'experiences of contemporary museums as theatre' (Bennett,S 2013)
//A thought came to me yesterday on site – what is the future for art?
In my mind, with technologies constantly evolving and taking over, is this where art galleries will end up:
What affect will this have on the local community?
Any thoughts?
//Reading the introduction to Susan Bennett’s book Theatre and Museums, it has allowed me to further understand the context of our site.
“theatres and museums are crucial to a city’s vitality and appeal” (Bennett,2013, p3).
In comparison to some of the other sites for this module, The Collection at first glance seemed to be the hardest to respond to as it already has a function and purpose, what could we do as a performance in response? It felt as though we were limited with what we could do, but then again, in some way this gave our group a head start as there was plenty of inspiration from the different exhibitions and galleries. “Both theatre and museums require an infrastructure supported by a diverse range of technical and intellectual skills, acts of interpretation and mediation, and eventually, an audience” (Bennett, 2013,p4).
As well as highlighting theatre and museum commonalities, Bennett then goes on to speak of theatre in museums, which is even more relevant to our purpose. Although we are not directly responding to what is in the museum as in re-enacting the past, as explained in this section, we are engaging with the whole site; to things that may not even be noticed or thought about on a daily basis. Our performances will still “enhance the visitor’s appreciation and critical understanding” (Bennett,2013, p7) but of the entire site as well as its exhibitions and galleries.
After having some initial performance ideas for our piece, we started to research further into café culture and different reasons as to why people go to cafes and who those people are. Reading from ‘Theatre/Archaeology’ the main points that came from it were to be true to the history of the space and the motion of uncertainty as the artist(s) do not know how the audience will respond to the work.
By the observations we made in the cafe whilst there we were intrigued as to why people go to cafes and who those people are. We researched the history of The Collection, the building itself and also the café owners ‘Stokes’ to understand the importance of the café within The Collection. Stokes of Lincoln describe the cafe: “The sleek, modern café is housed in Lincoln’s archaeological museum fused with the Usher Gallery in one incredible visitor centre” (R. W. Stokes & Sons Ltd, 2012)
Whilst researching for general opinions of cafes and why people go to them I found an article titled ’20 reasons why creative people like to go to cafes.’ The writer of which said it is a ‘”third place between work and home, where you can relax without the worries associated with either” (Dirkoff, 2012)
Another article I came across more specifically based on museums and cafe describes cafe as thus: “Cafés are rather like good exhibitions” (Brown, 2006) This opinion given here has given me confidence in our ideas we have for our performance. Within the cafe there are people who by coming to the cafe highlight the different activity and what we find most intriguing; why do people come to cafes? However later on the writer comments “the downside is that cafés are not static exhibits” (Brown, 2006) Does it matter that cafe’s are not static exhibitions? Due to our ideas of turning the cafe into an exhibition we want the audience to see the cafe for what it is in action. Or could we look on the other side and make the cafe a static exhibition similar to the ones we have seen within the museum?
Bound by Love
This painting hanging in the Usher Gallery has become another influence on our ideas for a performance in the café, The location of the painting in the gallery is rather random as the other paintings in the particular room are landscapes of Lincoln and other landscapes where as this is a surrealist painting. We made it link with the people who come to the café and why. For example, those on a first date might go to a café as it is an informal setting and relaxed atmosphere. The two ‘people’ in the painting are lovers trying to come together. This also linked with our observation of the café being separate from the rest of the building and us wanting to make the café an exhibition itself, joining the whole building together. Using the courtyard space between the café and the other side of the building we want to somehow recreate the painting for our performance to represent the people and emphasise the architecture.
Works Cited:
Bennett, Susan (2013) Theatre and Museums, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brown, Chris, 2006, Successful Cafe Museums, [online] Available at: http://www.aim-museums.co.uk/downloads/fe0a6c94-dd78-11e1-bdfc-001999b209eb.pdf, Accessed on: 4th February 2013.
Dirkoff, Mitch, 2012, Huffpost Arts and Culture, [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitch-ditkoff/creativity-cafe_b_1879907.html, Accessed: 4th February 2013.
//Following our initial visit to The Collection, we have developed some ideas for our performance. We’ve decided to focus our performance on the café as we were intrigued by its position in the museum and the observations we had made there when we first visited.
One of the ideas that we came up with was inspired by the architectural layout of the building and the café as it is separated from the rest of the museum. We thought that we could create something in the café that is not meant to be there such as an exhibition. Due to the fact that the café is in a museum it seems out of place and so to include the café as another exhibition would emphasise this fact. Another idea came from the different people we saw in the café.
“Analyses of everyday like similarly influenced much environmental theatre and site specific performance” (Allain and Harvie,2006, p 151).
We thought that the people themselves could be exhibits by placing placards with the information found by the artifacts and paintings at The Collection. Further thought needs to be given to what we ourselves will do as part of the performance. Hopefully in the next week we will put our ideas into motion and experiment with how we can be a part of our performance.
Some of the other ideas we collaborated were to use objects to create our own exhibition in the café for example cups, plates, cake stand. We liked how the alcove seating in the café were framed and from the outside it could be seen as a framed painting, the windows in the café also mirrored those of the Education Suite, which were on the second floor of the building. Thought went in to the duration of the piece and whether it would gradually progress throughout the day or be at a certain time. Another observation we made in the café was the music playing, we thought that perhaps we could create our own soundtrack similar to an audio tour of a museum but instead change the information to the café and the people sitting in the café.
Works Cited:
Allain, Paul and Jen, Harvie (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance, London: Routledge.