When going to the Lincoln archives we discovered a detailed memo book of meetings held about the Drill Hall from as early as 1926. These meeting discussed all major events to be decided on in the Dill Hall up until the mid 1950’s. These meetings took place in what was then called the “Officers Room” which is now labelled “The Room Upstairs”. Whist reading these memo’s we thought about how these meeting were performances in their own right and how we may restore this meetings/behaviours, in a way which can be viewed by audiences. This made me think of the writings by Richard Schechner,
“Restored behaviour is living behaviours treated as a film director treated a strip of film. These strips of behaviour can be rearranged or reconstructed; they are independent of the causal system (personal, social, political, technological, etc.) that brought them into existence. They have a life of their own. The original “truth” or “source” of the behaviour may not be known or may be lost, ignored, or contradicted even while that truth or source is being honoured” (Schechner, 2013, 34).
This inspired me to think about how we could chop and edit the recorded meetings in a non-liner fashion to still show the history of the room but also tell a story, incorporating the “original truth” but also allowing a narrative which would be engaging to audiences. Our current idea is to use the memos in a recorded, almost radio style interview, to tell the information of the memos to the audience, whist having copies of the memos around the room for the audience to interact with.
Schechner, R. (2013) Performance Studies An Introduction. 3rd edition. Oxon : Routledge.