First Rehearsal

Group members: Me, Fabio and Reece.

For our first group meeting we began researching Hoxton Hall and returned to the archive to look at some more materials. From the archive materials (mostly photographic) we were able to put together a sort of timeline of the events that took place in Hoxton Hall over the time span of 200 years. We discovered that the ephemera we had seen was probably one of the earliest archive materials from Hoxton Hall, when it originally opened as a music hall. We then found some photos from the late 19th century that showed Hoxton Hall being used as a bomb shelter. There were also written documents that showed this such as an instruction leaflet that was used during this time. We also found scripts from Shakespearean plays performed in the 1940's, as well as photos of social and youth events in the 70's and 80's. We liked the idea of exploring "Hoxton Hall" through the years and how it has changed, but mostly it's relationship with the people who went there. We plan to create a short scene from each vital time in history for Hoxton Hall. This week we will be thinking about characters we would like to play and continuing our research about Hoxton Hall. Also, since the idea of people is so vital to what we want to do for our performance, we are thinking about the idea of audience participation. We plan to meet again and establish this idea more clearly.

Week 2

Today's task was to find five archive materials that relate to the topic we are working on. I have chosen to work with the Hoxton Hall archive as I find it to be the most interesting and inspiring. Below are my five chosen archive materials that I will be using to base my performance on:

1)Scraps of Ephemera: This was a bag containing objects that were found under the floor boards at Hoxton Hall during refurbishment. Some included cigarette butts, scraps of newspapers and peanut cases. I think I could use these objects to inform a creative idea of the types of people that first went to Hoxton Hall and use them as characters in my performance.

2) Photograph of Street Orphan in the late 19th century. This reminds me of the downtrodden area that Hoxton used to be. The child is alone, in distressed clothing, and appears to be sad.

3)Note advising the introduction of a special supper every other Friday at Hoxton Hall. This is from the 1940's and appears to be around the time when Hoxton Hall was used mostly for social events and gatherings as well as performances. This suggests that Hoxton Hall wasn't just a theatre. It was a place that people met and socialized, and this may be one of the reasons why it has been so important and loved by many people. I would like to explore this further.

4)Photograph of a group of women sat around the fireplace of the Palmer Room at Hoxton Hall. I liked this photo because it showed friendship and unity. I want to look further in to the Palmer Room and it's semantics.

5)Photograph of performance of "Hamlet" in 1967. This is one of my favorite plays. I assume Hoxton Hall must have been quite popular and successful to have shown Shakespearean plays. It also shows the transformation Hoxton Hall has undergone from music hall to performance space.

All in all I have gathered some notions about the personal meaning Hoxton Hall perhaps had to some people. I want to investigate and hopefully portray the importance of that emotional attachment as well as simply the events that occured at Hoxton.