Legion of Memory is a site-specific performance co-created by Melanie Bennett and Andrew Houston, which was staged in an abandoned legion hall in downtown Kitchener, Ontario. Launched in June 2006 and remounted in April 2007, Legion of Memory attempts to animate the cultural displacement of the war veteran and refugee, while also exploring issues surrounding war memorials in Canada today. 
        
        
        Résumé
        
          Legion of Memory est un spectacle créé par Melanie Bennett et Andrew Houston dans une filiale abandonnée de la Légion, au centre-ville de Kitchener, en Ontario. Présenté pour la première fois en juin 2006 et repris en avril 2007, ce spectacle localisé cherche à illustrer le déplacement que vivent sur le plan culturel les anciens combattants et les réfugiés de guerre tout en explorant les enjeux actuels autour des monuments de guerre au Canada

Bennett, Melanie

English

University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals

Melanie BennettLegion of Memory: Performance at Branch 51Legion of Memory is a site-specific performance co-created byMelanie Bennett and Andrew Houston, which was staged in anabandoned legion hall in downtown Kitchener,Ontario.Launchedin June 2006 and remounted in April 2007, Legion of Memoryattempts to animate the cultural displacement of the war veteranand refugee, while also exploring issues surrounding war memor-ials in Canada today.Legion of Memory est un spectacle créé par Melanie Bennett etAndrew Houston dans une filiale abandonnée de la Légion, aucentre-ville de Kitchener, en Ontario. Présenté pour la première foisen juin 2006 et repris en avril 2007, ce spectacle localisé cherche àillustrer le déplacement que vivent sur le plan culturel les ancienscombattants et les réfugiés de guerre tout en explorant les enjeuxactuels autour des monuments de guerre au Canada.TRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170 • 129ForumPhoto courtesy of Mark Bennett.Legion of Memory, a site-specific performance production co-created by Andrew Houston and myself, was originallylaunched in June 2006 for the Tapestry Festival, a multiculturalevent in Kitchener,Ontario.Because of its integration of a sophisti-cated soundscape developed by composer Nick Storring, theKitchener Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound invited us toproduce a remount for April 2007. Legion of Memory attempts toanimate the cultural displacement of the veteran and refugee byhaving themmeet in the abandoned legion hall, while also explor-ing the problem of war memorials in Canada today.The following script is the remount version. AndrewHouston’s contribution was that of director, producer, andperformer, and mine was that of scriptwriter, dramaturg, andperformer.The overall project began as his brainchild, in which heinvited me to participate as co-creator. As the devising processleading up to both productions included weeks of workshoppingand improvisation, the performers—Brad Cook, NicholasCumming, Heather Hill, Viktorija Kovac, and Derek Lindman—were all noteworthy contributors to the development and revisionof the narrative.Perhaps the principal challenge of creating site-specificperformances is securing a site. We hit the jackpot with Legion ofMemory because the City of Kitchener welcomed the possibility ofcreating a show in thedisused legionhall Branch51onOntario StreetNorth in Kitchener,Ontario. The City used our show as a launchingevent to promote Kitchener’s growing arts scene and to advertise theold legion hall as a possible rental venue for community artists.All theatre is ephemeral, but the process-oriented method ofsite-specific performance makes it one of the most transientperformance practices. Because the text and narrative of site-specific performance is drawn from the building and the objectsfound there, it is meant to be performed in the site of origin.Withconventional theatre, the text tends to be considered sacred,whereas with site-specific work, the text is totally contingent uponwhat the site offers. If the showwere to be staged elsewhere, the textwould have to be altered considerably to accommodate the newsite of performance.It is a rare opportunity to be granted access to a disused build-ing with all its original contents for two incarnations of a site-specific production, separated in time by over a year.Although thebuilding was left in an almost identical state as it was for the origin-al production, we utilized this unusual occasion for a remountto develop and evolve the show significantly from its original130 • TRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170ForumForumTRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170 • 131conception. One important change from the original version wasthe addition of interview excerpts with war veterans. These inter-views were conducted by Andrew Houston and Brad Cook at alegion in Kitchener. In addition, a new soundscape was created byNick Storring that juxtaposed these new interviews with the inter-views of war refugees from FormerYugoslavia that we had used inthe original launch version.Another major revision to the remount performance was theaddition of the Prologue, which was set in a couple of the lower-level rooms of the building.We were denied access to these roomsfor the launch in 2006 due to the presence of asbestos and mould,but the City of Kitchener remedied the potentially hazardous situ-ation by the time we were rehearsing the remount in 2007. One ofthe rooms we used was an empty chapel,which clearly resembled achamber of mourning.We devised a series of ritualized gestures—of waiting, reflecting, and reaching out for help—that wereperformed by the refugee character played byViktorija Kovac.Weenhanced the atmosphere of mourning by including dozens of tealights, a suitcase full of dolls, a smashed family photo, and a child’smusical wall hanging from Serbia.The space surrounding the chapel resembled a dated adminis-trative space that looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry.Unlike the completely vacant chapel, the office contained vestiges ofan administration gone wrong.However, the office was also a placeof mourning; it was littered with soiled letters, Remembrance Dayposters, pension documents, photographs, memos, newspapers,maps, poppies, legion ribbons, a box of keys, and old Tim Hortonscoffee cups.We started examining the discarded documents on thefloor, andmany of them referred to widows of veterans (and legion-naires) who were being denied benefits from the government. Theletters were addressed to the Legion,which was being asked to backtheir claims for support. There were a lot of these letters, but therewere also other kinds of complaints. From this we conceived thecharacter of LawrenceAtchison, a name we created from the initials“L.A.” engraved on an old discarded briefcase we found. Lawrence,performed in our production by Derek Lindman, is an accountantand descendant of one of the Legion members. In the play, hedesperately tries to “account” for all of these forgotten complaintsdiscarded on the floor.The office and chapel images, therefore,werejuxtaposedwith each other to becomeour Prologue.The addition ofthe Prologue set the stage for the legion“festivities,” in that it offereda glimpse of both the legionnaire’s and refugee’s experiences ofdisplacement and loss before the spectators were ushered upstairs.Branch 51:A Peculiar Place for RefugeesDuring the 1990s, Kitchener became heavily populated withrefugees from FormerYugoslavia.Many of them had escaped fromtheir country because of the Yugoslav wars. These refugees had leftbehind lucrative work and family ties in order to come to Canada, apeaceful new home free from the daily threat of violence.Workingfrom this background, we began to imagine how these victims ofwar would fit into a legion hall that honours those who fought inwars, but not those innocent victims caught in the crossfire. Wewondered how these displaced individuals might meet in the spaceof this particular memorial, a building itself displaced by thepassage of time and disuse.As a fraternal organization consisting mainly of membersdrawn from the Canadian military (current and retired), the RoyalCanadian Legion emulates an exclusive patriarchal men’s club,where a refugee’s presence may seem remarkably out of place.According to site-specific practitioner Mike Pearson, one of theaims of site-specific performance “is to construct something newout of old, to connect what may appear dissimilar in order toachieve new insights and understanding” (52). By deciding to havea war refugee fromFormerYugoslavia enter a legion hall in the play,we created a new juxtaposition. The juxtaposition between the warrefugees’ stories and the war veterans’ stories not only creates aremarkable picture of war and its larger effects, but a potentialparallel between two very different groups of people. Both theveteran and refugee are happy to embrace a life free from war, yetboth are also haunted bymemories of a life damaged by it.Both aretroubled by the disconnect between their“new”lives and their“old”lives.While the veteran seeks to erase the trauma by drinking at thelegion hall, he also feels an obligation to memorialize the past byensuring that war and the sacrifices required by it are not forgotten.Similarly, the refugee strives to forget a life ripped apart by war, yetthere is a longing to preserve the memories of the family, career,history, and culture that have been left behind.Animating Legion of MemoryAs an emerging performance studies scholar, I ampartial to creatingwork through a multi-faceted process, drawing on theories fromvarious disciplines, such as cultural geography, archaeology, andperformance art. Site-specific creation produces a rich and multi-dimensional performance practice that is infinite in its possibilitiesof transforming the spatiality of a site and the meaning of objectsfoundwithin it.Forum132 • TRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170Mike Pearson defines site-specific performances as “conceivedfor, mounted within and conditioned by the particulars of foundspaces, existing social situations or locations, both used anddisused” (23). These performances rely upon the complex coexis-tence of a number of narratives and architectures, historical andcontemporary. According to Pearson, there are two basic orders ofsite-specificity:“that which is of the site, its fixtures and fittings andthat which is brought to the site, the performance and its scenogra-phy” (23). Here, the physical site (for example, a building) takesfocus and provides an archaeological context for investigating adense history.Thematerial traces of the past found at the site deter-mine the direction of the performance and result in an open-endedand non-linear form, reflecting the multiple meanings and valencesthat the site provides. Houston has described the methodology ofsite-specific performance as follows:You begin by seeing how the elements of the site (peelingwalls,windows, staircases) are metaphors for the life experiencesembedded in the site. This kind of work makes monologuesand physical scores out of the broken floor tiles and searchesfor ghosts that inhabit a place in order to animate (using a vari-ety of disciplines such as acting, dance, multi-media, etc.) theghost’s story. (Houston,“DeepMapping”)While Houston is talking about site-specific performance in partic-ular, his words point to broader ontologies of performance. InCitiesForumTRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170 • 133Photo courtesy of Melanie Bennettof the Dead, for example, Joseph Roach argues that an importantperformance strategy “is to juxtapose living memory as restoredbehaviour against a historical archive of scripted records” (11).Roach is drawing on Richard Schechner’s idea that all performancesare “restored behavior” or “twice-behaved behavior,” by which hemeans behaviour that “is always subject to revision” (qtd. in Roach3). Past performances must always be reinvented because theycannot happen the sameway twice.All definitions assume perform-ance functions as a substitute or “surrogate” for something else thatprecedes it.Site-specific performance is an intricate blending of historicaland contemporary detail that combines the myth, memory, anddream embedded in the host site. A variety of performance strat-egies—speech, images, gestures—supplement and contest theauthority of archival documents in the historiographical tradition.When dealing with sites that are deeply embedded in historicaldiscourse, the challenge for site-specific artists is to find the balancebetween knowledges of the past and our active engagement with thepresent. This creates a double narrative in which the performance“stands in for an elusive entity that it is not but that it must vainlyaspire both to embody and to replace” (Roach 3). In trying to givevoice to this double narrative,we thusmove inexorably“between theabsence of what we imagine the space to be and the materialevidence of its proper and present uses” (Houston “Introduction”vii).Legion of Memory is a complex overlay of the tangible mythsthat surround Branch 51 and its present non-use. Its meaning isconstituted by histories of the people who might have occupied thebuilding (war vets, women of the Ladies Auxiliary, building cus-todians, etc.), narratives taken from interviews conducted withrefugees and war veterans in Kitchener, the artists’ responses to thesite, and the spectators who complete the event as witnesses. Foundobjects also work to construct the site and its many resonances.Theneglected building stores shrines dedicated to the fallen comrades ofWWI and WWII; old documents outlining veterans’ pensions;newspaper clippings of significant events related to war, memorial,and legions; posters advertising dances; a Meat Draw board; soldieruniforms; and photographs.As we looked through these objects of memory, we couldn’thelp feeling the strong sense of nostalgia attached to them. Thenostalgia found in Branch 51 created an atmosphere determined todistract its inhabitants from the threatening realities of war. Otherevidence of the need for distraction was apparent in the form of134 • TRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170Forumrecords of celebrations: dances,games,and contests.The legionwithits fossilized contents was the embodiment of a place of pause,evok-ing the sense of a time capsule; at the same time, it participated innarratives of national heroism that celebrated and romanticizedwar.The present anti-war sentiment stemming from the Iraqwarmade itnecessary to create a performance that questions and revisits thisdiscourse.While memorial performances often inspire nostalgia forauthenticity and origin, the refugees in Legion of Memory transformthe legion into a space of contestation.Suddenly,all thememorabiliaglorifying war and demanding stasis come into conflict with theaudible stories of refugees and their experiences of war’s unendingreverberations. The objects memorializing the fallen comradesmark the absence of memorials for its other victims.The first half of Legion of Memory follows what appears to be atraditional legion event.TheMC invites the spectators to participatein the festivities. There is drinking, dancing, and a RemembranceDay ceremony performed by the veteran characters. Throughoutthese festivities, there are hints that indicate that everything is not asit seems. The 1940s music is slowed down, the dancing becomesviolent, the drinking gets out of hand, the host seems a little sad.Asense of loss filters in through the soundscape of refugee and veterannarratives.The nostalgia and sense of security surrounding the legionevents are significantly disrupted halfway through the performancewhen a refugee character enters the building speaking Serbian onher cell phone.Her presence threatens the fantasy of the legion hallas a place of refuge, security, and stability. The refugee character isquestioned by the Immigration and Refugee Board representatives.She is forced to dress as SlobodanMilosevic,coveredwith aUN flag,and interrogated. This scene uses excerpts from the transcripts ofthe Milosevic trial conducted by the United Nations court for itstext. Juxtaposed with the trial is a tableau of one soldier beingtortured, humiliated, and photographed by another soldier. Thetableau recalls the 2004 accounts of the abuse and torture of prison-ers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq committed by members of theUnited States military.When placed within these contexts, the warmemorial does not seem quite so heroic, nor do the politics ofengaging in war seem so black andwhite.While the publication of this script serves as an archive of loss,arecord of the experiences of those whose lives have been altered bywar, it is ultimately the spectatorwho ensures a living archive of thesememories, carrying forward the ghosts unearthed in this ephemeralperformance.TRiC / RTaC • 29.1 (2008) • Forum • pp 129-170 • 135Forum

Legion of Memory: Performance at Branch 51

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Legion of Memory: Performance at Branch 51

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