Extending the Site: An artistic journey in performance, music and drama at Heaton Hall and Park

Clegg, Caroline Margaret (2024) Extending the Site: An artistic journey in performance, music and drama at Heaton Hall and Park. Doctoral thesis (PhD), The Royal Northern College of Music in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This PhD in Performance addresses the concept of site-specific work through the creation of seven site-specific and site-sympathetic music and theatre performances (evidenced on video) that display a distinctive aesthetic approach to their site in question: Heaton Hall (HH) and Park (HP). Critical ideas that have supported the creative practice include Barthes’ idea of listening to the grain of the site, which serves as a metaphor drawing on the tangible and intangible materiality of the building, the ghosts of the past, and the presence of the audience. This complementary witing also explores Bachelard’s ideas discussed in The Poetics of Space, (1958) each piece, bathing in the poetics of place within a playful theatre methodology to celebrate community values. Each performance has a unique sonic and visual matrix synthesising music and drama in a non-hierarchical, three-way relationship with site, narrative and the audience.. The works embrace theatrical re-enchantment to act as an antidote to audiences feeling out of place and utilises the technique of theatricalised ghosts to stride the temporalities of the past and present to help audiences connect to the site. This three-way relationship enables audiences to listen to the grain of the site. Notably all the practice contained in this project has been undertaken at HH and HP, which opens up opportunities for further experimentation resulting in extending the performance to another site of equal significance. Thus, my submitted practice as research develops the site-specific genre by challenging Mike Pearson’s notion and Fiona Willkie’s definition that site-specific works are inextricably linked to their site by suggesting an addition to the genre, which I am calling ‘extended site specific’. I propose that a site-specific work can be relocated to another site of significance (if executed within the parameters recommended in my concluding model) creating a heteroglossic dialogue with both sites. The developing praxis discussed here embraces theatrical re-enchantment to act as an antidote to audiences feeling out of place and utilises the technique of theatricalised ghosts to stride the temporalities of the past and present to help audiences connect to the site. The work, which is of national significance, allowed space for a complete artistic exploration, showing a development in my directorial method and revealing new insights within the genre, proposing the use of the terms, ‘internal director,’ ‘directorial bliss,’ and the importance of the performer as ‘dwellers’ of the site. The work leaves a legacy in the Park and answers my original question of creating an audience with agency and a site-specific paradigm for HH and HP.