is that the prayer itself was created in 2007 to mark the 8^th century of the Carmelite rule of St. Albert. Considering how much sustain for this religious group has actually been achieved over the years is an useful contribution to our stimulus. We coupled this with our version of a baptism a very familiar aspect of the Christian religion to highlight how recognizable one aspect of the mainstream Christianity is in comparison to an aspect of the lesser know Carmalite Christians.

 

Works Cited

 

The BritishProvinceof Carmelites, Prayers for the Carmelite way of Life, Available at: www.carmelite.org/index.php?nuc=content&id=71 (Accessed:3 May 2012)

 

Hill, Jeff. Medieval Lincoln, 1965. Syndicates of theCambridge Uni Press:Cambridge.

 

Williamson, James. Guide Through Lincoln, 1809. 3^rd edition, James Williamson,290 High StreetLincoln:Lincoln (Obtained from Lincoln Archives)

Title of Project
Consumerist Carmelites

Description of proposed work
A physical performance based on the history and previous sites which is now Home base in the St. Marks shopping centre. The performance will take place in different areas of the store and will bring together a mix of stories derived from the sites history based on accurate and relevant research findings.(51/50)

What we plan to do and a sketch of our ideas
We plan on creating a physical piece of theatre which will be performed in the different areas of the Home base store in St. Mark’s shopping centre. Through research findings we have some knowledge of the sites history which we want to use to create a story of the site, which we will portray through physical movement. So far we have discovered that the site was once the largest friary in the country and it was also a railway station “What had been revealed was the site of the largest Carmelite friary ever found in the UK where the bodies of monks were buried”, (2011). We are going to continue the research to add to the piece. We plan on having the piece start off with something small which may represent something significant to the sites history, but may not necessarily be recognisable to the ordinary customer. As the piece grows and we come together it will become more obvious that we are performing. Another concept we want to explore is that of decay. All of the different forms that the site has adopted have fallen in to decay or been adapted. An example of this would be St. Marks church “Erected from the design of Mr. Watkins, of Lincoln, to replace a very diminutive and mean edifice, patched up in 1786 from the ruins of the ancient church, which fell in to decay in the civil wars”,(William,1890, Pg. 2). All of the different uses of the site will be represented at separate points during the performance. A link we have observed about the history of the site from our initial findings is the transformation from a very holy site to one that represents consumerism and capitalism. This is another idea we would like to explore. (296/250)

Target audience and how we’ll interact
Our target audience will be the everyday customers at Homebase. We will not be directly interacting with the audience in any physical way. It will not be immediately clear that a performance is taking place. As the performance progresses it will be clear that what is occurring has been rehearsed and is intentional. This will alter the conventional performer/audience relationship as Erika Fischer-Lichte writes: ‘Today, performance is no longer seen as a mysterious locus for an inexplicable encounter between actors and spectators. Rather, performance provides the opportunity to explore the specific function, condition and course of this interaction.’ (2008, P.40) our performance will be exploring this relationship as spectators being unaware they are watching a performance enables them a freedom outside the conventional actors/performers relationship. With this freedom it will be interesting to see the public’s condition as some members will simply ignore the performance and some will be interested in the abnormality of a performance outside the conventional space.
(160/150)

When and where we are presenting our work
We will be presenting our work at homebase onMay 3rd 2012 at9:00 am.

Action	Key Target	Date accomplished by
Permission	Get homebase to give written permission that we can perform in the store and also confirma time and date for the performance .	12/3/12
Archive Research	Book and appointment and visit the Lincoln Archives to get more accurate information about the site and its history. This information will hopefully guide our devising process and provide some inspiration.	14/3/12
Analyse Archive Research	Analyse the Research found in the Archives and explore how we can put it into practise.	15/3/12
Workshop	Workshop initial ideas and explore different movements and physical imagery. These movements will be influenced by a range of theatre practitioners. A voice and body movement workshop will also be arranged will arya so we can learn how to use those aspects effectively.	20/3/123 till 5
Devise	Using all the information we have found, and the influence of the space, we will now apply it to the devising process while continuing research.	21/3/121 till 4
Rehearsal	Be developing ideas further and in more depth.	27/3/1211 till 3 10/4/12 10 till 3 11/4/12 10 till 3 17/4/12 10 till 3 18/4/12 10 till 3
Practising in the space	The majority of our rehearsals will need to Take place in the store however we will need to create the physical movements beforehand so thatwe can practice them in the space, it is still a business so we cannot get in the way of that.	Times given above.
Run-through	By this point we plan to be conducting full run-throughs in the space.	19/4/12
	Note: due to restrictions in availability of our chosen space our rehearsals will take place in a combination of Lpac studios and the site.	(285/250)

Equipment and materials we will need for the performance
We will need to source the costumes but as we are basing the piece on physical movement we will not need any props.

Project budget
We will need a maximum of £25, £5 each for costume.

Audience suitability
Our performance will not contain anything which we will necessarily need our audience to be aware of. We have to remember it is still a business in operation and our audience will be there customers so we cannot disrupt them too much.

Artist’s statement
We are a physical theatre group exploring the history of a site and using it to inspire our work. We have taken influence from companies such as complicite, as well as practitioners such as Meyerhold and Craig. The intention of our piece is to change the public’s perception of a space they would otherwise give little consideration to, emphasising the historical context of that location. We chose this particular location because in a city so rich with history and culture locations such as this are often over shadowed and their unique pasts forgotten about. (95/100)

Timeline:

1066 – Friary (Carmelite or white friars)
1539 – Friary knocked down
1786 – St. Marks church re-built
1817 – Holmes field
1842 – Timbre yard
1872 – St. Marks church consecrated
1846 – Railway station
1985 – Railway closure
1996 – Shopping complex. St. Marks shopping centre opens as does Lincoln University.

During initial research into the local area an article was found from the Lincolnshire Echo detailing a discovery of 20 burials underneath the site that is now Debenhams. Detailing a court case to determine whether the discovery was in breach of  the ‘Disussed Burials Act 1894’ (http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/discovery-20-bodies-nearly-ended-shopping-centre/story-14228193-detail/story.html ed grover 28/12/2011) The decision St. Marks wasn’t a burial ground meant that the shopping centre could continue with building plans and officially opened in 1996; although some shops in the centre had been open before this date. This information was interesting enough to warrant further research into the St. Marks shopping centre.

Research uncovered the reason the shopping centre is called St. Marks. Previously the shopping centre was St. Marks Station and before that St. Marks Church. The discovery that the shopping centre had a previous existence as a station would perhaps be common knowledge to local residents of Lincoln but how many would have been conscious of the churches existence? or are conscious of it when using the space today? The interesting idea drawn from this research is how dramatically the landscape and functions of one place can change.

With further research we discovered a short history of the land that is now St. Marks Shopping centre. Firstly the Friary excavated when digging the foundations for Debenhams was that of the Carmelite Monks, as stated in Ed Grover’s news article, the Carmelite’s were known as the white friars because of there religious scapulars (religious shoulder wear one of the signifiers an individual belonged to the Carmelites). The location of there Friary Was facing onto the High Street with the then burial ground at the back of the Friary as the map shows:

It seems that the memory of St. Marks church has remained a constant feature of the location since it existed when the Friary had been forgotten until its re-discovery. Interesting to consider how one religious building can fall into disuse and when re-discovered be built over when a second religious building can remain present in the conscious or sub-conscious of people through the continued existence of its name. Asking ourselves how much we knew about the use of these buildings and the existence of the white friary before the existence of the shopping centre is a question that could be put to our audience through performance in a bid to make them consider how they have not been here before.

Further research discovered the official opening date of the shopping centre is the same year as the Universities opening. Thinking about the meaning and implications these two buildings have for a community, about what statements they make, one a place of furthered learning and the other arguably a contemporary past time but certainly a landmark to consumerism, it increases the implications of counsel granted permission to build over the friary. As Debenems involvement with the St. Marks shopping centre is said to be crucial to encouraging other chains to invest in the site, did this influence the counsels decision on whether or not the friary was protected by the disused burials act of 1894?  Two buildings opening in the same year both representations of contemporary culture and lifestyles. As local culture changes the use of buildings and space change with that culture. The white friars has been built over because its historical remains are not as valued as a shopping centre to the current community.

It is also interesting to consider the physical use of the buildings as space. While it is no surprise the layouts of shops are constructed to maximise potential sales, with similar products placed next to each other and displays set up demonstrating products, it may be a surprise that the brick work of St. Marks station is still in use, currently housing part of Argos and Phones 4 U. With the brick work changing colour at the join between Phones 4 U and Lakeland. The offices for JD sports are built on the same location and in the same shape as the original signalling box for St. Marks station. While that is a new building the plague marking St. Marks station on the side is the original. How conscious are the public of this information? How many walk through this shopping centre without making the connection to what it is that was in this space before them? even with the remaining brickwork and building shapes. A good stimulant for creating a performance both this information and these questions will contribute towards the rehearsal process. While local residents are perhaps more knowledgeable on the previous use of these buildings it may not be in the foreground of there thoughts when using these spaces. Our performance, while challenging the relationship between audience and performer, will also try to make the audience consider the previous uses of the space.

Creating a performance in a limited space or a space outside of the performers control, as we will be doing, reduces the materials available for creating scene and environment. Our performance will be very physical as the materials available to create the performance will be mainly the performers body. As Erika Fischer-Lichte details the impact Embodiment had as an emerging theatrical notion:

Actors had to become profficient at expressing physically the meanings that the poet had expressed textually- especially the emotions, mental states, thought processes and character traits of  dramatis persona. (2008, p.77)

Our performance will need to express physically the meanings of our texts. The text in this case being the history of the buildings and the cultural changes brought about by this history. It will be a challenge to accurately portrait the mental states of different cultural opinions from different historical periods while explaining the physical use of the space over those time frames. The difference in material importance, for example, between a friar whose religious life would have a very different outlook on material possesions compered to a train conductor or the employies of Homebase today. All this information will be used as stimulous for creating a performance piece that will try to incorporate and explore these ideas.

Works Cited

Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance, 2008. Routledge: Oxon

Mills, D R (ed.) R C Wheeler, Historic Town Plans of Lincoln: 1610-1920, 2004. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge.