Greenham: Costume, memory and activism in outdoor performance

Abstract

This visual essay illustrates the transformative, performative and narrative potential costume can have in the context of outdoor site-responsive work, by looking at Ceschi + Lane’s recent R&D project, Greenham. The project included two performances that took place on Greenham Common, the site of a former RAF and American Army base in the English countryside, which is now common land. Greenham is also the former site of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace camp, set up in 1981 to protest against the British government allowing American cruise missiles to be stored at the base. In response to the scarred landscape of the post-Cold War dereliction and the contested history of Greenham Common, we created costumes that embodied imaginative and provocative ideas around landscape and memory, the body and its environment and women’s relationship to power. These costumes acted as critical intervention and commentary in a public space. This visual essay provides retrospective analysis of these costumes, their effect on the performers and their contribution to the dramaturgy of the site-responsive performance. Drawing on contemporary references, it attempts to articulate the work’s contribution to the wider discussion around costume’s agency and costume as carrier of meaning in public spaces and as part of site-responsive performance practice.