Abstract

Performance-as-Comemmoration: Theatre and Performance as a Model for Commemorative Remembrance (2014-2018)

This four-year research project was a collaboration between Dr Andrew Westerside (University of Lincoln, Principal Investigator), Conan Lawrence and Michael Pinchbeck (University of Lincoln), BBC Radio Lincolnshire, BBC North, Proto-type Theater, the Royal Air Force and the Armed Forces.

Research Imperatives/Questions

1. How might works of theatre and performance operate as commemorative acts, and how might they respond to the tension between performance’s implicit liveness and commemoration’s widely theorised need for permanence, fixity, and repetition?
2. How might we explore, through practice, the relationship between performance and the commemorative via performances that 1) fall on significant regional, national, and international anniversaries or 2) fall within commemorative ‘cycles’ (i.e., 2014-2018)
3. Where does the personal act of remembrance meet the public or political act of remembrance?
4. Where is the boundary between commemorative and the performative acts, and how it might be blurred, broken or interrupted?

Research Outputs

1. Introduction, Chapter 1 and Conclusion, in: Publication: Pinchbeck, M. & Westerside, A. (2018) Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration. London: Palgrave Macmillan (Eprint ID: 34252)
2. Performance: Leaving Home: Friesthorpe. Documentation courtesy of BBC Documentary (BBC North / Lawrence & Westerside) (2015) (Eprint ID: 30408)
3. Performance: The Forgotten Suffragette (writer and director: Andrew Westerside) (BBC Radio Lincolnshire / University of Lincoln / Proto-type Theater) (2016) (Eprint ID: 34253)
4. Performance: Fallen (BBC broadcast documentation included) (2016) (co-writer and director: Andrew Westerside) (Eprint ID: 30406)

Engagement with Wider Research Communities

• Invitation to develop commemorative performance works for the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) digital archive and opening ceremonies, developing new and best practices in integrating performance work into historical and digital archiving
• The Forgotten Suffragette influenced and inspired a week of local BBC radio programming on the subject on women’s rights.
• Fallen uncovered ‘lost’ music never before publically played or broadcast (composed by men who fell at the Somme, 1916).

Awards

• New York Festivals Radio Awards: Judges Commendation for Innovation Leaving Home.