Tag Archives: Cathedral

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.

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.

Perspectives and layers

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During Monday’s lesson the weather was far from perfect. The wind and rain encouraged us to take our research undercover. We knew that we wanted our site to be around the cathedral so we headed into the cathedral to see if we could overhear some conversations about its history or local myths, as our original performance idea involved verbatim. Whist in there we visited the chapter house, of which the architecture blew me away. Whilst gazing into the phenomenal structure of the building a father and his two young children came bombarding in, with booming voices that caught the acoustics brilliantly. The father was telling his children about the history of the building and how it was used for conferences and debates. However the youngest child wasn’t interested at all and continued to run around shouting and seeing if their voice made an echo. This made us think about the difference in perceptions regarding age. What an adult may see in a building (a structure of history), a child may see something very different (a room to make your voice sound big). We then sat and talked more about this idea of seeing things differently and realised that the cathedral has so many layers of perception to it. We really like the idea of perceptions that weren’t overly thought about. Fictional stories that people think of when they immediately see a site or object. This then brought us back to the Gargoyles that we saw. The facts of why they are there are rarely know, thus people create varying myths and stories about their presence. No two stories are the same; therefore the layers begin to appear.

Initial ideas and sparks of inspiration

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Our fourth time venturing up Steep Hill to our given site, and it was pouring it down with rain. After having brilliant blue sky and sunshine weather for the past few weeks (albeit still being very cold), it is of no surprise that it made us view the site in quite a miserable way. Despite the awful weather, we continued to explore our site and the possibilities of performance. In this session we had formed our groups, mine consisting of: Charlie, Jess, Megan and myself. We had originally tried to write messages and leave them in certain places around the cathedral and keep an eye out for passers-by to see if they would notice and comment about them. However, with the weather clearly not being in our favour and getting harder, we decided this probably wouldn’t work and took our inspiration indoors. It was in this session that we discovered how hard it is to begin creating something for Site Specific Performance – it is so open to ideas, that we could practically begin from anywhere. Struggling to spark initial ideas of where to go and what to do, we decided to think back to previous tasks we had done whilst exploring Uphill Lincoln. We thought back to last weeks session of misguided tours and our individual interests when creating our maps and decided to take a walk round the inside of the cathedral and subtly listen in to various people’s conversations. We headed to an unusual part of the Cathedral that none of us had been in, ‘Chapter House’ which happens to be where parts of the Da Vinchi Code was filmed. Having seen bits of it in the film, it was incredible to see the architecture and its brilliance in real life. We sat round on the seating area surrounding the round room and were commenting upon the organ that was placed in the room and how incredible the acoustics of the room must sound. At this moment when we were discussing this, we noticed a family come through the door: A mum, dad and two little boys. The first boy ran into the space shouting and running to the back wall and it immediately changed the atmosphere of the place we had quietly been admiring. He then sat down at the far side of the room gazing up at the ceiling. The mum, dad and the other little boy sat down on the right hand side of us, explaining to the little boy some history he knew of this room and how people in generations gone by would ‘have discussions’ in the room. We continued to observe the first little boy and began to think how different a child would look at the Cathedral, in comparison to someone of our age. I knew at their age I found places like the Cathedral extremely boring and quite scary places. What did that little boy think?

After spending around 5-10 minutes in Chapter House, we decided to go to the Cathedral Cafe and listen in to more conversations. Whilst we were there, we found it quite hard to listen in without seeming overtly obvious. Instead, we began to write down any ideas or places that seemed to spark any of our interests during the day. Here are some of the things we listed to look at or research further:

  • Looking at the space with a child-like mindset – interview children about some of the pictures (below) we have taken surrounding the Cathedral?
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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

  • The Archways around the Cathedral – Stepping back in time, like a time capsule: the old and the new.

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  • The Hut, or ‘pixie’ hut as we referred to it outside the Cathedral – what myths does it have. Could we combine fact and fiction into our piece?

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  • Alfred Lord Tennyson statue – research some of his poems and reflect them back into the space in some way.

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  • The picture of the man’s head coming out of the wall. What is his story?

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  • Layers of perception – photo within a photo idea from our previous session.

Our job now is to do further research into these ideas and see which one sparks the most interest.

 

Misguides and gargoyles

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This weeks tasks had me really engaging with the idea of guides; an idea that I unexpectedly enjoyed. One of the tasks that we were given was to create a map, any type of map, but it had to be unconventional. My partner and I wandered around the cathedral, drawing freehand lines in correspondence to where we walked. We were originally going to recreate the shape of the map with objects we found on our walk. However we were then rapidly distracted when we found controversial gargoyles. This then took us onto a completely different track, and we then started to mark down on the map where the controversial and simply out of place gargoyles were on the cathedral. Within his book Mythogeography, Phil Smith stated that ‘after a while certain things may begin to connect and once that starts happening, without obsessively pursuing a story, you can begin, collectively, to ‘compose’ your drift, allowing what has happened so far to determine your next choices’ (Smith, 2010, 199). This slight tangent that we allowed our drift to go on meant that we developed something that truly interested us, something that was inspired purely from the site itself. I particularly like the idea of a misguide around the cathedral, creating elaborate storied about why and how theses particular statues are here. Allowing people to look beyond the typical tourist view of the cathedral, and discover new information about a place they may have thought they knew so well. Below is the map we drew and some photos of the gargoyles we found on our journey.

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As well as experiencing this oddly enlightening drift around the cathedral, we also explored the misguide. Despite finding this exercise difficult at first, it turned out extremely fun and interesting, both as ‘performer’ and audience. Although the facts aren’t true, the audience are shown a new and sometimes outrageous perception of a place. For example there were several misguides that took place, all with brilliant ‘stories’. Each one brought a new perception to the area around where St Paul in the Bail church once stood, and ultimately I’ll now see that place in a completely different light.

Smith, P. (2010) Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways. Devon: Axminster Triarchy Press.