CASE FILE #2 – THE MURDER OF SPENCER PERCEVAL + AND THE MAKING PROCESS
Who is Spencer Perceval?!
Imagine this:
- It’s the 11th May, 1812.
- You are in the lobby of the House of Commons.
- You’re waiting for the Prime Minister to arrive to proceed with his daily duties.
- Suddenly…
- A man in takes a firearm out from his large overcoat…
- And shoots the Prime Minister.
- Motive – to start a revolution.
- A senseless faint pulse and the power he had was taken by a bullet.
The assassination of Spencer Perceval. A true forgotten British crime. The only British Prime Minister to ever be murdered whilst in office. As a collective we found this particular crime to be a perfect body of study to create a contemporary response to something related to crime/punishment. although there isn’t much information on exactly what took place around the time, the ‘Britishness’ of the crime satisfied us that we had something rich to work on. Basically, when I say it was a ‘Britishness’ crime, it’s because the man who assassinated Perceval (John Billingham), shot Perceval and then immediately dropped his firearm and uttered “Sorry”. There was something about this story that we felt as professional northerners we could compile multiple images/texts to build a conceptual framework for the assassination of Spencer Perceval, but tell it in our own way. So, we did. We created a catalogue of images, delved into what they meant, wrote scenes for these images and then they became performance moments. For the making process I will explain how we began with images and how these images progressed to be performance moments.
IMAGE –
Typically, throughout a making process I have typically began with the imagined idea, story boarded the idea and then created images for the imagined piece of work. For this commission, as a collective we reangled our disciplines and decided to just create as many images as possible, rework and mould them into performance moments and then form a performance as a result of all the ‘data’ we had. Doing the opposite of what we usually do wasn’t a decision we found ourselves making right at the start of the process, it happened naturally because of a few things:
- We made images and didn’t instantly consider their materiality.
- No idea or decision was bad, we tried every way we could form an image.
- We found a true crime to unpack and explore.
To begin with, making images without considering their materiality posed its qualities. Having a bank of images which we brought into the space as a product of research meant that we could have endless different versions of our piece. Founding member of Forced Entertainment Tim Etchells states in Oddey’s Devising Theatre that:
With these tools we’re trying to make a theatre that’s both emotionally and intellectually engaging, allowing audiences to create their own meaning in the spaces between its texts, a theatre that trusts in its audience to find its own ways through. Oddey (2015;85)
We had a body of research in the assassination of Spencer Perceval as well as being open to the idea of creating images which we didn’t know what they would result in. We knew combining these images to the event of Perceval’s assassination allowed us to create our unique take on this real-life event. From this, as a three, we divided responsibilities in order for these images to exist within the final ‘thing’. From the moment images were beginning to form, we took interchangeable roles: The performer, the director and the choreographer. To broaden our expertise within the devising process, we let each member of the collaboration interchange between roles and to be at times in charge of the creation of an image, which then gave images a different edge. This was successful; however, we had a difficult decision to make for the images we were creating: Abstract or naturalistic?
Why naturalistic in this case and not abstract –
When we were investigating the work and crafting images, each of us would have our own versions or ideas for the image. The problem with this was if we were making abstract and naturalistic images, it would affect us being clear about what happened to Spencer Perceval. We felt that the best decision was to be natural in reinterpreting this real-life event. Our role was to stick to the initial commission: true crime. This wasn’t about escaping the ordinary, it was about telling a story in a bold and unique style. The making process was about being as true to true crime as possible, thus the theatre making was the crime we committed. Interrogating the work naturalistically was the best mode to unpack true crime, this also meant for the work to naturally distil. The distillation process for the images came subconsciously. We made the decision that abstract materiality would set us up for failure. We felt it would be impossible to tell this story in that way, which makes me now wonder what could have been if the fundamental decision was to tell the story abstractly? Fundamentally, concentrating on the focus of being naturalistic for this instance felt like the best way to bear testimony to the assassination of Spencer Perceval.
Repetition and being repetitious –
Repetition within the work was subconscious. But investigating why we used repetition as a tool to tell the story contributed to the overall way we devised this piece.
“Repetition is only repetition if we feel that we own it” Goulish (2001;33)
Repetition evokes familiarity. Evoking familiarity for the audience in this instance was to constantly remind them of the magnitude of the crime, a crime which we feel is forgotten.
Throughout the work we created we have repeated interview/interrogation moments with our characters. This happens three times. For my character in particular and the other two members of the collaborations characters. These repeated scenes framing similar questions expose tropes and conventions of police interrogation and in turn expose our process as makers. This example of repeated moments is repetitious based on its purpose. Whatever we repeated had purpose to build on getting to know the characters and telling the story.
“The Scottish Composer James MacMillan once described his style as the repetition of ideas of deliberate limitation. Through the course of the composition these elements either remain constant or gradually, integrally transform, depending on their nature” Goulish (2001;34)
Based on us as a collective demonstrating repetitious themes within our work, we deliberately attempted to limit the amount of repetition we used within the dialogue, but the nature of the dialogue didn’t have as much emphasis.
There was a moment within the piece where my character repeats “My name is John”. The character I was portraying was John Billingham, the man who murdered Spencer Perceval. My portrayal for John Billingham was to tell both sides of his story: his motive and how he was wrongly treated which resulted in him killing Spencer Perceval and instantly regretting it. Repeating “My name is John” and “Sorry” throughout the piece sometimes at moments could be deemed comical, but later on throughout the piece John has a moment where he confesses and seriously regrets what he did, so ultimately the nature of the dialogue being repetitious demonstrated different themes within the work. John Billingham was hung two days after murdering Spencer Perceval for the crime he committed. He was an idealist, not a murderer.
SEE CASE FILE #3 FOR RESULT FROM THE MAKING PROCESS…