Site 1 : Understanding the Content
- Subject-matter - Website research and prior visits will enable us to understand the subject matter and how it relates to the site, and to prepare questions for interviews/ questionnaires/ focus groups that can measure audience understanding of the subject-matter both before and after visits.
- Relationship to collections/exhibits - How and if performance locates itself in terms of the other collections on site (or even off site) either through dialogue, or use of props. Observation (using video and photography). Also looking at how the audience understand this relationship, through interviews, focus groups, questionnaires. Also, how do the actors and employees/directors place the work of performance in relation to the other collections? What connections do they make in the literature/publicity?
Levels of meaning - Can be analysed through discussions with audience members, and (in the case of focus groups) cross referenced with their pre-identified preferred learning styles. Focus groups especially would engender discussion of the meanings of the performance to different people without a feeling that a 'correct' answer was necessary or desirable. Also, visual elements might capture those references that are made throughout to contemporary life. Again, observation will be key.
All images © National Maritime Museum London
