Midnight Rambler

The Rolling Stones in the 1960s. (Townsend, P. 1963)

Support Act

Since it’s opening in 1890 The Lincoln Drill Hall has played home to everything from professional wrestlers to a hospital during the Typhoid outbreak, from WWI volunteers to the comedian Russell Howard, so it is no surprise given the building’s rich history it was difficult to pick inspiration for our site specific performance. The history of the building appears to be well documented up until the mid twentieth century. After much deliberation on an area to focus on we decided the ‘lost years’ was the area for us.

Upon research we discovered that the Rolling Stones played the Drill Hall on the night of the 31^st December 1963. The next day they would go on to play on the first ever Top of The Pops on BBC TV, marking the start of their worldwide fame.

Midnight Rambler is a piece based on memories and the nostalgia of the past but instead of looking back wistfully at the past, it celebrates that time whilst not dismissing the here and now.

The piece consisted of us transforming the ‘Blue Room’ into the box office it used to be, in such a way as to allow the audience to see the present state of the room. The transformation was more a symbol of the old box office as opposed to a truthful recreation, reflecting the faded glamour of the sixties, memories of the past and the Rolling Stones.

Janet Cardiff’s Forest (for a thousand years…) was our main source of inspiration as it is a piece that has the power to transport your senses to somewhere your eyes cannot see. The senses we manipulated were taste (with popcorn, Coke and Newcastle Brown), sound (we played a live recording of the Rolling Stones from the sixties) and smell (Popcorn, Coke, Newcastle Brown, perfume, hairspray and party poppers). The idea was to transport the audience to the past as particular senses trigger specific and perhaps personal memories and emotions and so would stimulate their understanding and enhance their experience of the piece.

We found it difficult to devise such an intimate piece and it not be interactive, this may be because “theatre that [takes] place in nontheatrical spaces often requires more involvement and interaction from audience members” (Wohl, 2014, 28). Therefore with it being an interactive and immersive piece the audience performed the role of customers waiting to get tickets for the Stones, while we engaged in conversation with them. The piece was 10 minutes, to be more specific the 10 minutes leading up to midnight. Our audience was decided at a maximum of three people as any more in such a small room would take away from the intimacy of the piece and crowd the room. The audience were invited to ‘take a seat’ on the sofa in the room while we waited to see if we could squeeze them into the gig before midnight. However due to the piece being interactive it meant that each time was a little different. The dialogue about the Rolling Stones stories was always the same but the second half of the performance engaged the audience in conversation, therefore we were unsure where the piece would lead every time. This is reflective of a gig and the way that at each performance the audience get the same experience overall but the specifics are a little different each time.

Main Act

Our final performance could not have been more different to our original idea. During one class we took a trip to the Lincoln Archives and came across a plethora of information regarding the Official Opening of the Drill Hall. The information we found included an Order of Service, a Menu, an Invitation and an article that was so detailed it was effectively a transcript of the day. We felt we had stumbled across hidden treasure and so endeavoured to find a way to recreate the Official Opening using the information we had discovered.

The Orders of Procedures for the opening of The Drill Hall. (Fage, C. 2015)

The menu from the opening of The Drill Hall (Fage, C. 2015)

The menu from the opening of The Drill Hall. (Fage, C. 2015)

Our research led us to Rotozaza’s Etiquette, a piece where “participants find themselves exchanging audience and performers roles by simply following instructions” (Rotozaza Press Release, 2007) that are given via headphones. This inspired us greatly and so we attempted something similar. We recorded a speech and instructions such as ‘stand up’, ‘clap’, ‘raise your glass’ etc. but when we experimented with the recordings we soon realised that we could not execute our idea well enough and so went back to the drawing board.

During our time spent at the Drill Hall we found ourselves constantly attracted to what is referred to as ‘The Blue Room’, which is now a changing/dressing room for the artists performing at the venue. With further research into the room we discovered it was once the Box Office in the mid twentieth century back when the original entrance was at, what is now, the back of the building. However documentation on the Drill Hall from around that time is scarce but there is one event that they proudly publicise, the Rolling Stones gig on News Years Eve in 1963. Upon this discovery we decided our piece would centre around that evening.

What is now the back of the Drill Hall but would’ve been the front in 1963. (Fage, C. 2015)

As mentioned there is little information about this time period in the Drill Hall’s history therefore we attempted to get in touch with people who had information and stories they would be willing to share about that night. Using social media we were able to find four people who told us their own stories or the stories of their loved ones.

Before we decided to change our concept we had been toying with the idea of playing on the senses and possibly manipulating them. When developing Midnight Rambler we thought that to enhance the piece perhaps we should involve those senses. Unsure on how to execute the idea we searched for Companies that used the senses and memories and stumbled across a Company called Curious and a piece of theirs aptly named On the Scent. On their website Curious write this about On The Scent:

“Have you ever been taken unawares by something in the air – transported to another place and time by an intangible but achingly familiar scent? On the Scent explores the elusive connections between smell and memory” (Curious).

Transporting the audience to somewhere else using their senses was an idea that soon became part of the centrepiece of our performance, however we were keen not to let the audience be completely transported to the past. Therefore we looked to Janet Cardiff to help resolve our dilemma and discovered that “space might be subject not only to transformation but ambiguity” (Kaye, 2000, 5). Particularly for our piece, that feeling of recognising where you are and understanding it but at the same time being unsure as it is different and your senses are in conflict with one another, similar to a dreamlike state, is something we wished to achieve.

To be more precise we looked at Forest (for a thousand years…). Forest is a “sound installation [that] blurs distinctions between site and art” (Cardiff and Bures Miller, 2012) and is a piece that has the power to transport you to another place. Your eyes tell you you are in one place whilst your other senses suggest you are somewhere else. Although Midnight Rambler did not blur the distinction between site and art this is very similar to what we wished to achieve, the smells and tastes may transport you to the past but the speeches and visual bring you back to 2015.

The main senses we aimed to manipulate were taste and smell, as we believed these to be the most powerful and evocative. We offered the audience popcorn, Coke and Newcastle Brown, this was because popcorn is associated with the entertainment industry and has a distinctive smell. Coke was extremely popular in the 1960s and Newcastle Brown was mentioned in one of the stories we told. The smells of the room were popcorn, obviously, party poppers (that were pulled at the end when we reached midnight), hairspray, perfume and that slightly musty smell old rooms have.

We had three ‘stations’ in our room; the box office/refreshments table, the music table covered in records and my station that consisted of a clothes rail and a mirror. The stations we occupied reflected the themes within our stories. At the refreshments/box office station the audience heard a story about how the Rolling Stones and the support act went to the pub after the gig and Mick Jagger was introduced to Newcastle Brown. At the music station a story was related to the audience about what the music was like that night and how the band acted on stage, followed by informing the audience that the Rolling Stones appeared on the first ever Top of The Pops the next day. At my station the audience were told two stories; the first about Tommy, a young man who met a lad with messy hair called Mick Jagger and got a photo with him before the gig, then they heard about what the fashion that night would’ve been like.

The refreshments/box office station. (Fage, C. 2015)

Mary Harris at her station. (Fage, C. 2015)

The music station. (Fage, C. 2015)

Sean Micallef at his music station. (Fage, C. 2015)

The coat rail that was part of my station. (Fage, C. 2015)

A closer look at my makeup station. (Fage, C. 2015)

My makeup/fashion station. (Fage, C. 2015)

Tommy and Mick Jagger in 1963. (Ryan, K. 2015)

The visual had a black and white theme, a colour combination popular in the sixties but not exclusive to that era. There were black and white decorations similar to those that would have been available in the 1960s. There were references to the time period in the form of our hair, makeup and costumes and the pictures decorating the mirror in my section. As mentioned previously we did not wish to transform the Blue Room into the Box Office from the sixties, we merely wished for the room to symbolise the past. This is because although site specific is about a particular location “the visual need not take precedent” (Pearson, 2010, 141) as “site-specific performance is predominantly actualized by responding to the physical conditions, spatial atmosphere and history of the site” (Anderson, 2013, 109) as opposed to it’s aesthetic.

My 1960s hair. (Fage, C. 2015)

Our 1960s clothes. (Fage, C. 2015

Makeup that was popular in the Sixties. (Fage, C. 2015)

We also played a live recording of a Rolling Stones concert from 1964 to reinforce the idea of the audience being at the Drill Hall to attend a concert, but also to create a relaxed party atmosphere as our piece was set around New Years Eve, which tends to be a night of celebration.

As a group we soon realised that the only way for our concept to succeed was to make it an interactive and relaxed experience, as we were conscious of not allowing our piece to become a presentation. We did this by effectively splitting our performance into four sections;

• Section one:
  • As the audience entered the room they were asked whether they were here to see if tickets were available for the Rolling Stones.
  • They were then asked whether they had seen The Stones before.
  • Offering two opportunities for interaction.
• Section two:
  • We then proceeded to tell the audience the stories we had collected.
  • This section finished when one member of the group left the room to see if tickets were available.
• Section three:
  • The two remaining group members who stayed with the audience would then ask them if they had any New Years resolutions.
  • If the member of the group that had left the room did not return by the time we had finished talking about New Years resolutions then we would proceed to talk about events that happened in 1963 such as the release of From Russia With Love and the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
• Section four:
  • Once the other member returned and informed the audience there were no spare tickets left I then returned any coats and bags I had taken from them.
  • We then gave them each a party popper and continued to talk with them until the clock reached 10 seconds before midnight.
  • We then counted down to midnight with them, pulled the party poppers and said our goodbyes.

Therefore due to the nature of the interaction with the audience we were prepared for each performance to be slightly different. In this sense our audience were also performers and we as performers were also audience members as “conversation is shown to be a kind of theatre whereby ‘audience’ and ‘actor’ roles are imperceptibly assumed and exchanged” (Rotozaza Press Release, 2007) naturally and seamlessly changing the dynamics of the actor/audience relationship. However Mike Pearson argues that there are three sets of relationships;

I   “Performer/performer”

II   “Performer/spectator”

III “Spectator/spectator” (Pearson, 2010, 175)

and that these relationships “become part of an active matrix of interaction and [are] available for negotiation” (Pearson, 2010, 175). This is an element that became clear in our piece once we performed it with an audience as in section three, in particular, the status’ of all the individuals was constantly changing depending on how receptive the audience in question was.

Once decided upon the Rolling Stones and memories idea, our piece did not go through many major changes as we were always clear on what we wanted our final outcome to be. Probably the biggest change came during our final rehearsal. We still had our three stations but instead of myself having a mirror we had put up a board to section off half of the room, behind that board was the coat rail and where I would stand. On the front of the board we had planned to print off pictures and fact sheets about 1963 to give the audience some context and help them understand the significance of the year. The printed sheets consisted off the Hit Parade, The Beatles albums that were released, headlines about the Profumo Affair, the first episode of Doctor Who, the assassination of JFK and many more. When running our piece with a ‘test’ audience the feedback we received was that the wooden board was a distraction and took away from the relaxed atmosphere we were attempting to create. We soon dismissed the board and attempted a ‘test’ run with my station having a table instead. The feedback we received this time was that the table was serving no purpose and looked awkward. It was suggested that perhaps we make use of the mirror in the corner of the room. Instead of being just a ‘coat check girl’ I became a representation of the fashion, makeup and popular culture of that time. My station was set up with pictures of celebrities of the time placed around the mirror and makeup in front of the mirror and on the floor. Since I had two stories we decided that I would tell the audience my story about the young man named Tommy first and then my story about the fashion last. When talking to the audience about the fashion I spoke to them through the mirror while touching up my hair. We felt this would be an interesting technique to use and that it would also reflect the current use of the room in the sense that it is now a dressing room.

Myself at my makeup station. (Fage, C. 2015)

This was the view the audience had when I told them about the fashion of that night in 1963. (Fage, C. 2015)

During Section three of our performance we explained to the audience the significance of the name Midnight Rambler. Midnight Rambler is a Rolling Stones song released in 1969 and was played 12^th on their most recent tour. Our piece is obviously centred around their gig on News Years Eve and finishes with us counting down to midnight, therefore Midnight Rambler seemed like the obvious choice.

Encore

Rand Harmon states that “the really successful site-based theatre productions are the ones that develop an immersive experience for the audience” (Wohl, 2014, 35) while we do not claim that our piece was ‘really successful’ we do feel that we created an immersive experience.

We performed Midnight Rambler five times in total due to the fact that we did not have an audience for our sixth and final performance. Our audience was capped at three maximum but for the majority of our performances we had two audience members, this was expected however as we were aware that three is an awkward number. As a group we did not feel that only having two audience members instead of three affected our piece.

Throughout the course of the performances we discovered our biggest enemy was the time. We set the clock just before ten to midnight, one of us would then go and collect the audience from the actual Box Office and the audience would enter the room just after 11:50pm. For the first two performances we had to improvise ‘small talk’ towards the end of the piece until the clock reached ten seconds to midnight. We then set the clock closer to midnight each time but due to the interactive element the timings were still different every time.

We soon discovered that “site-specific theatre also gives you less control over the audience” (Wohl, 2014, 31) because of the proxemics and often the topic at hand but in our case it was due to the interactive element. We found that some audience members were more involved than others. Performances that had these types of spectators were our favourite, as the experience was created to be relaxed and conversational so at times, if the audience were less interactive we were concerned that perhaps we had not achieved what we had set out to do. Less interactive audiences also meant there was more improvisation involved for the three of us and we did not wish for the audience to watch a conversation between us or feel awkward.

I feel the strengths and weaknesses within our piece are difficult to pinpoint due to the fact that each time we performed it was different. However personally I feel that our strengths were the different scents we had within the room, the diversity with the stories and the relaxed atmosphere we attempted to create. I also feel another strength is that I related one story by looking at the audience through the mirror, originally we were worried this might make the audience feel disconnected as my back would be turned to them and they would only see my reflection but in fact the result was the opposite. The audience seemed engaged and it felt quite natural. The weaknesses on the other hand I felt all related back to time. At points the time leading up to midnight was either too long or too short so if we were to perform our piece again we would focus on getting the timings as perfect as possible so that we would not have to improvise conversation about events that happened in 1963, as we feared that could become awkward for the audience.

Overall I am very pleased with how our performance went. If we were to do it again I would try to find a way to make the room smell even more like popcorn, as we were wary not to set the fire alarm off due to the heat coming from the machine. We would also find a way to perfect the timings leading up to the countdown to midnight. All the audience members we had the opportunity to speak to after the performance gave us positive feedback and enjoyed the experience we offered.

Works Cited

Anderson, B. (2013) Out of Space: The rise of vagrancy in scenography. Performance Research, 18 (3/June) 109-118. Available from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=138d8393-825e-4bd2-9245-6462cafe3290%40sessionmgr4005&vid=8&hid=4103 [Accessed 10 May 2015].

Cardiff, J. and Bures Miller, G. (2012) Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. [online] Available from http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/forest.html [Accessed 7 March 2015]

Curious :::curious:::. [online] Available from http://www.placelessness.com/project/1121/on-the-scent/ [Accessed 20 March 2015].

Fage, C. (2015)

Kaye, N. (2000) Site-Specific art: performance, place, and documentation. [online]London: Routledge. Avaibale from http://lib.myilibrary.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/Open.aspx?id=32715 [Accessed 2 May 2015].

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrace Macmillan.

Rotozaza Press Release (2007) Rotozaza’s Etiquette. [online] Available from http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/ETQ_press_release.pdf [Accessed 28 February 2015]

Ryan, K. (2015)

Townsend, P. Photographers Gallery. Available from https://www.photographersgallery.com/photo.asp?id=3108 [Accessed 14 May 2015]

Wohl, D. (2014) Site-specific Theatre. Southern Theatre. 55 (1/Winter) 28-35. Available from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c623d259-638d-47c4-84b4-53ffbf1585fd%40sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=118 [Accessed 2 May 2015].