Our aim in our performance is to make sure our audience gets the full experience from the typhoid epidemic that happened in Lincoln in 1904. Therefore, we decided that we wanted to immerse our audience into the patients and we wanted them to feel as they were back in the hospital in 1904. We therefore wanted to create a very intimate and uncomfortable space for them; we also wanted them to experience it all by themselves and not have their friends to turn around to whenever they would feel uncomfortable. That is the whole point of our piece; in order to do so, we separated our audience into 3 toilet cubicles as your can see on the picture above. Once they would enter the bathroom, they would heard running water and we nurses would constantly be dipping the flannel in the sinks so they would hear the water effect. We want to empathize on water as much as possible. We also took a very long time finding our space, we wanted it to be absolutely perfect in order to make the history stand out and the audience would experience a better outcome from our performance. According to Mike Pearson,”In which the scene is set, a personal history of practice is sketched and a particular context of performance making is delineated” (Pearson, 2010). There cubicles does make the experience more personal and isolating for our audience, and the water effect reminds them this this piece is based on the water that got infected years ago. We also thought that setting a performance in a bathroom isn’t a very usual space you tend to have performances, which is the point of site specific theatre; we want to bring back the history that the Drill Hall has had and make as many people experience it individually. This work well since as Mike Pearson said as well, “A large part of the work has to do with researching a place, often an unusual one that is imbued with history or permeated with atmosphere” (Pearson, 2010).
Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmilla.