Revitalizing the Prom: Popular Performance and History at the Seaside

重振舞会：海边的流行表演和历史

• 批准号: AH/H031529/1
• 负责人: Jane Milling
• 金额: $ 3.62万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2010 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FH031529%2F1
• 关键词: Revitalizing; Prom; Popular; Performance; History

This project aims to reactivate the pierrot show on the beaches and promenades of The English Riveria and South West resorts. The rise of the pierrot troupe or concert party as open-air, promenade, variety entertainment coincided with the rise and heyday of the British seaside resorts from the late 1890s, and shared their decline in the 1950s. There is only one pierrot troupe still giving occasional performances, Tony Lidington and The Pierrotters. British seaside holidays are once more on the rise, but there is no trace of this performance form that once formed a vital element of the holiday experience. Through a series of workshops, performances, and a travelling exhibition, the project will use historical research into, and through, performance to understand the history of this almost lost popular form, and to assess how audiences might understand and value such performance today. Much of the pierrot show was improvised and contingent. Only fragmented traces of scripts, songs, and memoirs form the archives held by the University of Exeter and Tony Lidington. By engaging with the embodied transmission of the repertoire, through Tony Lidington's professional practice, and by exploring in practice and in the space of the seaside resort, we can access a richer understanding of the necessary performer skills, the content, the audience address, and the significance of the form in the past. The Principal Investigator, Tony Lidington and four young, local, professional performers will conduct two day-long workshops that will explore what the pierrot show intended to do and what its potential relationship to audiences was.Using archive research and the findings of the workshops, we will interpolate material of our own during an intensive 2 week devising process, to create a promenade performance on the model of the pierrot show for contemporary audiences. The performance will tour beaches and promenades of the English Riviera and South West, licensed by Teignbridge and Torbay councils, during the early summer season. Two performances will visit schools with a short accompanying workshop. The devised performance will develop a performative frame (using prologue, epilogue and costume) that contextualises the interaction of the historical and contemporary performance elements, drawing the audience's attention to the performance mode as cultural history. An exhibition will accompany the performance, staged in a mobile booth clad with images and text drawn from the archive, and with a mutoscope showing rare footage of pierrot troupes in action from the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition will draw attention to the contested nature of history-making by contextualising the history of the pierrot troupe alongside other saeside entertainment forms such as black-face minstrelry, and will reflect on how the pierrot show form might already be valued and 'known' by today's audiences, from its afterlife translated into other mediated forms, such as the seventies television variety show, Seaside Special, or the Black and White Minstrel Show, or other narratives such as Croft and Perry's It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The workshop process, performance devising process, and performances will be documented and audience reactions will be recorded. Audience feedback is key to understanding how audiences respond to and conceptualise not just the content of the performance, but its process of history-making. Qualitative audience research in open-ended interviews will be undertaken to ascertain audience perception of the performance as entertainment and as cultural heritage, of the manufactured nature of theatre history, and the cultural contribution the project has made to their experience of the resort. Analysis of the findings from the workshops, performances, and project will result in an article, a conference paper, and a DVD case-study for distribution to resort officers, tourist officers, and heritage professionals more widely.

该项目旨在重新激活英国里维埃拉和西南度假胜地的海滩和海滨长廊上的皮埃罗表演。皮埃罗剧团或音乐会派对作为露天、散步、综艺娱乐的兴起，与19世纪90年代末英国海滨度假胜地的兴起和鼎盛时期相吻合，并在20世纪50年代分享了它们的衰落。只有一个皮埃罗剧团仍然偶尔演出，托尼利丁顿和皮埃罗特。英国海滨度假再次兴起，但这种曾经构成度假体验重要元素的表演形式却不见踪影。通过一系列的研讨会，表演和巡回展览，该项目将利用历史研究，并通过表演来了解这种几乎消失的流行形式的历史，并评估观众如何理解和重视今天的表演。皮埃罗的大部分表演都是即兴创作的。埃克塞特大学和托尼·利丁顿持有的档案中只有剧本、歌曲和回忆录的碎片痕迹。通过参与剧目的具身传播，通过托尼·利丁顿的专业实践，并在实践中和海滨度假胜地的空间中进行探索，我们可以更丰富地了解过去所需的表演技巧，内容，观众地址和形式的意义。首席研究员Tony Lidington和四位年轻的本地专业表演者将举办为期两天的研讨会，探讨皮埃罗表演的意图以及它与观众的潜在关系。利用档案研究和研讨会的结果，我们将在为期两周的密集设计过程中插入我们自己的材料，为当代观众创造一个以皮埃罗表演为模式的长廊表演。演出将在初夏季节巡回英国里维埃拉和西南部的海滩和海滨长廊，由廷布里奇和托尔拜议会许可。两个表演将访问学校与一个简短的陪同工作坊。设计的表演将发展一个表演框架（使用序幕，尾声和服装），将历史和当代表演元素的相互作用联系起来，吸引观众对表演模式的关注，作为文化历史。伴随表演的还有一个展览，在一个移动的展台上展出，上面覆盖着从档案馆中提取的图像和文字，还有一个自动放映机，展示了20世纪20年代和30年代皮埃罗剧团的罕见镜头。该展览将通过将皮埃罗剧团的历史与其他saeside娱乐形式（如黑脸吟游诗人）联系起来，引起人们对历史创造的争议性的关注，并将反映皮埃罗表演形式如何被今天的观众所重视和“认识”，从其死后转化为其他媒介形式，如七十年代的电视综艺节目，海滨特别节目，或者《黑人和白色吟游诗人秀》，或者其他的叙事作品，比如克罗夫特和佩里的《妈妈不性感》。工作坊的过程，表演设计过程，表演将被记录和观众的反应将被记录。观众反馈是理解观众如何反应和概念化的关键，不仅是表演的内容，而且是历史的创造过程。将在开放式访谈中进行定性观众研究，以确定观众对表演的看法，作为娱乐和文化遗产，戏剧历史的制造性质，以及该项目对他们在度假村的体验所做的文化贡献。对研讨会、表演和项目结果的分析将产生一篇文章、一篇会议论文和一个DVD案例研究，以更广泛地分发给度假村官员、旅游官员和遗产专业人员。