A Map To Remember Me

A MAP TO REMEMBER ME
PRACTICE AS RESEARCH
DAVID WILLIAM TUCKER
September 2010
Abstract
This work is a tool for the facilitation of the creative processes in the development of
a potential space at the point where memory, autobiography, biography and an
encountered or remembered space converge/fracture. The performance text that
emerges from this space will represent both the application of a theoretical
performance model developed by exploration of several key ideas concerned with
both space and with solo performance and will also function as the practice element
of the creative process in a complimentary feedback loop. The performance text is
comprised of both autobiography and my father’s biography. Schechner and others
discuss the ritual process as a way of connecting with and responding to memory
and ambivalence:
Rituals are a way people remember, they are ‘memories in action,

encoded in action’, and are designed to ‘help people . . . deal with
difficult transitions, ambivalent relationships, hierarchies, and
desires that trouble, exceed, or violate the norms of daily life’
(Schechner, 2002, p. 45)
My father died last year (2009) leaving two journals that relate his experience at a
number of places through his life. Perhaps my starting point has been a form of ritual
to understand my self, my father and our relationship? Perhaps it was a response to
an unconscious desire to metaphorically lay a commemorative wreath on the sites of
memory I have actively staged in the text and the memory of my father who has no
marker, monument or grave. Much of the journals relate his experience during
wartime and as I too was a soldier I have focused on those elements, looking for the
points of connection, some obvious some imagined. This work seeks to engage with
a range of ideas borrowed from practitioners concerned with space and place,
verbatim, biography and autobiographical performance.
1
MY GRANDFATHERS
STANLEY TUCKER
BERT CHILCOTT
MY FATHER
WILLIAM STANLEY TUCKER
MY SONS
MAX DAVID TUCKER
TROY WILLIAM TUCKER
2
Contents
1. A Map to Remember Me 5-37

2. Conceptual Framework 38-56
3. Appendices (attached)
3
A Map to Remember Me
4
Notes on staging and performance style
 Brackets indicate stage directions but also a physical action or merely a

silence to make sacred or focus on those moments from memory that allow a
pause, and a change of pace. Sometimes for a moment but sometimes for a
whole section of dialogue
 Stage-A simple dark coloured chair to one side. A table holding a Mac book
(from which all technical effects are managed by remote) and small number of
physical properties. A projection screen.
 In the sections marked in italics I imagine a direct, open and informal

relationship with the audience and the speech should differ in tone and tenor
from the written style as a consequence. As far as movement is concerned;
this will to some degree be dictated by the space but the most expedient
sightlines and proximity with the audience should be sought.
 At other points not in italics but in which direct address is used I imagine a
more ‘robustly theatrical’ and physical approach altogether, at times actively
reflective or introverted but always translating memory in an active way.
 My father’s narrative should be a conduit to his experience in time and space,

therefore I think it important to remain as neutral as possible and trust the
text to do the work. Allowing gaps for the audience to reflect and imagine.
5
Home
[Slideshow: Appendix 1-Images from a 60’s and 70’s childhood and which resonate
with ideas of ‘Home’. Creating a different yet similar culturally inspired response and
engaging the audience in a narrative of sorts. This runs until music fades]
[Music-At the Edge-SLF (A Belfast band) -play until fades at:]
Entrance
I was saying goodbye to my Father. He was standing on the doorstep as I was

leaving, going home after a visit. My sisters and stepmother were watching through
the lounge window like a tragic chorus. The pressure was immense. He was about to
have surgery to remove a cancer. The operation could kill him. If he survived that the
cancer was going to kill him anyway, everyone knew that. He was 86. He and I, we
both knew that this moment could be it for us, until the next world.
Suddenly on that very ordinary porch I was drowning in the memories that swam up
and swallowed me whole and I wanted to tell him that I forgave him for making me
cry when he was carrying me past the shops and I leaned out towards the window
and he was rough and angry and that I forgave him for calling me a ‘big girl’s
blouse’ in front of my friends. I wanted to tell him how much I would miss his belief
in me and I remembered how he always sat with me on every childhood hospital
visit. There were many.
After one of those visits we sat in a café and he drank his squash (never juice or tea
or coffee, always orange squash) so fast that I repeated something he had said to me
many times, ‘I bet that never touched the sides did it?’
[Drink] Something passed between us.
I remember that innocuous moment because he smiled at me when I said it and it

was my first memory of us sharing a joke. I remember him telling my sisters and I,
6
‘Course you like it’; whenever we said we did not like something, usually vegetables.
He would repeat it again and again during our childhood lives. ‘But I don’t like these
trousers Dad!’ ‘Course you bloody do!’ I remember him riding my motorbike back
from the site of one of my many teenage accidents while I sat in the back of the car
as my mother drove me to hospital. He passed us on the motorway between
Coventry and Birmingham wearing his anorak and slip on shoes.
[Motorbike S/FX-watch it pass]
He didn’t have a licence. Bloody’ was a favourite word of his. He used it to punctuate
or show disapproval. When my friends came around they would sometimes ask me,
‘What’s wrong with your dad?’ He was always stroking his Sergeant major’s
moustache and blowing the hair from his beard out of his mouth often, as he was
about to speak.
[Gestus: Tic-‘course you do lad, don’t be so bloody daft!’
A note on Gestus.
This is Brecht's term for that which expresses basic human attitudes - not merely “gesture” but all
signs of social relations: department, intonation, facial expression. (Brecht, 1978)
My father was very ‘Sergeant Major like’ in his demeanour but not so that other characteristics were
subsumed. His most singular ‘gestic’ actions were his moustache preening movements and his
manner of speech, kindly but idiosyncratic and at times caught up by his speech tic. In the Gestus I
adopt I will attempt to realise and leave a distinct impression by capturing his whole character in
these actions leaving a distinct and particular impression with the audience. It is important that my
father’s Gestus differs from the Gestus of the other sergeants and from the music hall sergeant
singing ‘Tommy’]
It became a tic that I can barely remember him not doing. I remember the way he
put on his coat
[Coat]
. . . and the way he wore his belt with the buckle on his hip.
[Gestus-tic] ‘So it won’t snag me bloody jumper’
7
Perfectly unremarkable, but still a memory and now become one of the ways I
remember him. A kind of mnemonic. A small thing that is embedded in my memory
to help me to remember the whole person. S.W.A.L.K; Sealed with a loving kiss.
R.I.P: Rest in Peace.
[Short film-‘Cherry Blossom Falling and Songbird’ under following dialogue]

The significance of this simple video is that the Cherry Blossom is in a way, the essence of Wabi-Sabi;
that sense of beauty in loss and in fading. My father was also an 11 th Hussar: The Cherry-Pickers so this
holds great meaning for me.
Something that now is indicative of him but will later come to represent him as my
memory splinters and separates the whole person that was him into a series of free
floating associations that may at first act as signposts to the now remembered life
but will later come to serve in place of that life and yet distil it further and yet more
poignantly as the whole is lost to fragments piece by piece until only the shards are
left to be plucked out from my memory, heightening the sense of incompleteness, of
sadness, of yearning. The Japanese call it Wabi-Sabi, and they should know.
I remember the moment I gave him a framed photograph of my mother and him
shortly after she had died and how we could not hug but instead just leant on each
other like two horses at night in a storm wracked field.
[Short Film-‘Cherry Blossoms Falling and Songbird’-end]
Some memories are reliable, some are not, some voices authentic, reliable guides,
some not. But if I could try to capture one moment that is a mnemonic, a road-sign
for this story it would be this:
[L-S/FX]
[Sit down, light primus, and cook sausages throughout]
8
I am on a beach in St. Agnes on a hot day in a childhood’s summer. I am watching
my grandfather sunbathe on a deckchair.
Why did old people wear the same clothes to the beach as they wore every day?
My Granddad’s only concession to the location was that he had rolled up his
trousers, dropped his braces off his shoulders, removed his shirt and fashioned it into
a kind of headdress to keep the sun off his baldhead. My father wrote about this
incident in his memoirs, which inform much of this story. He writes:
We would go on the beach amongst the rocks and swim or look in the
pools left by the tide. Nana and Granfy Chilcott were on holiday in
Cornwall at the same time and came over for the day. Granfy got his
little primus stove out and fried sausages and the other people on the
beach were looking to see where the lovely smell was coming from.
What he did not write was the thing that had the most profound effect on the
childhood me: as I watched my Grandfather from behind I saw the jagged edged
scar that made an inverted ‘L’ shape on his upper left shoulder. My Dad told me it
was where the bullet came out when he was shot in WW1. As he was being carried
to an aid station away from the trenches he was also nearly gassed to death in the
ambulance. His name was Bert Chilcott and he lived in Bristol for most of his life in a
small house in Kingswood. They never had much, much less than most of us. He
never complained but one day in a pub in Bristol just before I joined up he gave me
this advice, ‘If they send you for a bucket, come back with a ladder’, and he touched
the side of his nose. I never understood him then but now, well its’ a funny thing;
memory because I understood him long ago.
[Stand, adopt gestus of Drill Sergeant using slash-peak cap and pace stick]
[L/FX-Music Hall] Sing in an expansive style, directly to and for the audience.
If they will join in as the verses ensue, all well and good.
The singing of ‘Tommy’ should not be done ironically or with any knowledge of the
inherent irony. Enjoy it.
[Optional projection of lyrics/verse]
9
I went into a public-house to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' says, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls behind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I out’s into the street again an' to myself says I:
O its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";

But its "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O its "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.
[Black]
10
London
[Gestus: adjust jacket, sit and adjust trouser legs, tic, open book, pause. Stillness for a
few moments]
We moved from Queen’s Park just before I was 8 years old.
My Dad, your Granddad got his own school with a caretaker’s cottage, Lower Place
School; a right rough area by the Grand Union Canal. Only housing there was us and
a gypsy encampment. Harlesden was the nearest station. There were a lot of minor
villains there, blokes always in and out of borstal or prison. Families on benefit, kids
with no shoes or trousers, the teachers had a box of old clothes and shoes in the
cupboard.
Eddie Stevens was my friend, a nice lad, locally born, his father had died.
Like me he also passed the 11+ but could not go on as they were too poor. He was a
quiet lad and a very good artist; he later joined the RAF and got shot down and
killed.
[L/FX]
Summer of 1939 and the talk was of Germany invading various countries in Europe.
We all knew it would not end there. Chamberlain tried to stop Hitler going in to
Poland and went to Munich and came back with a promise “that little scrap of paper”
it was called. It brought us time though; we had no armed forces really, only a navy.
Been run down by governments, Lloyd George and Baldwin I suppose. I cycled a lot.
Just before I left college I started going to evening classes (night school it was then).
At Wesley Road school, for a couple of nights a week. I took a national certificate
from 7pm until 9.30pm. I had to walk and got told off if I was not home by 10pm,
which was quite frequently. I took maths, physics, trigonometry, and engineering
drawing. Later on I did a drama class as well. Not really my scene but I joined it
because a girl I knew wanted to join but was too shy to join on her own. Tall, lovely
long dark hair, good figure and looks, everyone fancied her. Violet Domain her name
was, don’t know what became of her.
11
I have never visited the places my Dad grew up and talked about when I was a kid.
He took me to see Queens Park Rangers play Birmingham City at St. Andrews when I
was about 9 or 10. That turned me into a life-long Blues fan! The last time I went to
London it was to visit the Royal Artillery monument at Hyde Park corner. Have you
seen it? Here it is:
[Projection-Appendix 2-R.A Monument]
When I was taking these pictures an American family, Mum, Dad, two small children
were also taking pictures and the father told the children to stand in front of the
monument, and then he told them to climb up and sit on the feet of the Gunner. I
had this moment . . . and in this moment I fantasised about a Vietnamese prostitute.
In this fantasy though, she posed against the black, polished granite of the Vietnam
War Memorial in Washington DC. Imagine that for a moment.
[Pose][Appendix 3-Optional-‘I will not Love you long time’ picture]
Wouldn’t she be as much a reminder of American invasion as any monument?

[L/FX]
few moments]
There were dances almost every night in village halls, church halls, the Palais.
Another pal was a bit like your Uncle Ken; quiet and nervous. He was keen on
building himself up and was doing a Charles Atlas Body Building course. The rest
used to tease him but it definitely made a difference. He was in the T.A. and went for
summer camp in 1939 and never came back. Most of those chaps in the T.A. went for
what was supposed to be a two week long camp but they were sent to Narvick in
Norway and were killed or taken prisoner. I cannot remember his name. Ebe also
went to night school with me. He was mad on electricity and Morse code. He used to
listen to the late night wireless. His ambition was to be an operator for Reuters. I did
12
hear some years after that he had become a telegraph operator. I suppose he
finished up in the forces. I never heard of him again. A crowd of us, about 8 chaps
and 8 girls used to go out as a gang. Girls always got taken right home in those days.
They were great times. No heavy situations at all. We used to drink around Queen’s
Park ‘The Falcon’ on Kilburn High Road, the ‘Rifle Volunteer’ the ‘Black Bear’, and a
lot of others I cannot remember, there must have been 20 public houses along that
mile stretch, also at Willesden Lane area ‘The William IV’, Big and Little Lamb, the
‘Grey Horse’ was a favourite. They were good friends whom I lost sight of after I
joined the army.
[Play WW2-Soundtrack-Declaration of War]
The world situation was heating up by now. Hitler proclaimed his intention of going
into Poland and we had a pact with them to assist against aggression. A formal
notice was given to Hitler and a time limit. The time limit ran out and at 10am on 2 nd
September 1939 war was declared.
[L-S/FX] [Soundtrack-Air Raid]
About midday the air raid sirens went off and we all thought ‘Now we are for it’.
[Stands, looking up at the sky]
We had even seen the Luftwaffe on the newsreels in action in Spain and the sky was
black with planes, hundreds of them. Anyway we all thought ‘now they will come’.
Funnily enough everyone was out in the road looking into the sky. The air raid
wardens were going spare, trying to get everyone into the air raid shelters but
nobody wanted to go in case they missed anything. After about an hour the ‘All
Clear’ siren sounded and we went indoors. Later, after we had the first proper raids
nobody stayed outside the shelters.
[L-S/FX Wedding Bells]
Auntie Elsie married Uncle Charlie; they had a son Arthur and a daughter Monica.
Arthur was about my age. Charlie was a lovely man and a solicitor so they were
13
“posh” and lived in Wandsworth by Wimbledon common. He had been a prisoner of
war during the 1914/18 War and was very poorly for a long time after he returned.
[L-S/FX Wedding Bells continue but change to become a Ship’s Bell]
In the following section-Cadiz several characters appear: child, father, mother and
narrator. It is important a distinction is made between them. This should be done by
the use of hand props and/or gestus.
Cadiz
Father, a ship! [child lies on floor facing audience as if looking from a window]
He says: 'Yes Charlie, my son, a ship. [father stands]
[Kneel: as father] Look Charlie, she's tacking. One day Charlie you may go to sea and
have great adventures in the service of the king
14
[Roll to floor and then run around as an aeroplane, finally falling and laying still]
[S/FX] A foreign voice calls and is lost . . . . .
Father: Charlie, now you must put away childish things and become a man
Child: I need more time; it's too hard, father, dad, daddy . . .
[S/FX]
Charlie Bourne, Charlie Bourne
Wondered just why he was born
Eat his tea in the sea . . .
Narrator: A foreign voice calls and is lost . . .

[Stand]
Narrator: Cadiz! The city lights shine up through the opaque, green ocean.
Cadiz; a drowned world! Now we are getting closer . . . much closer to Charlie, much
closer to . . . to . . . . . . me . . . . . . Listen . . shhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh
[L-S/FX Whisper]
The voice calls and is lost . . . .
On that lonely swim
In that cold place, we let it all slide
While we swam with the fish,
The world turned, we became, cold
The daily victories mocked our silent prayer
Oh, admit it!
We drowned out there
A ghost was what came home
A voice calls and is lost . . .
Narrator:
I lost it in Cadiz
I lost you in Cadiz
Something died out there . . . .
15
[S/FX] Her voice calls and is lost
[Mother: cradling a baby; young Charlie]
Mother sings:
Charlie Bourne, Charlie Bourne
I'm so glad that he was born
Eat his tea in the sea . . . .
I wonder just who he will be?
[L/X]
A soldier!
[Fall into press-up position]
Up, down, up, down-we love pain
Up, down, up, down-we love pain
[Stand-tuck pace stick under arm, slash peak cap on head]

Sgt. Andrews: My boys can do 50 Bananas Sergeant Howie, what can your boys do?
Sgt. Howie: My boys love pain so much they can sing a song about it . . . Sing!
[L/FX]
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
Then its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's a "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's a "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.
[L/FX]
16
few moments]
Every now and again there would be a proclamation in the newspaper ‘All men
between the ages of 18 and 23 to register at the Drill Hall for military service, so
chaps would suddenly disappear for a while and reappear in uniform on leave.
Then another order, ‘All firms to reduce their male employees by a further 10%’. I
was the only single member of our office so I thought ‘I’m bound to go this time’. My
pal, Doc was in a similar position in his department so he said ‘why don’t we go for
the RAF? They keep mates together don’t they?’ Off we went to the recruiting office
at the Drill Hall, he passed for a pilot. I failed on my left eye but passed for aircrew
although they were only recruiting for pilots. A RAF officer with one leg told me to
go home and wait. I was really cheesed off so walked across the hall and in to the
army and joined the Royal Armoured Corps. They gave me 6 weeks to wind up my
affairs. Doc never did get called up and I did not fancy the RAF anyway So on the
morning of 10th April 1943 I caught the train to Beverly, Yorkshire. The camp was not
far out of town it was the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry barracks, Leconfield.
Little did I know that 30 years later my son would also be posted there as a soldier.
L/FX
[Stand]
I didn’t say anything to the American tourists. . . because I think that war memorials
are difficult things. We don’t really know what to do with them. Pubs are easy, they
are part of an ordering system for the memories we carry around with us; The Falcon,
the Rifle Volunteer the Black Bear, The William IV, The Lamb, the Grey Horse. We
understand their purpose and IF memory is articulated through the places we use, IF
the places we visit and inhabit help us to remember time and our passing through it,
then pubs are important. We know what pubs are for, but what about memorials?
17
Meat Wagon
Because we were involved in covert soldiering in Northern Ireland we were

transported from Belfast Airport to the area of operations near the border, a journey
of several hours, in an articulated lorry normally used for transporting frozen meat.
The vehicle was empty when we got in still wearing civilian clothes, jeans, t-shirts, a
few people had coats. Even though, of course, the freezer plant in the meat-wagon
was not on, it was still very, very cold. We were sealed up inside the lorry in a
darkness so complete that it was impossible to see a hand in front of your face. To
avoid being thrown all over the place we sat and lay on the filthy floor of the
container and after the jokes and banter wore off we began to pray for the journey
to end. It was so cold that we held each other on the floor of that truck with no
embarrassment or hesitation. After a couple of hours someone began crying. No-
one told him to shut up. I never found out who it was and no-one ever asked. It
could have been any of us. A voice with a Lancashire accent said, ‘I’ve got to piss’. It
was Chaz . . . . we all knew that if he did, the urine would run up and down the
container as the truck went up or down hill soaking us. He pissed into his T-shirt but
we still got wet. I have never understood why, if we were special troops, we were
transported like cattle, I don’t get it and I don’t think I ever will. Anyway, that was my
introduction to the Emerald Isle.
18
Gunner
[Memorials slideshow-Appendix 4]
Ken Livingstone, when he was the mayor of London wanted to remove the statues of
two generals from Trafalgar Square. Were they simply from a time we no longer
remember or care about? In this era of wayside shrines to those murdered or killed
on the road and remembered by friends and family, is there a place for statues and
memorials provided by the nation or the state? Perhaps the statues can provoke a
sense of unease, a discomfort about the colonial and imperial past.
‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’, the slide you can see here shows that we value people for
what they are . . . . . ?
. . . . . rather than what they achieve. In our era of the politics of identity we seem
more interested in celebrating individuals' fixed and quite accidental attributes -
their ethnicity, cultural heritage or in Lapper's case, her disability - rather than what
they have discovered or done in the world outside of their bodies. We prefer victims
to heroes; we prefer that than living with the dead. The removal of those generals
would allow amnesia of the traumatic and transformative effects of their lives and
actions, of the bloody arenas in which they were actors and agents. Even if we don’t
19
agree that their actions hold merit, should we forget? Perhaps in an era in which we
are engaged in unpopular wars it would be easier if the Gunner and his company
were forgotten, ignored, or just reduced to a photo backdrop for a little memory in
the making. No blood and mud, no dying horses and body parts, no regrets. No
tears.
[Black)
[ Sotto voce but building as drums build underneath]
Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than these uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're getting on your tits
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But its "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.
Then its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But its "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.
[Black]
20
Normandy
[Slideshow-Normandy-Appendix 5]
This is where I began; after my father died. It’s a beautiful part of France and the
beaches that stretch along the coastline as you pass through the towns of
Ouistreham, Luc-sur-Mer, Lyon-sur-Mer, Arromanches, Colleville, Veirville and Le
Madeleine are clean and inviting. I swam at some of them and
[S/FX-Pipes and Drums-Garry Owen, builds to explosion]
. . . . . I stood in the sea looking towards the town of Lyon-sur-Mer which is in the
area designated as Sword Beach where the British landed and I thought about what
it was like, advancing up the beach. [Silence, a whistle followed by an explosion]
[S, L/FX-Landings under fire]

[S/FX-Gulls]
The tranquillity was now only disturbed by early morning joggers, walkers, cyclists
and me, the solitary swimmer.
My father was due to land with the 11th Hussars on D-Day + 9 but on 6th June, as the
Allies were landing in France he was helping to pull the pontoons of a floating
21
bridge out of the ground when one came loose a bit quicker than expected and
broke his leg. He spent the next few weeks recovering which is when he met my
mother so but for that stroke of fate, I may not have been standing here on this
beach today.
The more westerly points of Normandy are not so tranquil. A major tourist industry
has grown around the D-Day landings of Omaha and Utah beaches and would
convince us that the Americans fought the Germans single-handedly. There are so
many museums, manufactured sites of interest, cinematic events and re-enactors in
U.S Military gear its overwhelming. The television series ‘Band of Brothers’ and the
beaches of Normandy are so mutually referential that I am sure that those who do
not know could imagine the area as a theme park about the T.V series. You can buy
souvenirs everywhere and the ‘Band of Brothers’ commemorative edition DVD is of
course, on sale.
Is that how we remember?
Is that a form of public commemoration that is acceptable to us, the living, while
statues and cenotaphs are not?
Maybe tourism is as an agent of commemoration, a means of ensuring that we, the
living, do not forget history?
But, do we always want to remember?
[Black]
22
Germany
[Gestus: Seated, take off reading glasses, tic, lay book in lap; Bronowski’s, ‘The Ascent
of Man’, get out sandwiches and flask]
I was on my way back to the regiment and when we got as far as Soltau we stopped
for lunch on rising ground and watched a British unit about 5 miles away mopping
up some SS Hitler Youth troops who were in a small wood. They were doing it with
crocodile tanks that have flame throwers - didn’t half bring the buggers out of the
wood a bit sharpish.
There was a railway line nearby with some burnt out wagons on it. I went for a leak
and had a look into one of them and saw a British sixpenny piece inside. Then I saw a
line of stakes going into the woods. Following them I came upon a big circle marked
out in more wooden stakes, it was about 10yards across. The soil was fairly loose
over the circle and all of a sudden I noticed a boot with a foot inside sticking out and
then I found another. I yelled out and some of the others came over, among them a
RSM. I told him about the sixpenny piece and we went and found it. The RSM got on
the wireless to the camp at Venlo. An SIB (Army detectives) unit caught up with us at
the next place we stopped. They took statements from us and promised to let us
know what became of it. Later that day we were told the bodies were German
civilians who had been shot by British planes on their way to a labour camp. Years
later I read that, Jewish prisoners on their way to a concentration camp were able to
escape from a railway train that had been stopped in Soltau as the result of a British
air attack. The prisoners were hunted down by an SS Hitler Youth regiment with the
help of several townsfolk, and 92 of them were shot dead. There were trials after the
war but they were all acquitted due to the lack of evidence. There is a monument
there now.
23
[Tourist slide-show of Tonning and region runs under next section-Appendix 6]
As we pushed northeast we arrived at the German town of Tonning on the entrance

and exit road to the Danish peninsula. Lovely little village with a big square and
houses and shops all round it and two small bridges one out and the other back. The
squadron was parked all round the square in front of the various shops and houses
we were billeted in. nothing to do but wireless watch, maintenance and gun cleaning
and washing and airing bedding as well of course. All the young ladies of the village,
and there were quite a few, were out in the afternoons and evenings in the glorious
sunshine strolling over one bridge and back over the other and round the square. If
they did not mind walking we did not mind watching although we could not speak
to them because of the ‘non-fraternisation’ order.
There was a lot of Russian POW’s on the peninsula, working on farms there. We had
orders to ‘free’ them so went round with a lorry and interpreters and told them to be
on the roadside the following morning to be picked up and returned to Russia.
When we arrived to collect them, hardly anyone was there. They had been running
the farm with the wife and living as the husband as well in a lot of cases. They did
not want anything to do with Russia, never been so well off in their lives. We had to
forcibly manhandle lots of them on to the truck. Of course we did not know of Uncle
Joe Stalin’s policy of shooting all soldiers who had been captured by the Germans,
even if it was only for a few days after being surrounded or overrun. We just piled
them on the lorries and sent them off to a POW camp.
Also on the peninsula was a Kriegsmarine Barracks, which was empty, but due to be
filled with a Kriegsmarine unit, who were like our Royal Marines, that was on its way
to surrender to us. They arrived in a few days and stopped a couple of miles out of
the village to smarten up. They came into the village marching smartly and whistling
and singing, really smart they were too, with their rifles at the slope. They stopped in
the square and handed over their arms:
[Stand; German commander speaks to troops

Gestus of German commander]
24
Männer, es war ein langer Krieg, es war ein harter Krieg.
Ihr habt tapfer und stolz für Euer Vaterland gekämpft.
Ihr seid eine spezielle Gruppe, die ineinander einen Zusammenhalt gefunden habt,
wie er nur im Kampf existiert.
...unter Brüdern, die Fuchshöhlen geteilt haben,
die sich in schrechklichen Momenten gegenseitig gehalten,
die den Tod zusammen gesehen und miteinander gelitten haben.
Ich bin stolz mit Euch gedient zu haben.
Sie verdienen ein glückliches und langes Leben.
They fell in again and marched smartly off to the barracks.

Next day we went round the peninsular again with interpreters and told all the
women between the ages of 16 and 60 they were to be on the road in the morning,
working on the principle of ‘if we can’t talk to them then neither can the
Kriegsmarine’. When we went with the lorries next morning we found the bodies of
dozens of women who had committed suicide. We had to drag the others screaming
from their houses, even after the interpreters explained it was only temporary, they
did not believe us. I don’t know where they took them, we only loaded the lorries.
What we did not realise was they thought they were being taken to brothels. We
were there for a couple of weeks during which time the Kriegsmarine chaps cleared
and repainted all our vehicles for us. They had got a bit scruffy. It cost us 40 fags a
car which was good value. They were repainted after being steam cleaned, just the
job. Really nice blokes they were as well. Only thing was the paint they had was
battleship grey.
[Black]
25
Belfast
I was sitting there watching Smithy smoke a joint as he lay on his pit. I got
the dope from a girl back home. She sent me dope and my father sent me the local
newspaper. ‘Leisure centre hosts flower arranging debacle’ that kind of thing. We
even used to read it sometimes. I suppose it was comforting to know that the world,
however meaningless, carried on, even if we weren’t in it!
[Lying back on the chair, smoking]

The smoke was drifting and curling and we were philosophising as the night wore
on.
We ain’t no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
In the weeks before we went to Belfast we had lost three soldiers to accidents,
suicide and stupidity. Archer had stolen a land-rover and driven it into a lake when
he was drunk, another lad whose name I cannot remember was found dead at the
bottom of some backstreet steps in the city and a lad named Brooker when coming
home drunk one night decided he wanted a brockwurst. That’s what killed him, not
the brockwurst but his attempt to get one. He climbed down the stainless steel flue
of a Schnellimbiss, a little food stand that sells burgers, cutlets and brockwurst.
When he got inside and turned on the gas he found he had no matches so climbed
out again and asked a passer-by for a light. He climbed back inside, lit the match
and blew the whole fucking issue sky high. The pitilessly cruel sense of humour of
British Toms meant that it was not long before that particular Schnellimbiss became
known as ‘Brooker’s Brocky’. ‘The Death Regiment’ was a name we had started to
hear being used about us. I think those deaths were because we were going to
26
Ireland. We give up part of our morality to go to war. We accept what the army gives
us as our morality, our sense of right and wrong. It allows us to survive, it allows us
to kill. For some people that loss of ‘self’ is too difficult to bear.
He passed me the joint.

Nowhere to go, nothing to lose, situation normal: all fucked up!
While its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.
[Smithy gestus is adopted during his speech; accent, and specific physical manners]
I gave the joint back to Smithy, he takes it and he says . . . . Listen to this man . . . and
he played Highway to Hell for the 12th time . . . (He was from Walsall and whenever
he got stoned he tried to tell me how AC/DC where from Walsall too)
We were in Belfast. Living inside a dirty little war that no one wants to talk about
today in case they offend Gerry fucking Adams.
As that smoke drifted and curled its way into every corner of the room and AC/DC
were playing ‘Highway to Hell’ it all made a pattern in my brain that I knew I could
never erase. That room, that music, that city with street names whose hearing
snatches me back 30 years in a moment . . . . .
Smithy was rambling about his days as a dog handler; a bomb sniffing dog handler .
Living easy, lovin' free. .. .season ticket on a one way ride

Asking nothing, leave me be, taking everything in my stride
[Smithy] I loved it, ya know cos It was like me and the dog, you know we had this
thing, this partnership . . . any time of day or night we got called out. I had a phone
in me room, it was like I was Batman or somatt. Even with all the crap things we had
27
to do, it was as if the dog, well cos he was a dog, well, I must be a man. D’ya know
what I mean like?
Asking nothing, leave me be

Taking everything in my stride
And I said . . . . . Fuck that, I'm carrying that big gun all these months and miles and
humping the fucking ammo, before I go home, I'm gonna kill something!
I didn’t care what it was; a Mick or just a cow.
And now we're both singing because we remember landing in Belfast and the Crab
Air stickers everywhere welcoming us ironically to the shithole and the 4 hour ride in
the back of the freezer truck in the dark and having to piss into a t-shirt and
someone crying in that dark and we had laid next to each other in that lorry . . . . .
Going down, party time

My friends are gonna be there too!
Shep got killed on Clifton Park Avenue, Belfast. Sounds like a nice place doesn’t it?
An avenue definitely does not sound like the kind of place where you are likely to
get cut in half by machine gun fire; an American M60 machine gun. The first life lost
in the province to that particular weapon.
It’s important to know who your friends are.
[All the accents and mannerisms of the characters in the following section are
adopted again using a gestus ‘yardstick’ to capture the essence of the person as
closely as memory allows]
When we went out on patrol everyone was ticking and tight and thin like fuse wire . .
...
28
[Marking time, holding a ‘rifle’ (no prop used) moving towards the audience as if on
patrol, but really walking another path on a different map across time and space]
Jamaica Street: I see a girl walking towards me that I recognise from a previous dark
and rain sodden encounter in Belfast. She was a popular and regular visitor at a
depressing concrete out-post of the British Empire on the Crumlin road. This
Checkpoint was a known target for snipers and rocket launcher attacks and not a
good place to be at times.... However it was a magnet for sanger-bangers (girls who
like to fuck soldiers on duty). The one I recognised had her hand-bag emblazoned
with the cap badges of regiments whose ‘members’ she had blown over the course
of their tour.
[Turn as if following her gaze as she passes me]
As she walks past me I turn and smile at her cos she’s the brightest thing I’ve seen all
morning . . . .
Alright there soldier boy, (she says) want me to play with your rifle?
Before I could say ‘Yes’ . . . . . . . . . .
A man, my father's age lurches into me and right in my face, says,
‘Why don't you fuck off to your own home, this is mine you Black & Tan fucking
British bastard!’
Part of me wanted to stop him and say . . . no, you've made a mistake . . .I don't
believe in this stuff. . . what's happening here . . .I'm 19 . . . .I don't know anything . . . .
. . .you can't hate me for that?
But I didn't say that. I walked on.
The Mash-Men (The mighty Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders) were patrolling in
Andersonstown at the bottom of the Falls road when they heard contact a few
29
streets away. When we got back to Flax street I got the story from a jock stripey who
was there. . .
[Mash-man]
We heard the crack right and then about a minute later this fucking Patrick jumps
out of a downstairs windey aboot 60 yds up Cavendish street, across the way from
Laverty's chemist, ya ken that? I said I did. Aye well, wee Eck's up in front a' us right
and just as I see this guy jump out, I see he's got an Armalite in his hand. I couldnae
believe it. . what a fucking target right 'cept he's sa far away and the streets there are
right narrow, ya ken, it's just a jump atween the hooses there ken. So all in that split
second, Eck's dropped to his knee ken aimed and took him down just like that,
fucking unbelievable right. One shot one kill ya cunt eh, eh!
A bit later this jock was killed and so were three of his mates in North Belfast.
The jocks had it so bad . . . . they lost their sense of humour.
You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extra rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
And know the widow's uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
When the guns begin to shoot me boys, the guns begin to shoot
Oh, it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
Berlin
few moments]
30
After the war, I was in Berlin and an extra duty we had was train guard. This meant
going to Magdeburg in the Russian Zone, picking up about 3000 German prisoners
and taking them to Munster about 300 miles away.
Not long you may think, especially by train. It used to take us about a week for the
return trip. No priority for POW’s on the railway then. The trains were made up of
three pack wagons like guard vans and the rest were coal trucks. The wagons that
carried the prisoners were terrible with no heating at all, some died. Later the
‘powers that be’ decided to put a small stove in each of the pack wagons and it was
ok. It was a mad rush at Magdeburg picking up the POW’s and getting them all
packed into the trucks. Then we issued them with a loaf of bread and a tin of bully
beef this was to last them for the 3 or 4 day journey but it was all gone in the first
half an hour. Poor sods were starving. Unfortunately they all had dysentery so every
time the train stopped on the way a lot would jump out and crouch by the track. We
had the job of shoving them back into the wagons and then getting into our own
because the driver never waited. When the winter got too bad we never bothered to
get them back in the wagons as it was so cold, sod ‘em we’d say. We knew they
would not run away because they needed to collect ration cards and de-mob papers.
Ballymurphy
[Script plays as a slideshow]

It is hard now to remember what life was like back then
I believed them when they told me I was alone in the world
31
and that this place and time were invincible.
They left us to walk those troubled streets as strangers
But the stories we were told about ourselves and our place in the world stopped
making sense and so we walked . . . but we listened to other voices, the voices of our
cult.
[Slides-Belfast-plays under following section-Appendix 7]

[Sitting, voice almost disembodied in the darkness. The only light comes from the
flickering images running across the screen. I cannot be seen clearly.]
Whiterock road and Springfield road run along two sides of the Ballymurphy estate
We were told that anyone giving us lip or anyone who so much as spoke to soldiers
was to be arrested. We carried a round in the breach at all times and usually we
would wait until we got out into the street to cock our weapons as the noise let
everyone nearby know we meant business.
[S/FX-Working parts forward]
Once on the Murph we never went in the road, we kept to the back gardens, hard-
targets. Of all the people in Belfast it’s difficult to find anyone more anti-British than
those living in Ballymurphy. Huge gun battles raged there and there is lots of
evidence of this. Many houses have had their roofs virtually ripped off by machine-
gun fire and the school has 50 bullet holes in its front doors. There is one particular
corner on the northeast side of the estate called ‘the gap’ where from the space
between the blocks of flats snipers have shot 57 soldiers; 47 wounded and 10 dead.
[Map-Ballymurphy Brotherhood of the dead]
[SF/X Hopi Warrior Clan Dance Music]
Private Arthur Smith, Cheshire Regiment

Guardsman Anton Brown, Guards Regiment
Private George Lee, Duke of Wellingtons Regiment
32
Corporal Errol Pryce, Duke of Wellingtons Regiment
L/Corporal Peter Sime, King’s Own Scottish Borderers
Private Eustace Hanley, King’s Regiment
Private Chris Shanley, King’s Regiment
Private G. M Curtis, 1st Battalion, Light Infantry
Private R. B Roberts, 2nd Battalion, Light Infantry
Private Frank Bell, Parachute Regiment
[As I read each name I apply a line of camouflage cream to my face. The last three
names are the positioning of a beret on my head and donning a camouflage smock]
[Throughout the following I remain in semi-darkness]
Do you remember the anti-capitalist march that happened on May the 1 st 2000 in
London, and how some monuments where defaced? Winston Churchill had strip of
grass over his head giving him a Mohican haircut and some graffiti that had been
spray painted on to a war memorial
[Projection-Defaced War Memorial]
You can see a rendition of it now. Toilet doors, one male, one female. Well, the
damage to MacDonald’s and Starbucks was taken as par for the course, but the
desecration of a war memorial was a step too far for most newspaper readers. Maybe
it stirred up the memories of the thousands of people who had died during WW2.
The spray painted doors metaphorically ‘opened’ a passageway to the past, and the
ghosts of thousands of soldiers had walked through them into this world.
The dead haunt us; they are woven into the fabric of places; in Belfast you can take a
tour of the ‘troubles’ and see the murals. If you do, you won’t see any
commemoration for British soldiers but you may just catch sight of a ghost, from the
corner of your mind.
[Projection-Ballymurphy continues]
Doing house searches always disturbed me . . . it made me think about my parents . .
my own home. It was worse somehow if the people showed even a little bit of
kindness, which they sometimes did. It made me feel like something was breaking
inside me. It felt like the shattering of a dream that I can no longer remember, re-
remember, re-remember . . . . .note to self, re: memory; it isn’t what it should be.
33
[L/FX-Stand-change of pace, approach]
[Projection-Riot]
Riots were frightening, exciting. I remember waiting in the back of a vehicle at the
top of the Falls road to act as (QRF) a quick reaction force if a march got out of hand.
Adrenalin was pumping through my body.
There was excitement and tension in the air. I looked at the faces of my friends. We
all were sweat-black running into our eyes that said,
‘Please let us go-we’ll go mad if we don’t go’.
From inside the vehicle we didn’t have a clear view but when the engine revved we
knew we were going through the barricade. I remember seeing soldiers with shields
and feeling the most intense wave of adrenalin as we were swept along on the wave
of events. My legs were shaking and I have a memory of our Captain ordering us
forward and out of the vehicles. As soon as we debussed I was overwhelmed by a
noise coming from the west, up near the Divis flats.
[SF/X Riot sounds]

I will cut a passage through the heart of man.
I will fashion a bone crucifix
I will worship on an altar of blood,
I will surrender to the supernatural mystery of life and death.
It was a very heavy, rumbling kind of noise like a big train. Then I heard sounds of
people shouting through bull horns and I realised it was the sound of the marchers
on the move. The crowd is an animal, if you have ever been at a football match, you
understand. Now imagine that crowd of 15,000 directing all it’s hatred and
aggression at you. It’s a monstrous animal. It’s looking for you, you, you! It is coming
close now. . . . . . . .
[S/FX Loud Gunfire]
[Silence]
34
[Short film-Cherry Blossom Falling]
The sound and percussion of our weapons firing stuns the crowd. The shockwave
that bounces back of the buildings is powerful, resonant, sacred.
The animal is shocked into silence.
Our cult rejoces: we are become David.
After a shooting or a gun battle what’s left is a pool of blood, sometimes bits of
bone . . . . .and shoes.
A high velocity weapon blows a man, literally, out of his shoes.
It’s fucking haunting.
Just a stain and a pair of shoes.
[LX]
[Sotto voce]
An' its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
[Silence, LX]
An' Tommy ain't a bloody fool – I tell you, Tommy sees!
[Short film-Cherry Blossom Falling- ends-Black]
A MAP TO REMEMBER ME
Introduction
I had several concerns at the beginning of this process which the writing and
subsequent performance of the work is not guaranteed to entirely resolve but the
work reflects my desire to explore the effectiveness of a number of ideas in
‘authoring’ a performance text. Although the text that arises from this process is not
intended as a site-specific performance I have borrowed from the vocabulary of such
35
performances. I was interested to explore the value of the ideas I will discuss here as
tools for the authoring of a performance text. I was initially inspired to do so after my
visit to Normandy and remembering de Certeau’s words concerning space;
Each occupation, or traversal, or transgression of space offers a

reinterpretation of it, even a rewriting. Thus space is often
envisaged as an aggregation of layered writings-a palimpsest.
(de Certeau, 1984)
For as long as I can remember I have thought about space in a way that I have kept
hidden. Although I can enjoy the beauty of nature I find myself measuring distance
and assessing the landscape for hidden folds and contours, sightlines and open or
dead space. To what degree this mind-set gained from my time as a soldier
determined my identity is a question that in hindsight I can see I have actively
resisted, not wishing to be defined by that experience. Rachel Woodward explored
similar ideas suggesting soldiers construct a particular view of space which accords
control. Woodward quotes Adam Ballinger, my contemporary and the author of The
Quiet Soldier, his autobiography;
We were taught perspective, to train our eyes to search for focal

points scanning the landscape to identify the dominant features.
(Woodward, 1998)
There are several more quotes by soldiers in this work and my own observations are
that the question I consistently ask myself when entering unfamiliar space is, ‘How
could I cross this space while under fire?’ Woodward suggests then that the soldier’s
perspective of space is irrevocably changed by their experience. I am forced to
agree with this hypothesis and have sought to explore this idea of space in my
practice. It is my considered opinion that any rural or cityscape encloses the
palimpsest layers of a soldier’s experience as well as the experiences of tourists,
firemen, base-runners, police officers and farmers to identify only a few of the many
layers of maps hidden within the landscape. The way this theory informs the
performance text or script can be seen in the use of maps in some sections of my
practice. A good example of this are the maps of London which will be shown on a
36
projector (page 9); my father’s map of Kilburn High Road, London, the tourist Map of
London and the memorials map of London. Reference is also made in the text itself
to the veracity of memory and the use of landmarks as a system of checking and
ordering memory. (page13; see notes on staging in the text and appendices). A
further example of implementing theory in practice is in the use of some specific
staging techniques (page18; Normandy) I have also sought to expose the idea of
space as a single fixed entity as a false assumption by reference to Trafalgar Square
and the changing map of public art and its relevance to current political and personal
ideologies. (page16)
Simultaneously with my revelation that I was not alone in thinking of space in such a
specific way I began to realise that my father’s writing was very space specific; he
opened most chapters of his journals by locating himself, his soldier’s body in a
particular geographical location and when I considered my own memories I found
that they only became ‘active’ when located in a specific space. Heddon asserts that
indeed it is difficult or impossible to describe life without bringing space into that
description. The way that we move through space ‘makes’ that space and soldiers
are very specific users of space, changing, rewriting and often dominating
encountered spaces. ‘The specificity of any site is dependent on the specific bodies
that inhabit it’ (Heddon, 2008)
Sounds, voices, languages are always inscribed in places.

The original, the thing itself, would never come back. It had passed
away from the world. You could conjure it, though, the emotion that
kept it alive inside you with a trigger: an image, a smell, a
combination of sounds that stayed in your mind. That was the life of
the thing after it died. The only thing that would bring it back; this is
what a word is worth. (Brind-Morrow, 1997, p. 1)
Some of the ideas discussed here were a direct influence on my re-staging of

memory for use as a performance text. Both notions of space as a palimpsest and
the way that soldiers construct space anew are exemplified in the following extract:
37
As she walks past me I turn and smile at her cos she’s the brightest
thing I’ve seen all morning . . . .
“Alright there soldier boy, want me to play with your rifle?”
Before I could say ‘Yes’ . . . . . . . . . .
A man, my father's age lurches into me and right in my face, says,
‘Why don't you fuck off to your own home, this is mine!
You Black & Tan, British fucking bastard!’
In restaging this memory I wanted those things which I felt lay at the root of the
confrontations, namely the conflicting or complimentary layers of the ‘map’ of
Belfast; the local girl’s, the republican’s, the army’s and mine to be clear.
Heddon goes on to say that the ‘politics of place are as complex as the politics of
identity and the two are in fact, related’ and, ‘the relationship between identity and
place is one of mutual construction’ (Heddon, 2008, p. 88)
Initially, this was simply an idea and just as a number of other concepts which I
found interesting were thought provoking in the context of my own and my father’s
experiences I had yet to find a clear application or methodology for creating the text.
Heddon coins the phrase, autopography, conjoining the words autobiography and
topography to suggest a creative way of seeing, interpreting and inventing which
depends upon your viewpoint or position and purpose. Writing place through self and
simultaneously writing self through place (Heddon, 2008) I found this a useful tool
with which to interrogate my memory and the multiple and simultaneous ‘maps’ that
are formed within the layered sense of self as one reviews memory with hindsight. I
will discuss some concepts of space further including those that were active
authoring principles in the creation of the text, but in the first instance my struggle
was to imagine a form in which the process could flourish.
I realised in the course of preparation that what I was seeking was a point of
connection between my father’s writing, memory and space, which would promote a
‘cross fertilisation’ but would also preserve the integrity of biography. I sought to
create a ‘third space’ or a ‘potential space’ in which all narratives combine into
something that can be considered a 'new, fresh language’ that bridges the cultural
gap between soldiers and civilians; the potential audience of this practice and the
time and space separating the experiences of my father and I. Pratt’s description
38
may serve as a useful metaphor for what I hadad in mind. She speaks of an
improvised language that develops among speakers of different native languages
who need to communicate with one another consistently. Usually formed at the
borders of different modes of cultural/linguistic understanding contact languages
create a de-territorialised space of intercultural communication; (Pratt, 1992: 15) a
third space (Bhabha, 1990) in which one culture can speak to another in an
imaginative and purposeful dialogue. I certainly felt that there were several ‘cultural’
gaps; between what is written and what was felt in my father’s writing. This is
perhaps a result of the social constructs of his time but there is also a gap between
my generation and his and further, if we consider soldiers as members of a separate
culture, and I would argue this, between soldiers and civilians.
Citing Pratt, Irit Rogoff has employed this notion of ‘Contact Zones’, to articulate the
event of Creole as a mode that enables us to read current debates within visual
culture differently. (McCrudden, 2004) However, in this context it is perhaps worth
considering the notion of Creolisation as a mode by which to explore the ‘third
space’; the meeting of disparate paradigms and the new pathways for
communication that may be opened up as a result of this encounter. In essence then
I began a search for a performance Creole. I felt that it was important to minimise my
own ‘colonisation’ of my father’s biography to prevent me from giving it an emotional
voice by ‘attaching’ memory. My exploration has been in order to keep my own
memory separate and yet somehow ‘at one’ with the biography. I have tried to do
this by careful insertion rather than attachment of autobiography, fracturing the
narrative, interrupting the ‘then’ with the ‘now’ or the ‘later’. Breaking into ‘him’ with
‘me’. This method of assembling the text was influenced directly by ethical concerns.
My father spoke as himself in the biographies, I did not feel I had the right to
influence any meaning he may have wanted to make, hence, an exploratory
language, or Creole that both joins and separates. I looked to ideas concerned with
space/place to give me the structure of my ‘new’ language.
Space and its Context

Potential space is a term used by Turner and others including Jemstedt to refer to a
place of encounter between otherwise seemingly separate entities. In Turner's case
the entities she refers to are space and its users. (Turner, 2004) In Jemstedt's field
they are inner and outer reality. (Jemstedt, 2000) What is of particular interest here,
39
are the ways and means in which potential space can be created by these ideas and
the elements of theory that will predicate and support a performance model.
The idea of a space which both joins and separates is referenced by Fiona Wilkie in
her work on site-specific performance. Wilkie suggests that there are rules of the
place (the site) rules of the spectators and rules of the performance. (Wilkie, 2002)
What is created where these three positions meet could be interpreted as a potential
space. I suggest an adjustment of these terms for the purpose of clarity in this work
to: the narrative trajectories of biography, the development of autobiography through
active memory work and the historical narratives of the encountered spaces.
(figure1) What is proposed here is a model which places these elements as active
devices in the creation of an inspirational potential space. I wanted to respond
creatively to space but also my father’s writing and so set out with the intention of
applying Barthes’ ideas of punctum.
Potential Space
Creation of a Performance
Biographical
Text
narrative created
by user of the
Space
(trajectory)
Encountered
Space Memory
(history)
(Fig 1)
One of the first tenets to influence this experimental model is found in Turner's,
Palimpset or Potential Space:
Few would now dispute that space is produced not only by

architects, urban planners, cartographers and so on, but by the ways
in which it is reconstituted or transformed by 'the practice of
40
everyday life', the experiences and actions of the subjects moving
through it. (Turner, 2004, p. 373)
In order to test this model or methodology it is important to interrogate the elements

of theory which are of particular interest and which will influence its development with
the question: to what degree can these ideas function as authorial elements in the
creation of performance? There are three areas which will be the specific focus of
this work. These ideas are not distinct, they influence each other and are relational.
First is Barthes theory of the punctum; as an affective practice of seeing — feeling
— a photograph as discussed and referenced in the works of Ortega (Ortega, 2008)
and an attempt to apply that idea to space that is either encountered first hand or in
writing. (Wilkie, 2002) I elected to attempt a methodological application of this theory
to my father’s writing as a way of inspiring memory upon which I could base my
autobiographical writing. A second idea is Massey's writing on what she refers to as
trajectories. (Massey, 2005) Turner's words above coalesce neatly with Masseys'
thinking in which she considers space as a sphere of multiple trajectories that exist
and transform space and time. (Massey, 2005) The third is the the idea of the
encountered world as palimpsest. Multi-layered and made and remade by the bodies
that use it. Massey discusses space and time and the way that both are influenced
by our passage through them but concedes that space is much more material than
time and:
. . in opposition to time's incorporeality: it is (space) the landscape

outside the window, the surface of the earth, a given.
(Massey, 2005, p. 117)
Time is characterised by Massey as interior; a product of human experience. This is

important as time /experience will be important elements in the authoring of this
performance and what Massey has to say about trajectories, citing Raymond
Williams is seminal.
He too is on a train and he catches a picture, a woman in her pinny

bending over to clear the back drain with a stick. For the passenger
on the train she will be forever doing this. . .Perhaps she is doing it
41
just as she locks up the house to leave to visit her sister, half the
world away, and whom she hasn't seen for years. From the train she
is going nowhere; she is trapped in the timeless instant. (Massey,
2005, p. 119)
In a way, my decision to employ Gestus as a performance technique to delineate my

father’s word from mine traps him in that same timeless moment. I resisted this idea
initially but felt a device of some kind was necessary at those points. I have struggled
with the application of technique and remember the way that, in my opinion, The
Scottish National Theatre’s Black Watch was over theatricalised. Initially positing
itself as a piece of theatre drawn from ‘authentic’ testimony the performance soon
began to ‘seduce’ the viewer into its own, unique ‘reality’ of technical virtuosity and
staging effects and as a consequence lost any sense of the authenticity that
verbatim theatre generally claims as one of its strengths.
Another passenger on a train, Phillip Larkin alludes to the relationship between
space, time and human trajectories in his poem, The Whitsun Weddings,
A dozen marriages got under way.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And
someone running up to bowl - and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
(Larkin, 2001)
In terms of the influence these ideas/observations may have on performance I

suggest that in returning to Cathy Turner and the idea of space being made up of
'the experiences and actions of those who move through it' (Turner, 2004, p. 373) it
is possible to identify and evaluate this idea as an authorial element. The possibilities
for performance lay in the creative play-response to the trajectories of the biographer
in space, the extrusion of Williams' timeless moment. Therefore I was determined to
discover my own capacity to play and in my response to that which is 'found' in play
to create what Turner refers to as a potential space. Turner's ideas concerning
potential spaces were influenced by and refer directly to the work of D. W Winnicott:
42
I have tried to draw attention to the importance of a third area, that of
play, which expands into creative living and into the whole cultural
life of man. This third area can be contrasted with inner or personal
psychic reality which is biologically determined and with the actual
world in which the individual lives (it) being common property. I have
located this important area of experience in the potential space
between the individual and the environment, a space which both
joins and separates. (Winnicott, 1971, p. 138)
The process is dependent upon a play/response which encourages a creative

approach in the selection and editing of specific trajectories found within the
biographical text that will form one of the layers in this potential space or palimpsest
under development. In her discussion of the 'rules of the site' Wilkie refers to the
tensions and opportunities offered by different elements of the space:
Bore Place has collected and had imposed upon it meanings and
associations across history/ies, and though these will resonate
differently for each new inhabitant (however temporary) of the space
depending upon his/her position, the sets of rules operating within
the site guide users towards particular modes of experience. (Wilkie,
2002, p. 246)
There is a range of tourist information available on the subject of the Normandy

beaches, for example, and although there are several elements which have their
specific rules; signs, trails and maps, I intend to limit the focus of this model to my
response to historic accounts included in the material available to tourists or
available through online research that is readily available. The reason for this
approach is that in keeping with the development of trajectories it encourages a
play/response to the external world that can be shared in a performance. There is a
body of lay knowledge concerning the Normandy landings that can quite readily
43
function as a point of cultural connection. A second point of attack, again using
Normandy as an example is my personal ‘map’ of Normandy which took place during
my visit and contains the landmarks of my memory. Those memories ‘became
active’ in response to Normandy but are not necessarily situated there. Figuratively
speaking, a wormhole in Normandy sucked me into different places; beach assaults
on Torpoint in a Rigid Raider, beach holidays with my children, my father’s ‘ghost’
walking the beach near our home etc.
While the first two elements of theory discussed are concerned with the opening of a
creative window on a specific space, the third theory under investigation is perhaps
better described as using the space to open a creative window on oneself. This idea
became the most important element in the methodology I have adopted. The reason
for this was that I found a resistance in myself in the active process of staging
memory and so I wanted to allow a more spontaneous response to the biographical
text and space as discussed in that biography. The ideas described by Barthes were
particularly helpful in creating a more immediate re-remembering. Barthes described
the punctum (of a photograph) as 'the sting that wakes us and alerts us to look
further, to investigate, to understand, to care.' (Ortega, 2008, p. 236) Barthes
discussed the relationship between the symbolic meaning of a photograph and that
which is purely personal and dependent on the individual. Barthes referred to the
former as the studium and the latter as the punctum. Barthes was concerned that the
difference between these two only lives in the consciousness of the viewer; no one
else can understand the significance of the punctum but the individual who
recognises it. Barthes went further to qualify this idea by analysing his dead mother's
picture. Because there was something uniquely personal contained in the
photograph of Barthes’ mother that he could not remove from his subjective view,
instead of making reality solid and external, it became something evanescent,
elusive; the pain of loss and the nature of time. It is the “element that rises from the
scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me”; it is a mark made by a pointed
instrument That is, the punctum is that detail in the photograph that calls me forth
and invites me to engage with the image more fully and to even go beyond the
image to other possible interpretations. It is what makes me care about the image.
(Barthes, 1981)
I felt that this sense of the personal living in my consciousness as the viewer of, not
a photograph in this case, but a public space and/or writing of that space could prove
44
fruitful in the autobiographical process I was undertaking. I had experienced the
power of punctum in Normandy. The Latin word punctum is defined as a sharp point;
hence a very small orifice. (Arnold, 2009) Perhaps this descriptive term focuses the
thinking on a passage between the outer and inner reality, the encountered space
and the potential space of play, imagination and creativity. Perhaps it is possible to
consider the encountered spaces; London, France, Berlin, as Barthes' studium and
the punctum as a 'worm-hole' that connects the spaces with the individual's inner
reality, their experience and memory. I was interested to explore the degree to which
this idea could function as an authoring agent. As my creative writing began to take
shape I was aware that the punctum I responded to in the spaces my father had
written about opened into other spaces of my memory; Belfast, Normandy, London.
Ortega, partially quoting Barthes, describes the punctum eloquently as a wound or
as that object that can turn us, subjects, into objects. (Ortega, 2008, p. 235) That
was absolutely the phenomenon I experienced as I began to relax, read and respond
to my father’s biography. The ‘worm-hole’ projected me to places I recognised but
had not looked squarely at since they happened. I also found myself responding
quite spontaneously and imaginatively. An example may be the passage about
Uncle Charlie (page 16). As I read that section in my father’s text I remembered a
trip to Cadiz in Spain, it’s pre-eminence as the site of the battle of Trafalgar, and the
loss there of the only woman I ever loved. I ‘played’ with the ideas that sprung forth
concerning loss, dynastic military service and the sea off Cadiz as the site of
Sergeant Troy’s long swim in Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. Barthes’s
investigation into the nature of photography also turned out to be an exercise in self-
discovery and in the nature of interpersonal life.
It is a disclosure of self with others. The punctum in a photograph is

that cut, that little hole in the image that calls for your participation
and engagement, what stops a photograph from simply being inert in
our gaze (Barthes, 1981, p. 27)
According to Ortega there are three important elements to this rupture: its
unintentional nature, its power of expansion, and its temporality. (Ortega, 2008)
Ortega's experiments with punctum are in the field of language,
45
I would like to look into the relationship between experience, image,
word, and time in order to disclose the one who experiences, sees
the image, says the word, and remembers (Ortega, 2008).
This wound, sting, speck, this cut that wakes us and alerts us to look further, to
investigate, to understand. (Barthes, 1981) The punctum is an orifice through which
I can be propelled or dragged into another experience. These ‘wounds’ appear in my
father’s writing; and are evident in the active process of writing my own memory, my
own re-experiencing of those events, places and emotions. They are resident in the
gap between my experience of living in-between his time and mine, his experiences
and mine, the civilian world (now) and the military world (then), by the liminality of the
soldier’s voice, the erasure of individuality, the assumption that as a member, a tool
of the dominant ideology soldiers are not oppressed by that ideology, not corroded
by that environment and destined to damage themselves and others in later life, a
mix of all these.
The type of experience that I am thinking about is the one that, although it may be
part of our everydayness, “pricks” us, just like Barthes says a detail in a photograph
may prick, wound, attract, overwhelm, or shock us. The wound in the photograph is
what leads him to see, feel, hence notice, observe, and think. Our lives, our
experience, also have this/these wound(s); they inform the way in which we live and
the way in which we think about life and explore the ways to know life. In the active
process of re-remembering and in reading my father’s journals, these ideas and
memories although they have been part of my everyday experience were
unexamined, taken for granted. Their exposure in this process shocked me.
Our bodies preserve memories of difficult experiences, and we are

periodically assaulted by them, and yet sometimes we cannot find
either the words to describe the experience or the ears that will
listen to it. Words cannot approximate the actual fear felt; some
ears are not ready to hear a story of pain and sorrow.
(Ortega, 2008)
Wilkie plays with Barthes theory and applies the punctum to the environment
suggesting that:
46
The punctum is that which attracts me to a place and which returns
to me after I have physically left the space. . . . . . the spirit of the
place and the starting point of mapping. (Wilkie, 2002, p. 253)
Ortega makes an interesting observation when discussing the elements that make
up a punctum; specifically it's expansive nature. Perhaps this is a means to
encourage those working on a site-specific project to look inwards as well as
outwards.
By combining Massey's trajectories (user narrative), the historic narrative (s) of the
encountered space and the individual's recognition of and response to a punctum
(memory of the practitioner) into one application it is possible that a rich vein of
material can be developed for performance. The imaginative theory of the punctum
is potentially complex but given the potential the concept of utilising the 'self' as a
creative resource Ortega's definition of the punctum as 'that object that can turn us,
subjects, into objects' (Ortega, 2008, p. 235) seems to validate the concept as
perfectly appropriate for use in the development of this practice.
Researching my father’s writing and simultaneously engaging in the active

production of an autobiographical narrative influenced by his writing and my lived
experience of him and our relationship’s potential cause and effect on my life was at
once a quest for answers and also a hazardous journey in which I was aware of the
danger in assuming ‘all the roles at once’. Although referring to ethnic and linguistic
borders and translation or adaptation I think it worth considering what Pavis has to
say concerning the authoring process. He remarked that meta-culturalism, a term
that could conceivably be applied to the position that I am taking in this particular
process of creation, could be defined as a post-culturalism that recognises that its
nature and strategy is not that of coming after, but above in a superimposed position
in relation to other cultural givens. As soon as one culture comments on another to
explain or justify it, or re-contextualise it this develops a critical commentary on a
meta-textual level and becomes an interpretive meta-language. Pavis goes on to
remark that the 20th Century has produced a meta-culture, a meta-linguistic system
of a second order that encompasses everything. (Pavis, 1996) It is fair to assume
then, that immediately any creative agent seeks to interpret, translate, or adapt any
work the act positions the agent of change in a meta-cultural position and leaves the
47
reader staring at a reflection of self. While on one hand I actively sought to
communicate with an audience and enable them to ‘see themselves’ in the work I felt
that I wanted my fathers’ writing to speak for him rather than processing his words
and speaking about him throughout. I found this to be a difficult if not impossible
process as of course autobiography and biography differ from fictional forms of
storytelling in their claims to authenticity and the complex relationship between the
narrator and the protagonist; the writing ‘I’ and the written ‘I’. I realised quite quickly
that despite my notions of the ‘self’ at the moment at which narrative events took
place being the same ‘self’ writing about those moments today, what in fact appears
in the performance text and will appear in performance is a form of fiction despite my
‘authentic’ presence. Once I accepted this, the ‘meta-cultural’ position I could not fail
to assume became more comfortable. Furthermore, I found that it was a better
strategy to, in Kuhn’s words, subvert assumptions that may be made about
transparency and authenticity. If those assumptions are made by audiences I cannot
make them concerning my father’s biography or insist either on the ‘truth’ of my own
memory. They and my father’s words can only ever be an individual experience as
re-remembered in space and time and the text itself an active staging of memory.
My response to ideas of a social or collective imagining happened as a result of the

processes undertaken. I wanted to explore through a revisionist approach to
memories the potential for a fusion of the personal, social and historical. In using the
term, personal, I mean the result of a grappling with a sense of ‘what made me’. The
social, for me, refers to a collective set of experiences that may be shared by
soldiers and / or an audience. I began to see a pattern emerge in my re-
remembering. In the same way that I had searched for a ‘third space’ where
concepts could overlap spontaneously I searched for a discursive space in which to
explore the personal as political again using biography, encountered space, punctum
and implementing Winnicott’s assertion that
It is in playing and only in playing that the individual is able to be

creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being
creative that the individual discovers the self. (Winnicott, 1971,
p.73)
48
It is perhaps more precise to say that I was interested in the articulation between the
personal and political and the making and breaking of both. The section of the
performance text concerned with the Royal Artillery monument is an attempt at
bringing both of those ideas together. I felt that I wanted to explore this sense of the
political collective further and was perhaps influenced by the current and popular
trends in commemorating and remembering soldiers killed in action. Kipling’s poem,
‘Tommy’ has as much to say about contemporary society as it did over a hundred
years ago.
As someone who has ever refused to accept the significance of my military

experiences in the construction my identity I was interested in Kuhn’s assertion that
in the creation of autobiography there is not only a process but also a battleground.
(Kuhn, 2000, p. 182) I sense between what is revealed in my autobiographical
narrative and by what and the ways in which I re-remembered events. Kuhn
suggests the tension lies between experience and history. Again the methodology I
have employed in searching for the punctum and responding to it has helped me to
create what I hope is a more truthful rendering of memory rather than a chronological
‘life and times’ of the writer(s), a linear narrative which suggests the progression of a
life or lives. In re-remembering the events of Northern Ireland I was acutely aware of
the number of positions taken by the self or the number of layers to the self and so
found it difficult to unearth or reveal an ontological ‘truth’. However, although at the
outset of the work I may not have known precisely what I hoped to achieve in terms
of theatrical form, I knew what I wanted to avoid and so strove to explore the idea
that in practice a memory text could function effectively as a series of apparently
unconnected vignettes, anecdotes, ‘snapshots’ more like poetry than classical
narrative. (Kuhn, 2000). It is possible that this helped me to avoid the trap I have
seen some autobiographical performances fall into, namely the facile and superficial
‘story of my life that has a happy ending’.
I was concerned with the ethical issues of appropriateness of material and the limits
to which both biography and autobiographical material can be explored in public
performance. I am still concerned. If anything this process has left me with more
questions than answers. I did not want to ‘speak’ for my father. Although he never
49
indicated a desire for privacy when giving me his writing, he probably never
envisaged its public performance and we never spoke of this. I decided that
although I would select which parts of his writing I used, I would not manipulate the
content. Spalding Gray amongst others has been criticised for ‘rewriting’ his mother
after her death in an effort to understand himself (Heddon, 2008).
Autobiography has traditionally been understood as an unearthing

or revealing of the deep (typically hidden) self. Ethical appeals to
‘tell the truth’ are appeals to a knowable, fixed subject and yet . . .
the self-an individual, autonomous subject-is a discursive construct
and every self is relational. (Heddon, 2008)
The potential authority and authenticity of verbatim and testimonial theatre and the
inherent problems in the granting of such authenticity to a body of work was an area
that I chose to explore in this work by a deliberately shifting focus from personal ‘play
response’, autobiography and biography both in written form and in the presentation
of ‘self’. I realise that I have to some degree created an unsettling and alienating set
of indicators to my position in the story/ history/testimony. Stephen Bottoms
discussion of the authority granted Soan’s play, Talking with Terrorists because of its
perception as a piece of verbatim theatre and the idea that the audience are getting
insider information or a word for word account from an otherwise closed world
(Bottoms, 2006, p. 59) was particularly influential in my thinking. Bottoms remarks on
the same play that whereas stage realism
Purports to present a transparent representation of ‘life-like’

behaviour, while in fact providing an authorial perspective on
the real (Bottoms, 2006, p. 59)
Verbatim theatre is
Doubly illusory in presenting a ‘realism’ that purports to

present us with the speech of ‘actual’ people involved in ‘real’
events. (Ibid)
50
A further developmental step in the process of creating the work particularly
concerning agency but also in the function of the audience as witness was rooted in
the same ideology as Linda Ben-Zvi’s critique of Nola Chilton’s, Other
Israel, in which she discusses Michel de Certeau’s observation on citation; the
process whereby the media make truth by repetition of images:
How then to challenge media that claim to offer reality? If

through citation and repetition of televised images and print
descriptions, mediatised events gain an originary status how is
it possible to retrieve any sense of what occurred?
(Ben-Zvi, 2006, p. 43)
I chose to use images of the period, some autobiographical and some biographical
but also some marginally connected images in a deliberate attempt to disrupt the
dominant discourse that has enshrined those images into a received history.
This added yet another layer to the experience. Ben-Zvi also quotes Elin Diamond
who says:
Since theatre is always an illusion that may represent reality

but is not identical with that which it imitates it has the potential
to function, like citation, in a double game, using materials of
daily life while offering up its own performative, inexact
duplication to provide a space for destabilising from within the
simulacra that posit themselves as totalising reality.
(Ben-Zvi, 2006, p. 44)
The idea of soldiers as distinct and particular cultural ‘others’ led me initially to
exploit my position as one time ‘insider’ in the cult of ‘soldiering’ and I found support
for these ideas in Deirdre Heddon’s assertion that,
Every experience is made sense of and given meaning within the

cultural references available. Every experience then, rather than
51
being individual is a cultural phenomenon and already culturally
approved (Heddon, 2008, p. 26)
Culturally there is an enormous gap between soldiers and civilians and so the voices
of soldiers serve as both authoritative and alienating;
The very activities associated with the military life, ultimately to do

with the taking of life and the exposure to extreme physical danger,
serve to establish an almost unbridgeable gulf between the world of
the soldier and the world of the civilian (Bilton, 1990, p. 27)
As stated, I initially thought to explore and perhaps manipulate this idea of my being
‘other’ in practice and found that this ‘Other-ing’ phenomenon further enhanced the
multiplicity of ‘selves’ for the audience/witnesses to decipher. One ‘self’ or the ‘I’ that
shaped the material functioned as a translator in the position of making meaning
while leaving ‘spaces’ or omissions in the text between the military and its civilian
audience,
. .such as the gaps formed at the borders of different modes of

cultural/linguistic understanding to create a de-territorialised
space; a no-man's land of intercultural communication.
(Pratt, 1992, p. 15)
I found that in certain sections of the text I lacked a performance ‘language’ or more
accurately a ‘mode of engagement’ that I am capable of employing because in the
course of development I found that in fact I am, ‘other’. I do not feel I can ‘commune’
with the audience in the entire Ballymurphy section (pages 29-31) and have used
some technical staging and form of address in which I perform the function of a
conduit and not an active agent in the ‘telling’. Once written, I find that I cannot any
longer take responsibility for the events and emotions described although they were
authentic at the time they took place. This is no longer true. I am no longer that,
‘self’. The ‘gap’ here is not a result of any form of theatrical construct. I simply do not
have a way to fill the silences. I will use the film of the cherry blossoms as they fall,
each one a regret, a life, a memory.
52
The quest to find an appropriate cultural context and to identify the authenticity of the
events discussed should instigate an active process in the audience. The nature of
the material and its ambiguous presentation created what Tim Etchells referred to as
‘witnesses’ that are ‘produced when performed events are presented in a
challenging, open-ended way but also when they have a connection to the real’
(Etchells, 1999, p. 19)
I realise that A Map to Remember Me is a complex piece of theatre and it is certain
that its reach exceeded its grasp in this exploration of both material and form. In
common though with the work of the practitioners cited here it sought to create a
sense of dis-equilibrium, at once inviting the audience to participate in my journey
but a journey that can be perceived as challenging, turning a passive audience into
witnesses; a phenomenon that occurs when as Karine Schaefer suggests when ‘one
feels implicated in events and compelled to take a stand’. (Schaefer, 2003, p. 6)
53
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56

A Map To Remember Me

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A MAP TO REMEMBER ME

Rituals are a way people remember, they are ‘memories in action,

1. A Map to Remember Me 5-37

 Brackets indicate stage directions but also a physical action or merely a

 In the sections marked in italics I imagine a direct, open and informal

 My father’s narrative should be a conduit to his experience in time and space,

I was saying goodbye to my Father. He was standing on the doorstep as I was

[Drink] Something passed between us.

I remember that innocuous moment because he smiled at me when I said it and it

[Motorbike S/FX-watch it pass]

[Gestus-tic] ‘So it won’t snag me bloody jumper’

[Short film-‘Cherry Blossom Falling and Songbird’ under following dialogue]

[Short Film-‘Cherry Blossoms Falling and Songbird’-end]

O its Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";

[Projection-Appendix 2-R.A Monument]

[Pose][Appendix 3-Optional-‘I will not Love you long time’ picture]

Wouldn’t she be as much a reminder of American invasion as any monument?

[Play WW2-Soundtrack-Declaration of War]

[L-S/FX] [Soundtrack-Air Raid]

[L-S/FX Wedding Bells]

[L-S/FX Wedding Bells continue but change to become a Ship’s Bell]

Narrator: A foreign voice calls and is lost . . .

[Stand-tuck pace stick under arm, slash peak cap on head]

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

Because we were involved in covert soldiering in Northern Ireland we were

[ Sotto voce but building as drums build underneath]

[S/FX-Pipes and Drums-Garry Owen, builds to explosion]

[S, L/FX-Landings under fire]

As we pushed northeast we arrived at the German town of Tonning on the entrance

[Stand; German commander speaks to troops

They fell in again and marched smartly off to the barracks.

[Lying back on the chair, smoking]

He passed me the joint.

Living easy, lovin' free. .. .season ticket on a one way ride

Asking nothing, leave me be

Going down, party time

Before I could say ‘Yes’ . . . . . . . . . .

A man, my father's age lurches into me and right in my face, says,

But I didn't say that. I walked on.

[Script plays as a slideshow]

[Slides-Belfast-plays under following section-Appendix 7]

[S/FX-Working parts forward]

[Map-Ballymurphy Brotherhood of the dead]

[SF/X Hopi Warrior Clan Dance Music]

Private Arthur Smith, Cheshire Regiment

[Projection-Defaced War Memorial]

[SF/X Riot sounds]

[S/FX Loud Gunfire]

[Short film-Cherry Blossom Falling- ends-Black]

Each occupation, or traversal, or transgression of space offers a

We were taught perspective, to train our eyes to search for focal

Sounds, voices, languages are always inscribed in places.

Some of the ideas discussed here were a direct influence on my re-staging of

Space and its Context

Few would now dispute that space is produced not only by

In order to test this model or methodology it is important to interrogate the elements

. . in opposition to time's incorporeality: it is (space) the landscape

Time is characterised by Massey as interior; a product of human experience. This is

He too is on a train and he catches a picture, a woman in her pinny

In a way, my decision to employ Gestus as a performance technique to delineate my

A dozen marriages got under way.

In terms of the influence these ideas/observations may have on performance I

The process is dependent upon a play/response which encourages a creative