“A reconstitution of the past from its surviving fragments…” (Pearson, 2010, 42).
In this quote Mike Pearson highlights how difficult it can be to work with a limited record of past events. We only have access to records of minutes of meeting and people’s own memories about the Drill Hall in relation to ‘The Room Upstairs’, because of this the performance that we create could become very disjointed. This is particularly the case with the rumours which were spread about the room when it was called ‘The Officers’ Room’. This room had become infamous as ‘a Gentleman’s club’ in the early part of the Twentieth Century. These rumours still exist today even to the extent that when given a tour around the building, the first thing we were told about was it apparent ‘seedy’ past. The fact that the room was used to hold all important meeting about the Drill Hall was not even mentioned! It has almost become irrelevant whether the story was true or created by people lower down in the Army ranks to spite their superiors. It has now become a part of the Dill Hall’s history true or not.
This quote also emphasises our want to reconstruct the whole history of the room, however, because of the limited information, there are often large chunks of time missing as well as key events missing from records. This lends itself to us creating a performance using an episodic structure which allows self-contained scenes. We want to do this to highlight the fragmented nature of the information, rather than trying to conceal it into a smooth linear narrative.
Because there are only stories about thee ‘dual’ usage of the room, it forces us to create a fictional scene highlighting that side of the room’s history. This then causes a disjoined performance not only because of the episodic structure, but also in the source material from which the performance are created.
Work Cited
Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.