The Glorious Dead is a durational piece in which we have created in order to take the time to remember and memorialize those soldiers who died during the 4th Battalion. We have three stations in our piece. The first station has one of us turning a sand timer and watching the time go by as thought they are waiting for another soldier to pass in order to move onto the next station as the 4th Battalion took place in Egypt. The next station is where a member shall choose one of the soldiers in front of them and paint them the colour red. This is to represent their death and we shall be getting red paint on our hands in the process to portray show the horrible effect really has. The last station requires the member to gently bring their red soldier over to a table and carefully place them under the plaque in the drill hall cafe that reads, “In memory of The Glorious Dead of the 4th B.N (T.F) Lincolnshire reg”. Then the same person will spend a minute reading the plaque. After each minute we shall rotate in a circle to each station until 85 soldiers are painted red and placed under the plaque. The whole piece shall last 85 minutes and we shall be in complete silence to give a minute silence to each soldier that died, this means that every action that occurs within the three different stations shall only last a minute long until we move onto the next.
Our audience are members of the public that decided to come to the drill hall that day, not necessarily to see our piece but to go about their day as they would have normally. We want our audience to be surprised by the piece as it would have disrupted their vision of how their time at the drill hall would have been without us performing. We also want our audience to decide for themselves if they want to take the time to remember with us by either watching our piece or reading the plaque along with us. In a sense our audience are also playing a part in our performance as their reaction towards our piece is important as ideally we want them to remember with us but it shall be interesting to see if our audience decides to ignore what is taking place as we do not want to force them into watching our piece as Turner states “This reading stood and stands as a provocation or open invitation, rather than a practical proposal”. (Turner, 2010, 156) Our piece has been created to provoke emotion from our audiences which we shall find out by the way they react to our piece so the audience is a part of our performance as much as we are. Our piece is also an open invitation for anyone to come and watch for as little or long as they please. We do not want our members to feel like they are being forced to stay or even watch.
Although our piece isn’t obviously political we are making a point that those who enter the drill hall Cafe most likely do not take the time to discover or remember the soldiers (myself included before this project) and how we believe that those who do spend their time in the drill hall should take the time to do. “The work no longer seeks to be a noun/object but a verb/process, provoking the viewers critical (not just physical) acuity regarding the ideological conditions of their viewings”. (Kwon, 2004, 24) Our piece is a process that we hope that our audience will want to follow with us and take the time to think about the last time they payed respect to the soldiers that died in the 4th Battalion hopefully encouraging them to join with us and memorialize the 85 soldiers during our piece.
Turner, C. (2010) Dramaturgies of Public Space. Contemporary Theatre Review, 20 (2) 156.
Kwon, M (2004) One Place After Another: Site specific Art and locational identity. Massachusetts: Massachusetts institute of technology.