Behind the scenes

Our museums at Prestongrange and Dunbar open to the public between April and October. This means that every year we have to recruit a fresh team of Museum Assistants. No while it is the case that we have some staff from the previous year who apply again (other having moved on to other employment), the bulk of the Museums Assistants in any year will be new to the Museums Service and mostly new to working in a museum environment.

This year the interviews took up two full days. Having been on both sides of the equation, I can say that while being interviewed is a stressful and potentially-dispiriting experience, actually interviewing is more physically exhausting, and carries its own particular stress factors. The need to treat all candidates fairly and equally - to ask the same questions and in the same way, while keeping up an appropriate level of interest in answers often not dissimilar to ones you have already heard fifteen times is very tiring; the need to keep good notes of candidates’ answers, to help you remember who it was that said what; and the eventual need to choose between candidates who are all capable of doing the job on the basis of who nonetheless seemed at interview to be the best culminate of course in the worry that despite your best efforts, you might have made a wrong decision.

All in all, though, over the years we have been very lucky in the people who have come to work for us. I suppose that is one advantage we have as a museum service - the job itself appeals to people, not just as a route to getting paid, but as something worthwhile and enjoyable in itself. And who am I to disagree with that - after all it’s why all of us are here.

I really must discipline myself to write things up soon after they occur! The National Theatre of Scotland organised a series of performances at venues across Scotland to celebrate its launch on 25th February 2006. These performance were immensely varied both in their form, subject matter and venue, but all were based around a single theme ‘Home’. One of the performances took place at Prestongrange Museum (aka ‘a secret location in East Lothian’ according to the brochure), something that had been arranged between the Museums Service and Catherine Wheels theatre company months ago. The performance was a retelling of Hansel and Gretel.

The museum itself is closed over the winter (though the site remains open), so we arranged for a member of staff to be on hand to open up the buldings, etc. for the production. I imagine they were all really cold during construction and rehearsals - fortunately on the night of the performance I saw the weather was not too bad, slight bit of drizzle, but not too cold.

Although I was aware that the performance involved scenes in the visitor centre, the power house and around the site, I had not seen any of the work that had been done, so it was a complete surprise. After sunset Prestongrange is a very dark place. The audience (about fifty for each performance) was bussed in from Musselburgh, a couple of miles away.

The visitor centre had been internally transformed into a 1970s home - the display cases boxed in with temporary walls (complete with the obligatory wood-chip wallpaper), and we entered to ‘Shang-a-lang’ by the Bay City Rollers played on a solo cello(!). Scenes from the home life of H&G followed, complete with suitably wicked stepmother and hapless, feeble father (he never really gets the blame he deserves in the fairy tale, does he?). Then on to the woods…

…up around the Hoffmann kiln (wonderfully lit) to find the two kids, abandoned amidst eerie lights and sounds. We followed them on through the woods, which were full of spooky set dressing (tombstones, bats, skeletons, etc.). As we watched them huddled together for warmth some twnty metres from the path, behind us music began to play and bright fairground lights came on, luring us and the children into the House of Sweets (aka the Power House).

We sat in a curtained enclosure, either side of a huge table groaning under the weight of (mostly but not entirely) fake sweets and cakes. The starving children gorged and scattered sweets across the audience, then as expected were trapped by the little old lady who turned into a really rather scary (and hungry) witch. The story then proceeded as expected, though I did like the *ping!* when the oven had finished!

Having polished off the witch, the children left followed by the audience holding hands in a chain - back to the bus, past the stepmother’s grave (pause for short dance by H&G), and back to Musselburgh - with lots of sweets handed out.

It’s hard to give a real impression of how the site had been transformed for the performance. I suppose most of the audience were not aware anyway of what had been done, but as someone very familiar with the site and all its buildings I was astonished - it was literally fantastic. But it demonstrated for me something I’ve always felt - Prestongrange has such potential for a multitude of uses, if only we can find the time, resources and people.