By taking inspiration from the site we have created a performance inspired by the war memorial located in the cafe of the Drill Hall. On the memorial it says:
In MEMORY of THE GLORIOUS DEAD of the 4th BN LINCOLNSHIRE REGIMENT
Using this plaque as inspiration for our performance and Andy Field’s performance Zilla! We wanted to create a strong visual image using toy soldiers. We wanted to visually represent the number of deaths in the 4th battalion of the Lincolnshire regiment. Field used lego men to miniaturise a city as the audience look at the city from a great height “from above, imagining the people far below like ants” (Field, 2013) Similarly audience members will be looking down on the toy soldiers that are primarily on the stage and scattered around the cafe. We are using the stage because it is net to the memorial but also we found it was the focus point as soon as you walk into the room drawing audience members to see what we are doing.
The performance itself consists of a journey of grief, stopping off at 3 stations:
1. They will sit to the left of the stage waiting for one minute to pass then play the gun shot sound and turn the sand timer over.
2. The performer will then paint a toy soldier red to symbolise their death.
3. They will take the painted solider to the table directly below the memorial and place it on the white dust sheet that will be on top of the table looking up at the memorial. Once the gun shot is heard they will walk to the blackboard, already located in the cafe Drill Hall and mark another solider off.
We are expecting the performance to last 85 minutes to represent a minutes silence for each soldiers that died in the 4th battalion of the Lincolnshire regiment.
We wish to encourage anyone who wishes to watch and remember to do so. We realise that our performance will be in a working cafe that will still be expecting costumers. As we set up for the performance we will put up signs to say there will be a gunshot every minute between 2 and 3:25 and they are welcome to take pictures or videos if they wish.
We will all be wearing black funeral wear clothes that we would wear now. We wanted to almost modernise our clothing because remembrance is still part of everyday life now. We still remember the soldiers lost across the generations from WW1 to now and is something that will continue for generations to come. Through the costume and location of the performance we are able to “attempt to record and represent the substance, grain and patina of a particular place, through juxtapositions and interweaving of the historical and the contemporary” (Pearson, 2010, 32) We also plan of having red lipstick and nails painted red to highlight all the bloodshed. As the performance continues will be get more red paint on our hands and perhaps on our clothes to symbolise the increase in bloodshed.
We had a clear idea on the content of the performance but began to question how would be mark the beginning and end of the performance. When working in the cafe especially we “to work hard to distinguish [the performance], to indicate that it has come into being … [and when it] has completed its business.” (Pearson, 2010, 141) This is something that we will continue to explore when next in the Drill Hall.
Field, A. (2013) Zilla! [online] Avaiable from http://www.andytfield.co.uk/home/?p=10 [Accessed on 19th March 2015]
Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan