Kate Dawson's Site Specific Performance – Page 2 – _________________________'You Have Not Been Here Before' – my Site Specific Performance blog _______________________

March 26, 2012
by Kate Dawson
Comments Off on Steep!

Steep!

Our new idea is to travel up the hill in different ways to emphasise the struggle of the journey e.g. rolling up the hill. This idea was inspired by a person we interviewed, who said that a film had once been shot on Steep Hill, which involved the performers leap-frogging over the railings, which we thought really highlighted the struggle.

I have also found other instances of people travelling down Steep Hill in different ways:

Our performance will be task based and last for 4 hours, in order to give us enough time to show the struggle of getting up Steep Hill.

To give us performance ideas we looked at the Lone Twin Theatre company who have completed a number of time/task based site specific performances, such as Totem and On Everest. Totem involved the performers ‘walking through the town centre carrying a 20 foot telegraph pole’, the task being ‘to walk a line as the crow flies between two buildings’ (Ed. Williams and Lavery, 2011, p.82). On Everest was a performance, which involved two people walking the ‘five and a half mile ascent to the summit of Mount Everest’ (Lone Twin, 2012) along a line taped on the floor, while reading a script, which detailed where exactly on Everest they would be depending on the distance they had travelled.

In this film Gary Winters, a member of Lone Twin, explains some of his performances, including On Everest and Totem.

These performances were interesting because we could relate the difficulty of the tasks to Steep Hill, especially On Everest.

We have also spent some time attempting to edit the footage we filmed last week, however this has been more difficult than anticipated. Therefore, we have decided to do a live performance, instead of creating a film.

Word Count: 296

March 20, 2012
by Kate Dawson
Comments Off on An Audience with the Public

An Audience with the Public

After a couple of successful interview sessions, these were some of the responses we had to the following questions, which we will use to inspire our final performance.

1. What do you think of Steep Hill?

2. Can you tell us a story about the hill?

3. If you could describe Steep Hill in 3 words, what would you say?

Word Count: 56

March 16, 2012
by Kate Dawson
Comments Off on New Idea and Research

New Idea and Research

We now want to create a performance on Steep Hill, focusing on its physicality to make our piece entirely site specific. Out tutor advised us to stay away from our original division theory, because it is based on an assumption. He advised us to research into Steep Hill itself and to focus on the laborious task of getting up such a steep gradient.

Unfortunately, the only useful information we discovered at the archives was that ‘ the very steep slope in the upper part of the hillside is, in places, about 1 in 6’, and that when Steep Hill was first created ‘a major change in the layout of the settlement in the Lower City took place in the 11th Century, apparently in the generation before the Norman Conquest. These changes included the… laying out of The Straight and Steep Hill’ (Jones et al, 2003, p.204).

I contacted Lincoln Council to find out the exact length of Steep Hill and where it officially begins and ends. Unfortunately, all they could tell me was that Steep Hill officially begins at number 1 and ends at number 65, however looking at the following map, those houses appear to be directly opposite each other. Therefore, they were unable to tell me how long Steep Hill is exactly.

Steep Hill Map

Word Count: 214

March 12, 2012
by Kate Dawson
Comments Off on Dead End!!

Dead End!!

Due to information discovered at the Lincolnshire Archives, that the divide in Lincoln had been in place until 1850 – 1900’s when ‘Lincoln’s social composition changed enormously due to the engineering companies which stimulated population growth’ (Walker, 2002), we decided to produce 2 narrative style performances based on what we imagined society’s reactions would have been to these changes.

However, at this point we realised that because we had decided to include a narrative in our scenes, this meant that, in theory, they could be performed anywhere, so they weren’t site specific. Just as Nick Kayne says: ‘To move the work is to destroy the work’ (2000, p.2).

We were advised to move away from a narrative scene, so we discussed how we could physically ingrain our performance into our site.

For example how Stephan Koplowitz’s theatre company TaskForce integrates stairs into this performance and makes it impossible for that piece to work in any other location. The performers become the site, which is an interesting idea.

This performance inspired my idea of using solely the Lucy Tower Car Park to symbolise Steep Hill. We could devise a physical theatre performance, emphasising how the social classes change as you move down the levels. With this in mind, we contacted the local authorities to gain permission to perform in Lucy Tower Car Park, which sadly, they refused.

Word Count: 226

February 28, 2012
by Kate Dawson
Comments Off on Filming the Public

Filming the Public

This week, we attempted to film interviews with the public about their opinions on Lincoln’s divide, however, downhill, nobody allowed us to film their responses to our questionnaire! This is a setback because, although we have information from the public written down, the footage was important because we were hoping to edit it into our film, to show our performance’s development.

Instead, we took the camera uphill, where we had more success and filmed two interviews.

One was a young man who had lived in Lincoln for many years. He did see a divide between the uphill and downhill areas, especially in terms of architecture. He said this obviously affected house prices, which meant that only rich people could afford to live uphill and poorer people were forced to live lower down the hill where the houses were cheaper.

The second man was on his first visit to Lincoln yet he could already see a divide. We told him of Lincoln’s historical background and he said he could understand why there had been a divide and could see how this division may still be in place today.

The information we received from the public today is very helpful because the response confirmed our ideas about the city of Lincoln.

Word Count: 209