When first visiting The Lawn and being particularly interested in the history behind it, we were inclined to dig deeper and discover more about the building. At first we saw the large open space as a great opportunity for performance space, however, after contacting the council to gain permission to use the site, we were informed that the building was about to be taken over by Stokes company. Plans had been made to turn The Lawn in to ‘a micro roastery but on a bigger scale’ (Whitelam, 2014) which meant that we could not guarantee that building work would not disrupt our performance. Govan states ‘contemporary public spaces present particular problems to the performance maker’ (Govan) which i believe definitely applied to my group. When we spoke to the managing director of Stokes, he was not sure on the exact date which the building work would begin which meant there was a possibility that the site would be clear. However, we decided that this was too much of a risk to take as

the factors which we had to consider included building noises, machinery and restricted access to particular areas. For this reason, we have decided to change the location of our performance to Stokes Coffee shop.

I think that the change of location has benefited us, as it now means that the audience can focus mainly on the audio aspect of performance. To ensure that they still have the vision of the original site we have planned to show photographs, both old and new, along with newspaper articles.

References

Govan, (not sure on reference, cant find any of the info.)

Whitelam, P. (2014) Stokes Coffee is to take on The Lawn. Lincolnshire Echo, 28 November, 1. Available from, http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Stokes-Coffee-Lawn/story-24829935-detail/story.html [Accessed 9 March 2015]