Discussing with my group what we were trying to achieve with our performance got me thinking, is memory ‘space’? Although our piece is set in the Drill Hall about the Drill Halls own history can our thoughts and memories be considered ‘space’ too? The Drill Hall is, after all, our ‘site’. In our piece, the audience isn’t just watching us, they are also being forced into thinking and feeling some form of emotion towards the soldiers who spent time in this space, therefore when they leave and remember our piece and remember the soldiers and the site itself, are we still performing in their minds? Have we transferred our performance to a new space whilst keeping the same site?
Or maybe its a “Purposeful Paradox” (Pearson, 2010, 36) where there are in fact two performances. One taking place in full view of the audience with us paining the toy soldiers and another in the audience’s heads where they themselves are unconsciously performing and watching.
Just a thought.
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.