Conditions: “In which ten sets of geographical, architectural, social and cultural conditions and formulations are described as they inform or impact upon the conception and exposition of site-specific performance” (Pearson, 2010, 92)
When creating a site-specific performance influences need to be taken from the space in relation to its relationship to the world, i.e. what its used for now, its historical dimensions and the emotions experienced with regards to the space.
We have decided that our performance will take place under a memorial and on the stage in the café/bar of the Drill Hall. After taking inspiration from Jake and Dinos Chapman we have decided to use toy soldiers in our piece.
Everything in our performance has a reason for us doing it. We are using the toy soldiers to replicate the childish idolisation of war and to replicate how young many of these soldiers were when they died, and to link back to the space in which we are working as there is a childrens play corner here. Having these small figurines in our performance means that we can use a vast amount to create more of a spectacle in the piece. Since 85 soldiers from the 4th Bn died in the war, we shall be painting 85 toy soldiers red. These painted soldiers will then be placed directly under the war memorial. Our piece will go on for exactly 85 minutes, and will be performed in complete silence to an audience of anyone who is in the drill hall at that time. We are performing a minutes silence for each soldier and to signal the end of each minute there will be a gun shot.
In our last session we displayed the toy soldiers how we wanted them in our performance so we can see what it will look like. It was a good day to practice as the Drill hall café had many visitors and we were able to see how they reacted to the piece. Although we didn’t do a run through of our performance we were able to note how members of the public felt about the idea.
Making clear links with the space and history is a key idea in site-
specific performances. The audience must understand how the performance relates to the space. We hope that our performance does this and will be trying out different layouts and performance ideas through the coming weeks to discover what suits our piece the best.
There is a “role of language” (Pearson, 2010, 101) in Site even in our performance where there is no talking at all. The language of the piece is shown through our actions and ritual routine of what we are doing. The painting of the soldiers and the silence is the key voice in our performance. We want the audience to relate and feel something for the piece as much as we, the performers do.
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillian