‘Mirabilis’ - a new performance by in situ:

‘Christina’……………Bella Stewart
‘Guide’……………….Richard Spaul
Man with camera……..Pete Arnold

‘Mirabilis’ was devised by in situ:, and directed by Richard Spaul. Pete Arnold
created the sound and video installations.
Original music by Robin Bunce, with thanks to Kathie Brown and Lucy Bunce.

About the performance

This is a multi-focal performance. This means that there may be several different
things happening at the same time within the performance space, and audience
members are free to choose what they watch or listen to. Of course, this entails
moving around the space, and you are also free to do that. It should be fairly clear
where we prefer audience members not to go. You may sit down wherever you like,
although being seated does not guarantee a perfect view of any action that may be
taking place.
Since this is fairly unusual, you may not be entirely sure what’s expected of you, so
these few guidelines might help:
1. Please try not to talk to each other during the performance, and please don’t talk to
any of the performers, even if they seem to be addressing you. In this respect at least,
this is a wholly conventional performance that respects the traditional distance
between audience and actor.
2. Rest assured that no audience participation is required. You will not be exposed or
embarrassed in any way during the performance. You do not have to join in or do
anything other than move around the space, taking in whatever interests you.
3. Please leave things as you find them. You are most welcome to examine things
more closely, by touching, smelling etc., but please don’t try to move, or interfere
with, anything, especially candles, speakers and televisions.
4. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ place from which to experience the piece - you can
go wherever you like. Please co-operate with the performers, however, and be
prepared to move if one of them appears to need the space you’re occupying.
5. Finally, please do take care. Please don’t climb on or over anything, and try not to
rush around, bearing in mind that the floor surface may not be even throughout.

We hope you enjoy the experience.

About ‘Mirabilis’
We wanted to make a piece based on the Life of Christina Mirabilis, written by
Thomas of Cantimpré in 1232, because its powerful imagery seemed to us to already
belong to the world of performance. Reading more closely, there emerged for us
something that opened out into our own, very contemporary, concerns, the things we
think are important to address through performance.
Christina returns from death and finds the world an unbearable place. Her agitated
flights from human society and her extreme behaviour put her on the margins of her
social world. She performs the suffering of others elsewhere, and, of course, people
cannot bear to look. She goes too far - crawling into ovens, remaining under freezing
water for long stretches, flying, entering the graves of the dead. This narrative made
us think about our own witness of others’ suffering, a witness made commonplace,
even pervasive, through mass media, and primarily through images. What will make
us look? How do we look? How do we respond?
These are difficult questions, and Christina’s story asks them as assuredly as any
contemporary reportage from a war zone, or disaster, or famine, or half-forgotten
enclave of deprivation. It isn’t the place of performance, as Christina’s example
testifies, to try and provide answers. It can, however, make a space to reflect. This is
what we have tried to do.
We have chosen images from the world of the past, Christina’s world, because they
seemed to us to reflect images we still see around us now. Struggling to imagine the
life and world of past people has become an important theme in in situ:’s work,
perhaps as a way of acknowledging that it is work to imagine others, to empathise, to
connect.
Christina puts her own body into her performance. In the physical absence of the
other world, whose torments she demonstrates, her female body becomes its site.
This embodiment makes performance a vivid and immediate means of making
present an ‘other’. In Christina’s time, people like her were regarded as evidence of
God’s intervention in the world, the presence of the ‘other world’ folded into our
own. Another, later, and somewhat less flamboyant, mystic, the Englishwoman
Julian of Norwich, puts it that this other world “..is God’s clothing, which for love
wrappeth us.”
The contemporary world no longer finds evidence of divine intervention so readily.
Sometimes it seems there is little enough human intervention. The images from the
modern world have been deliberately chosen; most of them are well-known, some are
familiar. We wanted to find a way of looking at them again.
in situ: July
2004
Acknowledgements
A project of this scale leaves us huge numbers of people to thank. Some have
provided invaluable support and skills, making our lives easier; others have simply (!)
made the whole thing possible. In the latter category are Kate Weaver and Chloe
Cockerill, field officers of The Churches Conservation Trust, in whose wonderful
buildings most of these performances are taking place. Our gratitude also to Sarah
Bell, Sebastian Warrack, Jane Wilson, Joanne Gray and Julie Hewitt for their advice
and support. To Janet Cornish and Barry Pearce of the Cambridge Preservation
Society, and the Friends of the Leper Chapel for allowing us to use this atmospheric
place for our Cambridge performances. To Robin Bunce for his enthusiasm as much
as his wonderful music. To Geoff Broad for his generosity and willingness to put his
formidable range of skills at our disposal. To Kate de Buriatte for making costumes.
The Department of Applied Economics for their patient support. The residents of
Brustem and St. Truiden in Flanders, Belgium, especially Danny Gennez, Rudi the
journalist, and the Benaets-Vanweddingen family of Sint Kristina’s Straat, Brustem.
Special thanks to Jos Neven, the village photographer, who generously allowed us to
film his amazing photographic archive of local Christina-related celebrations. Many
thanks also to Jorge Guzman for photography. Thanks also to Nicole Buijsse for
early encouragement, enthusiasm and practical advice. Finally, our heartfelt thanks to
all our faithful front of house people.

‘Mirabilis’ is funded by Arts Council England, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk County

Councils, and Arts Development East Cambridgeshire (ADeC).