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Creepy Faces and Cobwebs

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An original idea that my group and I decided on was to pursue a guided tour around the back of the cathedral. We were fascinated by the mystical sculptures we discovered. We believed that we could create a truly fascinating mythology to incorporate into our piece, taking our audience on an eerie journey around the back end of the cathedral that isn’t so popular as the front.

As we moved further with this idea we began to recognise that most of our mythologies that we had made up were in fact already ‘Lincoln myths’. After this discovery we were left feeling slightly disappointed as we didn’t want to be seen as though we were presenting a generic ghost walk to the public.

Progressing on from our ideas of ‘Creepy Faces and Cobwebs’ we decided to completely move away from mythologies and sway our thoughts in a completely different direction.

Small town

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Carrying through my theme of miniatures and perspectives, I created a map of a town using the patterns of a stone floor. It already had the characteristics of a place with its shapes and levels, all it needed was someone to see it. I started off by choosing a piece of the floor that I thought had the most potential; this involved traits such as daylight, shadows, litter and shapes and depth of stones!

This was the area I chose for the birds eye view map:

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I figured that there was no need to be 100% realistic in what I was doing and this allowed the simplist of things to become important. This notion has become very relevant and useful in site specific performance as it has taught me to look beneath the view.
Stones became buildings, cigarette butts became crash sites from where they had fallen from the sky, scratches on the stone became the aftermath of a tiger escaping from the local zoo, the daylight and shadows became the separation between AM and PM in the town and so forth.
After blowing the picture up and printing it off I was able to draw my imagination…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130878920@N06/16647407236/
I also made a key to accompany my map, so it makes sense to everyone else too!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130878920@N06/16050990094/

 

Drop everything now, Meet me in the pouring rain

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Walking into the Cathedral, I was in awe. The pure beauty of the building was all around; in every nook and crevice, every stained glass window and every buttress.

During the workshop session, Lizzie, Kia and I decided to shelter from the pouring rain inside the Cathedral. At this point, we thought it would be a good time to discuss and make plans of what we would like to create for our Site Specific performance.

We liked the idea of an audio walk but to add a twist onto it. One of our ideas was to have our audience participate in an audio game (almost like a scavenger hunt). The idea of incorporating the Cathedral into our performance intrigued us so, bearing this in mind, we looked around the building for some ideas to use. That was when we came across the war memorial part of the Cathedral, the side room dedicated to those who perished in WWI, WWII and the most recent wars. It was quite daunting, walking around that room as there were historical artefacts such as old battered Union flags from the different time periods and old records which listed the dead. It struck a chord as in that moment the wars became all too real and also highlighted just how important Lincolnshire was during the wars and even to this day. We knew at that moment we wanted to use this as some sort of basis.

We would start our audience off with a pre recorded tour which would have instructions on it to follow. We had the idea of having three different walks so that our audience members could experience different things and could discuss their findings with each other. One of the walks could incorporate the war memorial in the Cathedral. The audio could include bomb sound affects along with the audience being told to duck or find somewhere to hide. Their path could start at the castle, thus including the historical elements of wars and battles and would lead to the Cathedral. We could also tell the audience members who were taking the tour facts about Lincoln during the war.

The only problems with this idea would be getting the permission to go inside the Cathedral and use it as part of our tour as well as the issue of entrance fees.

Rain, rain go away…but not really

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We were set the task of listening to Adrian Howells’ podcast, created for The Guardian (2011). ‘Everyday Moments’ is a podcast series by theatre producers, Fuel and Roundhouse Radio. The nine minute audio track featured an assortment of noise and musical interludes which included rain, slurping, gasping, shipping forecast, static and classical music. The instructions for this piece were to listen to it in bed, in the early morning with a hot drink. I did not follow these instructions and this may be why I achieved different results to the podcast than other people did. I listened to the podcast in the library whilst completing some work, listening to other music (but putting it on pause to complete the podcast). My experience of the podcast became varied.

I found the slurping and gasping during and after Howells has a sip of his drink very annoying and infuriating, the chink of china was distracting and the static noise from tuning the radio, taxing. On the other hand, the rain and classical music was very soothing and I was enjoying listening to it but as soon as I was relaxed, Howells’ additions made me frustrated. Saying that, I did notice that my breathing and heart rate fell into time with the music and his breathing and I found that comforting. Due to the repetitive nature of the podcast, the nine minutes went by very quickly and I was shocked to hear the voice telling me it was over.I think I do enjoy these types of performance pieces, as they focus the mind and allow for concentration or they get you on your feet dancing in the privacy of your room like Hofesh Shechter’s podcast did. The ‘Everyday Moment’ series allows for expression through various ways and different people would enjoy some more than others.

 

The Guardian (2011) Everyday Moments Adrian Howells. [podcast] 21 November. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/nov/21/everyday-moments-podcast-adrian-howells [Accessed 17 February 2015].

The Cathedral

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Due to the weather last Monday we took shelter in the Cathedral as it was one of the places in which we wanted to use for our walk/game. We also knew that in the Cathedral there were numerous flags as well as the names of people who were in the Army, RAF and Navy who fell during the war. In one of our audio games we want it to be as if the players are in a war, the sounds, the moves, each game will interlink however it will be in different ways. For instance in this game the players may be told that the person next to them is an enemy trying to attack them, however the person in that game may have been told to try and make friends with that person and stick by them therefore they have to try and solve this problem.

We will try and use the Cathedral as a base for a beginning and an end as we love the echo of voices you hear inside, the design of the windows, the prayers that are made and thoughts that are given as well as what was made in the War. We hope to end the 3 game links in the church listening to the choir singing as each voice radiates against the walls is so pure and delicate, we believe we can create a small story within this about how each step and each footpath was led to this destination where all thoughts are free and everyone can be welcomed as well as forgiven for what they have done or even guided to where they may want to be. We would like to open people’s eyes to the opportunity of following different footpaths which they are told to and then given the light to create their own.