Touching Past Lives: Sensorial Spectatorship in the Paston Footprints Project
- Submitting institution
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The University of Essex
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 3136
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Oxnead Hall, Mannington Hall, and Norwich Castle Museum
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- June
- Year of first performance
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Maples’ PaR was undertaken between 2015-2018 with Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Funding. Maples wrote and directed three public productions with professional actors and musicians, and managed partners including Oxnead Hall (Lord and Lady Aspinall), the Norwich Castle Museum, and Mannington Hall (Lord and Lady Walpole). Archival investigation into Norfolk Medieval history and the Paston family letters informed the writing of verbatim scripts. These were developed into a season of three 60-120min productions, each specifically tailored for a different site using an array of immersive theatre techniques. Maples also undertook audience studies with findings disseminated through research papers.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This practice-as-research project was part of the Heritage Lottery funded Paston Footprints (£374K) led by the University of East Anglia and Paston Heritage Society. This three-year project explored the Paston family legacy and collection of letters from the 14th to the 18th centuries through dramas, exhibitions and workshops.
This three-part output involved the scripting and public production of three full-length, site-specific, immersive performances that use sensory, experiential methods to invite members of the public to, literally as well as figuratively, feel and touch the past through interactive, creative responses to history. With a two-year research and development phase, the three-productions took place at Oxnead Hall, Mannington Hall, the Norwich Castle Museum from June-August 2018. The productions worked with professional as well as student actors and were supported through additional Arts Council funding (£14K).
Maples scripted and directed these productions drawing from the Paston Letters and other historical research; each used different source materials and variations in place and participatory strategies, but all focused on exploring how staging and script- development can facilitate highly sensory and participatory audience experience whilst also enabling critical thinking amongst heritage publics. The practice-as-research investigates how immersive performance methods and historical verbatim text can create more complex understandings of local heritage for members of the public.
In addition to the three productions, Dr Maples also facilitated participatory workshops targeting distinct communities, and organised a research symposium on Immersive Heritage Performance at Senate House in London. The performances included diverse methods of audience feedback and evaluation interviews with the project’s heritage partners. The feedback illustrated how the use of haptic and participatory methods impact audience experience of heritage sites, particularly enhancing empathic and imaginative responses and relationships to the past through the use of performative storytelling and site specific performance work.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
