On visiting the site again the other day, it started to turn in to another drift again. As we walked a different way to our site (as we’re still unsure of which route to take), I started to look at things in a different light.
As we are thinking of making our performance based around children and the future/growing up in Lincoln, I started to look at all the new sites that are being built around Lincoln, and the walk started to make the performance detail seem much more relevant. As we are exploring the changes/growing up in Lincoln, the fact that things are currently changing and new things are being built around our site is very ironic and important to our performance.

I also researched our site but to much annoyance couldn’t find anything about the park online, so I decided to email the Lincolnshire council (which we had discussed as a group) I asked if the council had any plans for the future for the park and I asked why it is no longer in use. Hopefully we shall hear back from the council soon so that we can perhaps think about adding any of this information into our final piece.

Emily Jeffs

An update on the creative process.

During our seminar we were invited to look into our minds/memories and construct a realistic room that we have been to many times, how when entering this room we felt not only emotionally but physically. How did our movement affect the space we occupied, and was this a place we wanted to be or some where we associate with good/bad connotations. For me this proved to be a challenge as I found myself thinking back into long-lost memories that I had thought about very little until this exercise. I would describe the experience as not something that I found pleasant, but however as I am much older and maturer I looked at in a completely different light. An example of this would be how the objects in the room made me feel, how the smell lingered on me after I have left and when I spoke how the echo would sound across this empty space, creating something like a ever-expanding echo that would be in the back of my mind.

Through this I feel I have gained a deeper understanding into the process that site-specific drama demands of its contributors. You must feel free and be completely engaged for it to work and on some small level for it to impact on you emotionally and physically through the smallest memory or gesture.

Similar to this we explored the idea of a repetitive action and through using examples of real life situations, such as a hospital patient that receives the same breakfast the same way each day and how this can impact on there mental state emotionally how this could affect them.
I have never really thought about repetitive actions and the impact they can have on one person, but thorough this is saw how dystopian it almost seemed and although I knew this was a example I wanted to stand up and let some change occur in what ever small way which I think only deepens my understanding of the patients it take when relating drama to real life events.

Kyle Higgins

Developing our understanding of a site-specific piece.

Lincoln has a fascinating and cultural history that has left the city with a long-standing legacy for future generations to enjoy. Creating a site-specific piece that could illustrate a journey from one location to another by using the city of Lincoln as our inspiration and developing a narrative that could not only capture a journey, but also show a engaging audio piece that a non-aware spectator can become involved with is proving to be somewhat of a challenge. The main reason for this could be
due to our lack of understanding or the new skills that are crucial in creating a audio production for a general public audience that will be open to criticism and there own levels of engagement.

After much discussion and brain storming we had a range of ideas spanning from tongue and cheek murder mystery role-playing where each spectator played a crucial role and would affect the outcome of the piece, to looking at the ever-changing lifestyle that Lincoln has provided through the years and how this has touched and impacted on residents life’s, through growing up in this quickly developing city.
One of the main questions we debated was what kind of message did we want to deliver although we wanted to promote a positive portrayal of Lincoln we often questioned how we could link this to its past, and ask does its future hold a more productive and positive outcome then its predecessor or have we lost our way on what is important?

Through looking at Lincoln and our growing understanding we were able to keep developing our concept into a fully developed piece. Using help from the Lincoln archives and British PATHE that gave us a real glimpse into the bygone days of Lincoln’s past through resources such as archive footage of the city’s development.

When Locating a ideal place in which to conclude our journey we toyed with the idea of a location that is completely normal and a everyday sight that we often pass by unaware of, this could be simply because of its unappealing or vulgar appearance or it is simply something we have chosen to ignore rather then engage with. A perfect example of this would be of course a local playground that has seen better days and through creating a false facade we can lure the listener into better days while revealing the hash unsightly truths of the future and how the areas where we are supposed to feel free and be creative leave us feeling like we should avoid them because of the negative reactions they provoke. 

Kyle Higgins

Yesterday we found out that The Lawn is going under a refurbishment in the next couple of months, which it will have builders on the land during the time we would be there during the performance. The owner Mr Stokes has been open to us using part of the grounds and is going to give us a brief plan of where the works will be when we have our performance day. With this in mind we have decided to adapt our piece to show The Lawn through the years and what it could potentially be in years to come. This means more research for our group and change of format from our original piece.

From the Friday session last week, when looking at performance in terms of framing and threshold,  I felt, was a different and interesting way of looking at the performance as a whole. The repetitive actions such as opening the door and saying ‘Hello’ over and over again, showed that in ordinary day situations, a greeting in which we say so naturally, can be turned into something that almost becomes robotic, as it was the same word being said at us, the meaning of the word felt like it was being lost in the process and we couldn’t do anything about it, we had to wait. During the exercise at first we as an audience, didn’t know whether we should interact and say ‘Hello’ back to make it stop, however we tried saying ‘Hello’ back and it kept going, although us saying Hello back didn’t make it stop, I feel it was good that we all decided to try something as a group. For example my group need to try things out a few times to see if they work. We are going to record our actions soon.

When thinking of our performance in terms of framing, I feel that we want a linear structure to it, but to also make it seem interesting for the audience. We have thought about the idea of using music from the war period, for our transitions, (from monologue to monologue) for example. For our performance, we would like it all to make sense for the audience members. We also said that the use of headphones, is like a threshold for the audience, because its their way of entering the performance but in a different way.  It was also discussed that The City of Lincoln could be an example of framing for our piece.

When researching what the words ‘Ethnographer’ and ‘Phenomenologist’, I found that an Ethnographer is when someone ‘deals with the description of specific human cultures, using methods such as close observation and interviews’. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ethnographer [accessed 18/2/15]. ‘Phenomenologist’ comes from the term ‘Phenomenology’ which means: ‘the study of structures of consciousness, as experienced from the first person point of view’. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ [accessed 18/2/15].

After the Audacity session this week, I felt that I have gained a better understanding of the software and I enjoyed looking for sound effects to go with our performance too. We are going to do more recordings as a group soon.