Nap-poo, Too-dle-oo, Goodbye-ee…

Ten girls came together to produce a show
Nine poppy wreaths are laid in remembrance
Eight black tap shoes are all lined up in a row
Seven hours prep time before performance.
Six soldiers’ letters read out loud by the birds
Five World War One songs, sang with love and with pride
Four wooden brooms creating sounds and not words
Three dancing styles that we each took in our stride.
Two instruments played live on stage and in key
One great adventure these birds have given me.

Works Cited:
Birds Eye View Theatre (2014) 

Gone but never forgotten.

Where are the girls of Arsenal?
Working night and day;
Wearing the roses off their cheeks
For precious little pay.
Some people style them canaries,
We’re working for the lads across the sea,
If it were not for the munition lasses,
Where would the Empire be?
~ Anon.

As the performance looms ever closer it is important to remember where our ideas generated from. So a trip to the war memorial in the centre of Lincoln high street, followed by a visit to Lincoln Castle where a World War One re-enactment was taking place, seemed like the perfect way to achieve this.

I found myself completely overwhelmed and quite emotional by the level of respect and remembrance for all the soldiers, wounded, missing or killed in action over the past 100 years. We set out to the war memorial for a photo of the company for our programmes and the sun was shining which was perfect for a photo op. After we took the photo we wandered around the memorial looking at the names scribed on the walls of all the soldiers we lost in World War One, below were lots of poppy reefs from many different organisations with personalised messages to remember our fallen soldiers.

Poppies for our fallen soldiers.

Coleridge, 05/05/2014

I suppose we have all lost someone we care about in our lives, I’m no exception to this. I have my own way of remembering the important people lost in my life, but it was lovely to see that people who never even knew these soldiers acknowledged their ‘sacrifice’ to the war effort. Personally I feel war is a futile effort shadowed with words of hope and peace, when really it causes more hurt than good.

Personal crosses.

Coleridge, 05/05/2014

What I enjoy most about our performance is that it not only recognises the death and sorrow of World War One, but it focuses on the women and their roles in aiding the war effort. We include humour, singing for morale and dancing, three things which indubitably are characteristics of enjoyment. These women were strong, dedicated and loving, without them the war could have been lost. Throughout creating this performance I have been moved by the culture of the era, from the music and dance styles to the act of letter writing and poetry. For me these are things to be remembered and celebrated as well as the bravery of those who gave their lives. The war wasn’t all doom and gloom!

Lincoln Castle WW1 re-enactment.

Coleridge, 05/05/2014

 

Works Cited:

Coleridge, E. (2014) Lincoln Castle World War One Re-enactment. [Photograph].

Coleridge, E. (2014) Lincoln War Memorial. [Photograph].

How to build your own man!

Birds Eye View How to guide: Props edition

Step one:
– Purchase some pieces of wood and measure out the lengths needed and cut the wood to size using various types of saw…

Wooden frame

Step two:

– Measure out the correct position that you want the wood to be held in.

Taking measurements

Step three:
– When you know where the sections need to be placed begin to nail the wood together.

Nailing together the sections of wood

Step four:
– Continue to nail the sections together until you have the basic structure for your man.

Structure

Step five:
– Wrap newspaper around the structure to give your man some bulk and muscles. Wrap a coat around the structure to make your man more realistic!

Finished product

Step six:
– Your man is now complete, so enjoy dancing (the waltz is highly recommended), strolling along the beach or having a quiet night in on the sofa. Here at Birds Eye View we prefer to dance with our makeshift men! Look out for this in the show.

Extra tip:
– Use lots of Power Tape…

Power Tape

 

Good Luck!

A day in the life of a costume and props coordinator.

9:00am – 9:30am

Wake up, possibly have breakfast if you’re the breakfast eating kind of person, I am not. Stuff a snack in my bag for later, (I’m going to need it) get dressed, brush teeth and leave the house ready for the day.

10:00am – 12:00 pm

Arrive at rehearsals, early! I try to never be late. Rehearsals could include any of the following: Waltz, fox trot, singing, acting, movement and playing games. When the session finishes I usually feel inspired and leave with a new request added to the props list.

12:00pm – 2:00pm

SHOPPING! No not the fun kind where I buy myself new clothes… I shop around to find the best deals on the things that we need for the performance, usually at the request of one of the directors. But can also include collaboration with our production manager and/or stage manager. The cheaper the better so not to waste the budget! So far shopping has included brooms, chicken wire, sheets and wooden pegs.

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Lunch break! I am partial to a bacon sarnie and a cup of tea (yes I’m northern), whilst I relax and watch mindless television, ‘come dine with me’ is a personal favourite.

3:00pm – 6:00pm

Getting creative! Using the previously bought chicken wire I get my creative juices flowing and begin to assemble props requested for a dance scene. So not to give too much away I will sum these three hours of my day up: If I cannot buy, steal or borrow an item then it may have to be made using my own two hands.

6:00pm – 8:00pm

I take a good two hours for dinner as I love to make meals from fresh, especially if it’s Spaghetti Bolognese! At dinner time I treat myself to a TV show, at the moment I’ve been watching Nikita and it is getting very intense.

8:00pm -9:00pm

As deadlines draw nearer, I tend to spend my evenings writing small sections of essays, too much writing at once and I will stop making sense. Perhaps I’ll do a cheeky blog as well, who knows.

9:00pm onwards

Shower, late night snack and my last cup of tea before settling down for the evening, eventually drifting off to sleep.

Please Note: This is an average day for me and is not a realistic view on my everyday activities, although I wish I could afford to go shopping every day. Each week Birds Eye View Theatre is working towards our final performance and so each day is different but just as important towards making something incredible for you, our audience. Enjoy!

“The power of post”~ BBC News

As this exciting process develops we are discovering more and more sources for exploration with each passing week. This week in particular we are really honing in on a main idea for our performance piece, which is to take letters from World War One and use them as a basis to tell the stories of those who are no longer here to do so.

After each session the company all take a few minutes to write a letter addressed to our lovely audience (hopefully those reading this will become our lovely audience), in which we explain the session we have just took part in and highlight our favourite points. I personally love the art of letter writing and I think that somewhere down the technological fuelled line it has become lost and sort of cast out.

By delving into Lincolnshire’s past and finding letters from soldiers to their mothers/sweethearts/daughters etc, I have been inspired and moved by the power of words. So my personal aim in writing these letters to our audience is to inspire them and let them in on our creative process so they can become part of the performance and really engage with what we are trying to do.

Booklet of letters from soldiers at war.

Museum of Lincolnshire Life 04/02/2014

Another reason for writing these letters is to keep track of how our ideas are developing, not everything we do in sessions and write about will make it into the final performance but it is all relevant to the end product, which I think is important to include the audience in.

“12.5 Million letters left the home depot every week” (BBC , 2014) during the first world war, so you can see the great importance they had at the time and with so many letters floating around we have a lot of material to work with. For now it is just a case of narrowing down the stories we want to tell, who stands out above the rest and how we can make a performance that incorporates these letters with dance, music and verbatim all in one. All I can say is watch this space, the birds are moving forward and developing some great ideas to put into practice shortly.

Works Cited:

Johnson, A. (2014) How did 12 million letters reach WW1 soldiers each week? [Online] London: BBC. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqtmyrd#z2p634j [Accessed 20 Feb 2014].

Ford, S. (2014) Booklet of soldiers letters. [Image] Lincoln: Museum of Lincolnshire Life. 04 February.

‘In the beginning…’ ~ Pinchbeck

Starting the process of setting up a Theatre Company is not an easy task! However, I feel we have begun our journey with positive footing. I believe we have gelled well as a group and share the same ideas and direction in terms of where we want this process to go.

‘The Trilogy’ (2014) [Online] at forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2013/artist/michael-pinchbeck/

Right from the off we delved into opportunities that inspire us and upon watching Michael Pinchbeck’s outstanding performance, The Trilogy came together buzzing with ideas to use for our own piece of work. The initial groundwork and basis of our ideas can be seen in the manifesto (you should take a look if you haven’t already), this was an important part of creating our theatre company because it gave us an aim for our current project and of course for future projects we undergo.

INSPIRATION!

This word is key for our process, inspiration is all around us and we are fortunate to be a Lincolnshire based Theatre Company, due to the historical relevance that it lends to our performance idea. We hope at the end of this process to create a performance that looks into the role of women within the First World War. Much to our delight we found out that the first ever tank used in the war was built right here in Lincoln, and fortunately for us a replica still stands at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life. So of course the only thing to do was to have a field trip!

Flirt II

(Ford, 04/02/2014) Flirt II

She was beautiful, named Flirt II and to top it off she was built by women as part of the war effort. This along with other stories of women in the war such as ‘the canary girls’ and munitions workers put us in good standing for going further with our ideas and beginning to move forward with our performance piece.

All in all these first initial workshops, meetings and outings have really got us excited for what’s to come and how much we can do as a Theatre Company for our first performance to make our mark in the industry.

Works Cited:

Forest Fringe. (2013) Lowres-Publicity-Image-Final. [Online] Edinburgh: Forest Fringe Edinburgh. Available from http://forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2013/artist/michael-pinchbeck/ [Accessed 10 February 2014].

Pinchbeck, M. (2014) The Trilogy. [Performance] Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 30 January.

Ford, S (2014) Flirt II. [Image] Lincoln: Museum of Lincolnshire Life, 04 February.