Evaluation

After a lot of hard work and under the time limit that we had I feel that we created a not only very good physical theatre piece but also a very moving, thoughtful and engaging final piece in aid of the centenary of WW1. I think that though this piece commemorated the many lost and remembered respectfully and truthfully the reality of the war and what it cost many people. I think from the reaction of audience members that we created a piece which was a lot more powerful than we had originally expected and as a result provoked many people emotionally to think about what happened to so many people and families during the war.

In the final piece my main contribution was as a member of the ensemble. I found that working with such a large group of people one could feel lost however I realised the importance of every persons contributions and how they all added something and brought the piece to life. I discovered the importance of an ensemble and the power that it can have visually on an audience, as it creates such an impact seeing such a mass of people and I feel that it really enforces the message that you are giving to the audience. I also feel that it gives the audience a chance to see one larger scene and message but also the opportunity to look closer at difference people and see the individual in the mass. As a result of this I learnt how important it was to be fully committed in an ensemble performance and to be emotionally and physically involved in everything that you do even if you think that the audience can’t see you as an individual. I feel this because there are audience members that would see you but more importantly it creates the energy of the piece and the atmosphere if all the actors are fully engaged which creates a stronger impact on the audience.

For my own role within the piece I found that it was important to convey how the women would have felt at the loss of their partners and I think for everyone in our group it was more about the relationships and the love that was between them than the physical war. I think it was about telling how it affects the individual and the emotional pain that came with the distance and the fear. I think that my role with my group showed the reality of the emotional side of the war and as a result of this I thought that it was really important for me to connect to my character so that I could present the emotional turmoil that came with the war so that the audience could connect to this piece emotionally and understand the pain that people we though.  I think that my role in the piece physically demonstrated a very real reality for a lot of people and this made me more committed and dedicated to the quality of the piece. I felt that because it represented true emotions and stories that my convey of it had to be accurate and strong and this pushed me to develop and explore the movement alongside the emotional to tell clearly the development of the story and the experiences that happened to so many people during WW1.

TECH AND DRESS

In today’s session we did a technical and dress rehearsal of or performance that we were to perform that evening. As a result of the time limit that we were under these run through’s were really important to get the piece not only finally in shape but at a performance ready level. This meant that in these run through’s, but more importantly in the dress run, that we played the objectives of our characters and to tell the story but the emotions of the story as well. As an actress I think that it is really important to be able to understand that the tech rehearsal is not to be focused on us but on everything that enhances our performance and that we wouldn’t be able to put on a show without.  

I think that the dress rehearsal was the first time that we actually began to engage with the performance as an emotional journey not just as a piece of physical movement. I think that in the dress we all remembered the beginning of the project and how, especially for the couples, that we are communicating individual stories and the true and very real emotions that came as a result of the war. This allowed the performance to become real and for the audience to really connect to the stories and journeys that we are communicating. I think that in this dress the piece fell together after a lot of hard work and not a huge amount of time to work it in and that we have created a very moving and real performance to mark the centenary of WW1.

Critics

The run through in the theatre really opened up our piece to allow us to see the full content of our piece and what can be developed and still needs to be worked on. Although this session was just putting the pieces together roughly, for me the session allowed me to see sections of the piece that could be developed further and where things are missing and what we could add to make the piece more challenging to the audience and to open them to the truth of WW1.   

When we began this project we wanted to explore the stories of World War One to commemorate   it 100 years on. We especially wanted to focus on the untold stories of WW1 and that aren’t normally remembered for their efforts. However through this process I think that the final project has become more focused on the solider of the war rather than the people who are not normally celebrated for their contributions such as the women and the work that they did. I think that the majority of our final piece is made up from the story of the soldier’s and I think that we could make our piece more original by incorporating some of the stories of the women and the untold stories that audience wouldn’t normally encounter when talking about WW1. I think that this is also important because there are a lot of companies that are remembering WW1 and I think that we could separate ourselves from them by taking a more intelligent and explorative approach to our piece. I think this is important not only for us as actors to be able to connect to these stories but also for audiences to hear them and to keep them alive.

Piecing it together!!

In today’s session we had a run through of our 100years performance. This was our first run though since before Christmas because of this some problems were presented to us. These were problems such as not knowing the order of the performance and the detail of what we had devised. For myself another problem was presented, I wasn’t at the last session when the 3 pieces had been combined into the structure of the final piece, as a result of this, this session was really important to me as I was not only being reminded of the piece like everyone else but I was also getting to know and understand the piece that we are creating and how each section links into one another. Furthermore I think that this session was really helpful because it not only made me think about the structure of the piece physically but the journey of the characters and the story that is being developed and told through us. I think that this is really important because we are not just trying to structurally put the three different sections together but to see how they affect one another, as this shows how the many different areas of war affected one another and people lives.

Our piece opens with each person saying what they think about WW1, we then combine this with recordings from WW1 veterans and their thoughts and opinions of WW1. I personally think that this is a really smooth transition from the modern day to WW1 and transferring the audience into the themes and world of WW1 that we are confronting in our piece. I also think that it is really important for this opening to acknowledge that we are students taking on such a huge subject as it shows that it is still relevant to the world that we live in even though its 100yrs on. I also think that this opening not only expresses what we think about WW1 but it actually these thoughts probe the audience into thinking about WW1 and what their opinion is.

I personally really like how the show flows through telling a story. As part of the couples section I feel that we thread through the piece telling the story and the soldiers represent the war and the women represent the aftermath and how the war affected and changed the couples. The couples begin with our chance meetings, exploring contact and showing physically the emotional connection and development of their relationship. Then the soldiers enter for their sign up section, but as the enter they push the couples together and back into a line. I feel that as the couples get pushed into a tighter group this shows how the propaganda forced men into signing up, consequently pressure is put on the couples and their relationships. The tighter the group gets the more strain is being put on the couples and the men to join the war. As the couples then experience the signing-up section, watching the soldiers and the brutality of the beginning  of the war, we see the men from the couples starting to be transfixed and the women’s despair of them leaving. I think that this is really effective because it shows the start of the pain that is caused for the women who stay at home. This story and theme is then transferred with the women’s group and how we see them opening the box and the pain at the loss of their husbands. I think that this will be really effective and moving as an audience member as in our piece we are taking the audience on a full journey from beginning to end of the lives of the men at war, allowing them to connect to the characters and to experience their story and their pain that was felt during the war.

Journey

We have just put together our piece and the journey that our characters in the piece go on. This shows us the exploration of couples in the war time. I feel that our piece really explores and intricately looks at the emptiness of being away from the one that you love and that it highlights the love and need for the other person. 

 

Journey of the piece

 

• First meeting
• Melt into each other on floor
• Come apart from hold
• Explore floor for other half
• Find each other and rise together and part
• Woman walk round searching for man – touching men (for them it’s the effects of war)
• Woman get desperate and give up – walk emotionless in elision fields.
• Men walk behind woman saying letter and trying to balance the letters on them
• Men stop and fall to floor then come up again in position of start of duet
• Woman do mundane everyday routines – life becomes too much- fall to floor then get up and rejoin man in duet position
• Duets start
• Stop and watch the final veterans duet come together

First meeting

We explored and developed how our characters in the couples first met and physically moved through and expressed the emotions and instant love within one and other. In our pair we looked at how the physical touch can send and the tension and connection that goes though each other. We showed this through the small grazing of our hands touch. We used that literal situation of waiting for a bus and then taking it into a more abstract physical exploration. We took the small touch of the hands and showed how the connection travels through the body. Hopefully we show this through our facile and body expressions and how they change from neutral to a more exaggerated and abstract movement to show heightened emotions.

 

We then jumped in time to the moment when the couple start to explore and get to know each other. We show this through the physical and intimate movement and gentle touching of each other. We used this physical movement to show the personal and emotional development of the relationship. I feel that through the intimate touching and delicacy shown through the physical movements shows the care that went through the process of getting to know each other and the love that develops between the characters. We then moved to me being picked up and a turn to show the passion and love and fire that was also part of the relationship and the connection going from emotional to physical. Also contextually couples wouldn’t have had sex until they were married so this more sensual movement symbolises the marriage of the characters and them coming together as one. I feel that this highlights the pain when they get separated as spiritually and emotionally they have become one and are being ripped apart. 

We started to explore the relationship of our piece with letters that were sent in WW1 – specifically looking at letters between couples. We saw how it looked when we combined the walking and balancing letters on people’s shoulders with the letters being read over the top. I thought that this combination of movement and the letters created a really strong atmosphere and showed how the words were written but might never have been read as they might not have reached the wife or husband before they died.

As there is a lot of trans-like walking around we wanted to explore different planes and how the different levels enhance the stories. We started by exploring the floor and how we can move around it with our bodies and over and through each others bodies. We used the objective that we were in a double bed and in a half sleep looking for the partner that isn’t next to me in the bed. I found that doing this with the objective really drove the piece through and it gave it an underpinning emotion and storyline of which the audience could connect with and get drawn into. As an actor I found that having the objective really allowed me to get into the piece and that I could use this to drive my movement through the piece. We then developed this to finding our partner and standing up with them.

Once we were standing we explored walking around the room and the women searching for the men still. We showed this by going up to different men- that’s not our partner- and touching/moving their bodies to try and see if they are our partner. I thought that when we lived through this moment it looked and felt really effective. Within myself I found that as I went round looking for my man I became more and more frustrated and that effected my movements. I found that when I tried to find my man how I touched the guys I became more forceful with my touch as I became more desperate to find my man.

The men’s reactions to the touch of the women were that they took it all through their body, and to them it was the effects of the war. I think that this is really interesting visually as it shows the two different worlds in one place, yet the couples are so disconnected from one another that the emotional distance feels so large compared to the physical distance. The women then stood still while the men continued to feel the effects of war. I found that as a woman stood still and watch the men suffering that it was like I knew the pain that they were going through but couldn’t do anything to stop it. I think that we could explore this further and the women could try to move slightly but be forced into that space physically as they can’t reach the man. Even is this isn’t developed physically I think that it is something to look at and explore mentally and emotionally as we work through this section.

I think that our piece really shows a calmness of the piece however I feel that there needs to be more bursts of energy and tension as I think this is more representative of the issues that the couples went through. I think that the waiting and unknowing caused a lot of volatile emotions within the characters and although physically they could do much to deal with the pain and so we are representing this through the calmness. However I feel that we should show the internal turmoil in the characters and couples through more energised sections that continue to drive the piece.