There were many phrases coined in WW1 that we still use today but many are now forgotten. Try guessing what these interesting words and phrases mean in my WW1 Colloquialisms Quiz! And for anyone who would just like a quick link to the answers, here they are.
This Horrible Histories sketch about the British trenches shows how many of these words were used.
Gemma Kate, 2011.
Works Cited
BBC (2014) The English expressions coined in WW1. [online] Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26277732 [Accessed 17 May 2014].
Gemma Kate (2011) Horrible Histories – First Time in the British Trenches. [online] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzzXPkAdQXQ [Accessed 17 May 2014].
The Great War Society (2006) Words, Expressions and Terms Popularized 1914-1918. [online] Available from http://www.worldwar1.com/heritage/wordswar.htm [Accessed 17 May 2014].
UnnamedHarald (2014) World War 1 History: Front Line Slang. [online] Available from http://hubpages.com/hub/World-War-1-History-Front-Line-Slang [Accessed 17 May 2014].
With references throughout The Second Minute to West Bridgford, the River Trent and the Sherwood Foresters, I felt a sense of pride that these WW1 soldiers had come from the place where I grew up. The setting of a small local theatre worked well, making the play more intimate. It felt like a community of people coming together to watch their heritage being played out on stage. The relaxed atmosphere promoted conversation amongst the audience with people talking to the strangers around them about their own family stories of the war.
Works Cited:
Birds Eye View Theatre (2014) The Second Minute. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKUoeVTzPdo&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 28 May 2014].
Day, R (2014) The Second Minute – in production. [online] Available from http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/whats-on/other/the-second-minute/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Day, R (2014) The Second Minute – in production. [online] Available from http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/whats-on/other/the-second-minute/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Lewis, S. (2014) Sarah Lewis Theatre Designer. [online] Available from http://sarahlewisdesigns.tumblr.com/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Lewis, S. (2014) Some of the drawings I used to make the animations for The Second Minute. [online] Available from http://sarahlewisdesigns.tumblr.com/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Lewis, S (2014) The Second Minute set design. [online] Available from http://sarahlewisdesignportfolio.tumblr.com/post/83803970157/the-second-minute-by-andy-barrett-nottingham [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Nottingham Playhouse (2014) Nottingham Playhouse. [online] Available from http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
Terry O’Toole Theatre (2014) Terry O’Toole Theatre [online] Available from http://www.terryotooletheatre.org.uk/ [Accessed 16 May 2014].
I have been completely moved by the news of the new art installation that will be opening up in August of this year. The “Sea of Poppies” as it has been named in the Telegraph. I adore art, it is one of my guilty pleasures and the simplicity of this soon-to-be stunning piece will be breath-taking.
Telegraph (2014)
900,000 beautiful ceramic poppies.
Each one resembling a British or Colonial soldier who lost their life in the war.
They will then fill the moat that surrounds the Tower of London.
This installation was developed from Mr Cummins, who usually makes these beautiful ceramic flowers for garden ornaments. It was revealed that he took the title of the installation from a will made in the trenches by an unnamed soldier from Derby. Mr Cummins stated that:
“I read through an archive of the wills and came across one written by a man who said everyone he knew had been killed. He wrote of ‘blood swept lands and seas of red, where angels dare to tread’ (Telegraph 2014, online).
These beautiful works of art will fill the entire moat, creating a sea of red, a sea of loss, a sea of epic emotion.
Image and works cited from:
Telegraph (2014) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10814268/Tower-of-London-moat-to-become-sea-of-poppies-to-mark-WW1-centenary.html [Accessed: 16/05/2014]
This week a few of the birds went to see The Second Minute by Andy Barrett
Mooney. C (2014)
Ellie and I could not fit in the car so we cycled and did some flyering on the way.
Bunclark. F (2014)
Bunclark. F (2014)
The play focused on letters being sent in the First World War ‘around nineteen thousand mailbags crossed the channel every single day and the art of letter writing enveloped the country, as people of all ages and from all classes tried to keep in touch with sons, brothers, husbands and lovers’.
Messages from the front line were sent from the soliders requesting their favourite food and telling their families they missed them. These are the types of letters my Great Granny Mooney had to deliver. Good news and bad. Letters and the delivering letter was crucial, it explored a mothers loss of her son.
Day. R (2014)
The story follows a mother called Laura who is a researcher and has discovered a solider called Tom’s letters. The honest accounts and struggle with Laura having one of Tom’s letters delivered a day recreates her relationship with her son in the war, who we find out died. She looks for something in Tom’s letters to give her hope and fill the void in her heart that her son dying has left.
We were so excited as a group to watch and experience how another theatre company dealt with a topic that was so sensitive. They performed with such a fantastic understanding of how important it was to share these stories that excited us all to perform our telling of the stories we feel are important to share.
Whilst there I asked the owner of the Terry O’Toole Theatre if she minded if we handed out flyers at the end to help market the show, she was so excited at the prospect of another centenary piece she encouraged our enthusiam.
The Second Minute is one to watch !!
Yours Sincerely
Charlotte
xx
Works cited
Day.R (2014)Terry O’Toole Theatre Website[online] Available from: http://www.terryotooletheatre.org.uk/events/the-second-minute/
In the show we have composed several scenes where we have used our interviews with relatives and local residents as verbatim. The purpose of verbatim has been described by Hammond as follows: “Instead of adapting or repackaging experiences or observations within a fictional dramatic situation, a verbatim play acknowledges, and often draws attention to, its roots in real life” (2008, p1). The idea being that you display the interviewee through the actor by imitating the person’s pauses, inflections in their voice and use the precise words that have been recorded. The idea of verbatim is to present a sense of authenticity because “if you go out and collect evidence about people’s way of life, things are revealed to you which are completely extraordinary that you don’t see coming”(National Theatre Discover, 2014); a truth that can be presented to an audience.
Some regard verbatim as a form of theatre however, as Hammond and Steward point out, it is a technique within theatre (2008, p1). This is due to the nature of verbatim as a source of information which can then be configured into a narrative creating a drama. The verbatim may be edited for a particular section of the interview or can be stylistically edited through the use of other sounds or rhythms. Within our show Lauren has devised a few ways in which we present the verbatim. Some pieces are the original recordings, some are simply spoken to the audience (this is the common feature for the verbatim from the letters we are using) and also we have taken inspiration from Dan Canham and Stillhouse’s performance with using audio devices like an Ipod where we listen to the recorded verbatim and speak whilst listening .
The piece of verbatim that was designated to me was by a lady from the Eastholme Care Centre. We came to name this piece ‘The Last Journey’. I worked very closely with Lauren to decipher the rhythm and pace of the verbatim. We soon realised that the piece was by far the fastest pace out of all the verbatim and so it took me a while to grasp everything the lady said. One piece of advice that Dan Canham gave us when using verbatim was to treat the verbatim as a rhythm. So once I had practised speaking with the lady and the pace, Lauren helped me break the piece down into sections where there were pauses in the speech or slight changes in pace. This helped greatly with translating the inflections in the lady’s voice in my own voice for the performance. Another note Dan emphasised was to not to learn the verbatim like lines from a play, the idea being that we embody the voice of the person, it was natural occurrence and not forced.
Speaking someone else’s words at first can seem very strange. I found that to begin with, I would just say the words in my own voice. It wouldn’t have much tone or emotion involved and very dull, hearing myself anyway! Gradually you have to forget about what your own voice sounds like and truly listen to the other person’s to be able understand what it is you’re trying to do with the verbatim. Every detail in the track matters; the pauses, the changes, the accent, the inflections. That is what makes the person and that is what you need to be able to portray the person to the audience. The person is manifested/transferred through you to the audience. Below is the audio track of ‘The Last Journey’ verbatim that I will be performing in the show and also a couple of links to Lauren’s posts on how she directed the verbatim in ‘Sincerely Yours’.
(Chapman, 2014)
Links to Lauren Kirby’s (Director) blogs on Verbatim:
Hammond, W. and Steward D. (eds.) (2008) Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre, London: Oberon Books.
National Theatre Discover (2014) An Introduction to Verbatim Theatre [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui3k1wT2yeM, [Accessed 5th May 2014].
National Theatre Discover (2014) The Ethics of Verbatim Theatre [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JSv-n_W5U, [Accessed 5th May 2014].
‘There’s the girl who clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There’s the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,
And the girl who calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They’re out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They’re going to keep their end up
‘Til the khaki soldier boys come marching back.There’s the motor girl who drives a heavy van,
There’s the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,
There’s the girl who calls ‘All fares please!’ like a man,
And the girl who whistles taxi’s up the street.
Beneath each uniform
Beats a heart that’s soft and warm,
Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;
But a solemn statement this is,
They’ve no time for love and kisses
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.
This poem by Jessie Pope we thought was a true representation of how hard the women worked in the war. After our working progress we discussed that it was a framing for a piece.
What I thought would be nice was to create a poem for the end which included the people who had created the piece, the women who helped us to create it and the women who inspired us in the first place. I devised the poem that you will hear at the end of the show.
I want to stage it so that the girls engagded with the poem so that the audience would. Every time the girls read out their roles or the process through the poem, you hear this incredible pride because we have come so far.
I hope you enjoy the poem and the show
Yours Sincerely
Charlotte
xx
Works Cited
Pope. J (1911) War Girls poem[online] Available from :http://allpoetry.com/poem/8605783-War-Girls-by-Jessie-Pope[Accessed on 15 May 2014)
Adrien was the kind archive angel who helped us find hundreds of letters and pieces we could use in the show. We were able to learn more about the people who were from lincoln and talked of places that we had visited and experienced.
Harry Butt was one of the young men that we got a closer look at through being in the archives, we read his story and learnt alot about the humour he used and how through his humour he would be able to keep the morale of his sweetheart high.
Being in the archives was an experience, we couldn’t take pictures of the letters and we were only allowed pencil and paper to make sure we didn’t damage the letters or photos. The fact that we had to put anything we took out of the holdings onto protective pillows gave a good understanding of how precious and valued these letters were and that the adventure we are starting on was not one to be taken lightly. The letters contained historical accounts and we knew we had to proceed with caution and be senstive to the topic we had chosen.
Ellie Lousise and I working in Lincolnshire Archives Mooney. C (2014)
Also in the last rehearsal we discussed that we were an all female cast and we had to take advantage of us all being female so we looked at what the women did in the war. World War One acted as a catalsyst of change for women and gave them independance that they had never previously experieneced. We found out through being in the Archives that women in Lincoln helped build the first tank ! Right outside the building we do all of our performances in.
Lincoln Women who built the first tank outside of theLPAC
The were called Munitionettes and Conductresses and in the early months of the break out of war women became integral to the men who were on active service. ‘ Women eventually took on a very wide range of roles in the manufacture of weapons, including sowing the fabric on the aircrafts and barrage balloons’
Mooney. C (2014)
These women played an integral part in the change of women in society, by not only ensuring the country’s surrival when then men were at war but also in the way women were perceived. They enabled a change in society that encouraged women to strive for goals they had never previously been able to experience. They made it possible for a group of ten girls to study at university and produce a piece such as this. We as a theatre company want to honor their sacrifice.
Sincerely Yours
Charlotte
xx
Works Cited
ROBEY collection. (1916) Handout sheet from the Lincolnshire Archives[online] [paper copy] Available at : http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/visiting/lincolnshire-archives/[Accessed May 5 2014]
Today some of the girls from our theatre comapny spent an afternoon at the castle in Lincoln for a Wolrd War One re-inactment.
Reading of WW1 poetry Mooney. C (2014)
All of their cast spent time talking to us about their experiences and what they had discovered.Stories of their grandparents going over the top and the things that they had read to help them understand their characters better. The period costumes that they wore were authentic and the props they had in the medical tent were all authentic, we were in awe of the objects we were beholding. Medical instruments they used on the front line, magazine articles and postcards that had been sent.
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.
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.
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!
Coleridge, 05/05/2014
Works Cited:
Coleridge, E. (2014) Lincoln Castle World War One Re-enactment. [Photograph].
Coleridge, E. (2014) Lincoln War Memorial. [Photograph].
Yesterday a few of us ‘Birds’ went to Lincoln Castle to see a WW1 re-enactment.
Mooney, 2014
Upon arrival we were drawn into a circle of people listening to a woman dressed as a lady of the First World War. She was surrounded by people who represented the many professions held by women at the time, including nurses, land workers and munitionettes.
Pearson, 2014
From her we learnt about the roles and conditions of women’s work:
Munitionettes who worked in the factories filling the shells with TNT often contracted Jaundice which caused their skin to turn yellow, giving them the nickname ‘Canary Girls’.
Many women chose to work under these very dangerous conditions for higher wages, as women could only earn a limited amount in other jobs.
Women were a source of cheap farm labour to replace the young men who had gone off to war. Their roles would be everything from looking after livestock, working the land and managing the upkeep of the farms.
Other roles a woman could take on were nursing, hospital cooking or ambulance driving.
For many girls this was an opportunity for freedom from the inevitable fate of looking after their aging parents.
The idea of women nursing wounded soldiers was not popular with the British government. One Scottish hospital was set up, employing only women, which was gratefully accepted by foreign governments. The idea behind this was that if one had to train many new male soldiers to fight, it only made sense to train new female nurses to help look after them.
There were over 46,000 women nurses in the First World War.
The war gave women new liberties: such as wearing bras, having short hair, wearing shorter skirts, going to the cinema without a chaperone and smoking in public!
It was really fascinating to learn how much we, as an all-female company, owe to these pioneering women. Most of things we take for granted now, such as the right to vote or even going out without a chaperone, came from the liberations the First World War gave women when their men were away. It also showed us just how much the war was a joint effort of both sexes, with the men off fighting for the country which the women back home kept running, with women also providing a huge service in the making of ammunition, defences and medical care.
Mooney, 2014
Charlotte has also written a blog on this which you can find here.
Works Cited
Mooney, C. (2014) WW1 reenactment group 1.
Mooney, C. (2014) WW1 reenactment group 2.
Pearson, L. (2014) WW1 reenactment women’s role in the war.
Even though I have taken on the role of stage manager. I have also been thinking about our lights and what design would suit the performance best. Overall, I think simple lighting such as warm washes and spot lights would suit our performance the best. But I had an idea that I wanted to try out. Below is a diagram in which I thought would look effective and a representation of a poppy.
(http://www.stagelightingguide.co.uk/)
Here is my attempt…
I managed to create the lighting effect but I realised that too much colour was involved and it is a very dramatic contrast between the washes I had and this particular design. Therefore, I had to think of something else. This is where the image of the poppy projection idea came into place. I asked Louise, the assistant stage manager whether she would be able to create a poppy that could be projection from the lighting bar above the stage. This is what she came up with:
With this image I would like to put it in the centre of stage as an end piece during the last song in the performance.
‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ or ‘Till the Boys Come Home’ (as is was originally know) is the first song we learnt as a company and was the starting point for me to realise the potential of the girls. This potential grew as we did vocal warm ups. It also gave me a good indication of who was potential for a solo.
I led lots of excercises whilst learning this song because some of the birds use lots of emotion and some of the girls connected less initially to the song.
One of the exercises was to put themselves in the position of some of the women who were left behind. The emotions they portrayed were sad and heart broken which was really good but I think the song is surrounded by hope, which is one of the emotions I want the girls to convey to the audience. So I sent them out of the room and had them all come back in, sit down again, faked a phone call that the war had been won and they were retreating and the whole mood of the song changed. It was incredible to see.
I showed them the difference in facial expression by using a mirror and making them sing infront of a big pannel of glass in the studio. This was so they could not just see what they were doing but gadge how other people were using and expressing themselves in the song. At this initial point I was not to concerened with the ability of singing I was more focused on them conveying emotion.
I stressed to them the importance of emotion over sound, to the extent I made them do it in silence to just focus on their faces
I hope you can tell how hard the girls have worked on feeling the emotion of the song.
Our performance has a homemade feel to it and, due to the nature of the content, it feels very personal and quaint. We want to extend this beyond the performance and to our audience in the lead up to the show, as well as the shows aftermath. After all, it is the centenary year of World War One.
During our research stages we spoke to many people who have influenced the show as we give their stories a voice. To say thank you to these people and to show how much we appreciate them sharing their stories with us, I will be sending them a home-made invitation/thank-you card.
Golby (2014) Home-made Cards
I hope that these small gestures will show how much we value these stories and the people who they belong to. As a company we must ensure that we stay true to them and do them justice when they are transformed for the stage.
Step one:
– Purchase some pieces of wood and measure out the lengths needed and cut the wood to size using various types of saw…
Step two:
– Measure out the correct position that you want the wood to be held in.
Step three:
– When you know where the sections need to be placed begin to nail the wood together.
Step four:
– Continue to nail the sections together until you have the basic structure for your man.
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!
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.
Here are a Few Clips Ellie and I recorded in the Care Centre.
Residents Talking of their good and bad experiences of the war.
Today Ellie and I went to visit the people in the East Holme residential care centre to hear their stories and see if it could inspire our piece especially seeing as it is research and development stage.
The stories of these people were beautiful and melted our hearts. A common theme seemed to be how
‘No one ever talked about the war’
The topic of war was painful for a lot of the residents to talk about, they were more then happy to share stories of family members returning and riding on tanks and their fathers returning from war. However, losing members or having them not return brought some of the members to tears, this was hard for Ellie and I to experience but gave us an understanding of how sensitive the issue was for all of the people we talked to and potential audience members.
Even though the residents found it hard they shared their stories and were so excited at the prospect of coming to see it because it was the stories they had told us, and we were giving their words a stage.
This is what my desk looks like at the moment. It feels very professional with two screens, two keyboards and a Laptop Performance Keyboard.
Pearson, 2014
Works Cited:
Birds Eye View Theatre (2014) How to create a backing track. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFJjmkwNjA&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 20 April 2014].
Birds Eye View Theatre Company (2014) Behind the Scenes. [online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIr3SWRJwXM&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 18 April 2014].
