PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Mackey: Sally | UK

Performing Place

Can performance have a place-defining function? What might this look like? Does performance impact upon the participants’ response to place? These questions drove a three-year project investigating, praxically, relationships between performance and place. Interweaving DVD and live annotation, this session will present a reflective articulation of the questions above, as explored in the practical research project, the Caer Llan Trilogy, 2002-2004.

As with other disciplines, performance theory is engaging with and interrogating concepts of ‘place’ currently (from Pearson and Shanks, 2001 to Hill and Paris, 2005). Eliding with theoretical discourses, the Caer Llan Trilogy set out to explore the performance/place crucible practically. It sought to offer a researched and disseminated example of the impact upon those participating when place (as distinct from - although closely related to - site or space) is prioritised as a central focus for performance. In addition, it specifically targets rural ‘landscape’ as the performance environment.

Caer Llan is a country house with extensive terrain, now a field studies and residential centre, on the border of Wales and England. Working with 25-35 applied theatre practitioners as researchers/ees, the trilogy comprised three annual intensive performance projects of 4-5 days each which sought to experiment with ‘platial’ performance. Working methods during the intensives included: theoretical input/discussion; multifaceted site-research; explicit incorporation of participant memory; collaborative experiments with performance techniques, design and craft-making. Minor and major performance pieces were devised, with invited audiences at two of the three events. The yearly cycle of the project facilitated gestation periods. Knowledges were initiated, practiced, explored, constructed, reflected upon, altered, ‘increased’, returned to, re-initiated, alternatively practiced, further explored …. The research asked to what extent participants articulated ‘place’ through this three-year performance project and, synchronically, (re)defined this ‘place’ for themselves in the process. It is not just the performances alone, therefore, that is offered as the practice as research, but a conjunction of project elements: processes; overt and aleatory performances; participant distanced reflection.

Certain methodological issues impacted upon and helped steer the research as the trilogy unfolded. (These were explored embryonically at PARIP 2003 after Caer Llan 1.) Of particular interest was how to appropriately reflect the variety of participant subjectivities in this group-based research (and where individuals’ responses were immanent and critical to the research itself). A DVD is being created as a coda to the project as one means of capturing this multi-vocality; extracts from the first stages of this will be piloted in the session.

Possible questions to be considered as part of a peer review process may include:

- can the Caer Llan Trilogy contribute to an understanding of place-defining (or ‘place-specific’ or ‘platial’) performance?

- are there any methodological guidelines that could be taken from the project for further place/performance work?

- how will the work have impact beyond the project itself?