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The “Lost” Art of Letter Writing

‘A letter should be regarded not merely as a medium for the communication of intelligence, but also as a work of art.’ (Westlake, 1876, 44)

Lost art 1 edit Lost art 2 edit

For those struggling to remember how to write a formal letter, here is a quick ‘how to’ guide.

Turk, 2014

Works Cited

BBC (2014) Writing a Letter. [online] Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/writing-a-letter [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Debrets. Art of Letter Writing. [online] Available from http://www.debretts.com/british-etiquette/communication/written-etiquette/letters/art-letter-writing [Accessed 6 May 2014].

McKay, B and K, McKay (2009) The Art of Letter Writing. [online] Available from http://www.artofmanliness.com/2009/04/16/the-art-of-letter-writing/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Turk, G. (2014) Look Up. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Westlake, J.W. (1876) How to Write Letters. Philadelphia: Sower Potts & Co.

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Women of the Great War

Yesterday a few of us ‘Birds’ went to Lincoln Castle to see a WW1 re-enactment.

WW1 charlotte 1

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.

WW1 1

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.

WW1 charlotte 2

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.

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How to Promote on the Radio

When you think about performance promotion on the radio, you automatically think of interviews. This is not the only way to promote a performance via the radio!

Simpson, L. (2014) BBC Radio

Simpson, L. (2014) BBC Radio

As part of the marketing team, it is imperative that you conjure up new and creative strategies that are guaranteed to grab your audience’s attention. For our particular piece, we discovered a lot of letters sent from the front line which are not all being used within the performance itself. To me, this seemed like a waste of such good material. So, why not use them as a marketing tool?

I contacted the local radio station and pitched my idea to them and asked for their advice on how best to tackle this project and also asked if they are interested in the idea themselves. I proposed that we read the letters out as a weekly feature leading up to the show. The radio station, Siren FM ,expressed a great deal of interest in this project and brought a lot of new ideas. They offered us the chance to turn the letters into a selection of mini radio dramas, complete with sound effects of the war.

Siren FM Studio

Simpson, L. (2014) Siren FM Studio

Last week, I went along to the studio with a male actor to play the voice of Billy Lounds in the mini dramas. We spent half an hour recording 5 of the individual letters, and then I edited them into individual tracks. I then left them in control of the people at Siren, to add relevant sound effects or music to. They will then be released every few days leading up to the performance, so stay tuned to Siren FM. The latest dates and times are as follows:

May 14th – 1pm

May 15th – 2pm

May 17th – 10am

May 20th – 12pm

May 21st – 7pm

May 22nd – 11am

But for now, here is snapshot of one of the letters…

 

Let’s hope that it brings in a big audience!

Works Cited:

Simpson, L. (2014)

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Practising with lights!

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.

Lighting state

(http://www.stagelightingguide.co.uk/)

Here is my attempt…

poppy-lighting-720x963

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:

poppy projection

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.

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Documenting, creating an archive.

Whilst being involved in this process it has been incredibly enjoyable documenting everything that happens during rehearsals, meetings and catching some wonderful moments. I find it amazing that we are creating our own historical archive that people can look back on. So in a way, we are producing a piece of work from historical documents and archives and in the process we are creating our very own files of videos, pictures and notes documenting our journey. Our digital afterlife reveals how our ‘content is a reflection of you’ and how the ‘content is [our] legacy’ (Carroll and Romano 2011, p.3). That is why it is incredibly important to make sure that all content is ‘relevant to the target audience, as well as presented appropriately and in context’ (Leib 2001, p.108).

Works Cited

Carroll, E and J. Romano (2011) Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What’s Your Legacy? USA: New Riders.

Cox, E (2014)

Leib, R (2001) Content Marketing: Think like a Publisher – How to use Content to Market Online and in Social Media. USA: Que Publishing. 

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Till We Meet Again – A Collaboration

 

1175336_10152000323245426_895215068535173070_nHello reader,

Charlotte and Ellie here with an insight into our collaborative process of creating ‘Till We Meet Again’.

Here’s a few photo’s Emily took in our rehearsals:

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Directing: Words of Wisdom…

During the process of devising the content for Birds Eye View Theatre’s debut show, the three directors, Charlotte, Ellie and I have taken very different approaches when leading our sessions. Having little knowledge in the field of directing, I feel we have developed three very distinct styles as the rehearsals have progressed. Here are three tips I found most useful when directing our company…

In Chapter Two of Directing: A Handbook for emerging theatre directors, author Rob Swain writes;

‘It is important for any director to have what many directors call their toolkit. This Toolkit may include individual games or exercises and it may include whole patterns of structuring rehearsals.’ (Swain, 2011, p.47)

This is true. There are certain warm ups now which have become a regular occurrence of my sessions. I found it is extremely important to motivate the group and by starting the session with a fun and energetic warm up that the group enjoys.

Laurens Iphone 2013-14 838

‘Much needed Caffeine’ Kirby, L. (2014)

This brings my to my next point regarding ‘Rehearsal Decorum’. If you can establish a professional and comfortable working relationship in your rehearsal space, you are far more likely to see the best work from your actors, administrators and producer. Michael Bloom’s Thinking Like a Director suggests,

The most consistently effective [directors] are those that regard actors with respect, tact and appreciation, as colleagues and members of a team. (Bloom, 2001, p.132).

A final thing I have found most useful during this module is organisational skills. I feel my organisation skills have developed considerably since the beginning of the module. In order to gain authority and respect from the company a director must inform actors and plan rehearsals accordingly. Writer of Directing a Play, Michael McCaffery states his views on the guidelines of ‘daily rehearsals’,

With ‘daily’ rehearsals make sure that:

  • you are rehearsing what needs it, not just repeating things.
  • you plan far enough in advance to let the actors know where they will be rehearsing and when.
  • you do not go out of sequence unless you are confident enough to do so. (McCaffery, p.44, 1988).

I’d like to conclude this post with a rule of my own…

Be confident.  

During our process so far at Birds Eye View Theatre I have found confidence is key. Afterall,

‘The director of a play, film or television programme is the person who decides how it will appear on stage… and who tells the actors and technical staff what to do.’ (Sinclair, 1995, p.463).

Work Cited: 

Bloom, M (2001) Thinking Like a Director: A Practical Handbook. New York: Faber and Faber.

McCaffery, M. (1988) Directing A Play. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Sinclair, Gwyneth Fox, Stephen Bullon, Elizabeth Manning. (eds.) (1995) Collins Cobuild: English Dictionary. London: HarperCollins Publishers.

Swain, R (2005) Directing: A handbook for emerging theatre directors. London: Methuen Drama.

 

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Keep The Home Fires Burning

Dear Reader,

‘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.

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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

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I hope you can tell how hard the girls have worked on feeling the emotion of the song.

Sincerely Yours

Charlotte

xxx

Works Cited

Harrison. J (1915) Till the Boys Come Home (Edison Blue Amderol 2773) Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.

McCormack and Kirkby (1916) Vintage Audio: Keep The Home Fires Burning—[online] Available from: www.firstworldwar.com [Accessed on May 01 2014)

Fuld,J. (2000).Keep the home fires burning ; The book of world-famous music: classical, popular, and folk. (Courier Dover Publications)pp.316. 

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The Personal Touch

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.

WIN_20140501_121413

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.

Works Cited

Golby, Jessica (2014) Home-made Cards.

 

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Current Expenditure

They say money makes the world go around and, as the producer, it is my job to keep on top of the company’s finances and I do this by keeping detailed sheets of where all the money is being spent.

WIN_20140512_104533

Golby (2014) Spread Sheets and Receipts.

At the start of the process I made a preliminary budget sheet which gave each section of our expenditure, a budget. You can see this here. Now, as we are well in to the project and are coming in to the final month, it is vital that I keep an eye on how much we are spending and where it is being spent. This is to ensure we do not go over our budget of £266.66. You can see how we have currently spent our money here.

 You will be able to see that we have currently underspent on Marketing and Audience Development, Technical Support and Disposables, yet have over spent by £12 on Artistic Spending. The under and over expenditure have levelled themselves out and, as long as I continue to keep an eye on the budget, I believe we will spend our budget to the penny, or even underspend.

Works Cited

Golby, Jessica (2014) Spread Sheets an Receipts.

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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!

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Dear Residents

care home

Dear Reader,

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.

Yours Sincerely

Charlotte

xxx

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For the People…By the People

The nature of ‘Sincerely Yours’ offers a beautiful space within which the voices of The First World War can take centre stage in its centenary year to pass on the tales of history. Our piece has been created from the letters, personal stories and history of the Local Lincolnshire people during the First World War and has been devised for the people of Lincolnshire in the 21st century. This gives our audience a strong, emotive connection to the piece, a deeper appreciation and understanding of their ancestors. They can hear what their feelings, emotions, fears, rejoices were and listening, in some cases for the first time, to the truthful occurrences in day to day wartime Lincolnshire life.

wp428986ba_1a
The Women of Lincoln who built the first ever Tank, Flirt II.

The Lincoln Tank Memorial. Accessed on April 21 2014, http://www.lincolntankmemorial.co.uk/aboutus.html

Our visits into local nursing homes have provided us with some of the closest accounts and most personal stories that we will ever come across in this process. Speaking to the elderly about stories their mothers, fathers and relatives, now passed, have previously told them gives us the most intimate link to wartime Lincolnshire people. They were able to tell us specific times, smells, sounds, feelings they had when their elders had told them stories and, more importantly, the tone in which their elders had spoken. There is something incredibly moving about talking to the elderly about their childhood experiences and how they spoke with their parents about The Great War. They divulge some moments in time which are extremely personal and, on occasion, has caused great upset, yet they carry on speaking as if it helps them to deal with their past and aids them in moving on. We have seen how they talk fondly of their past, almost without pausing to think, as if it were yesterday, and they can remember the conversation word for word without even thinking about it. Like muscle memory they reel this information off and share such intimate moments with us, we have been extremely privileged. To capture this in performance, we use the technique of Verbatim. It allows us to speak in their vocal pattern, with their story telling tone and hope to capture the essence with which they told us originally. We don’t embody or act them. We allow their voices to speak through us.

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Birds Eye View Theatre Company walking in the footprints of the women who came before our time.

Emily Cox, 2014.

Works Cited

The Lincoln Tank Memorial. Accessed on April 21 2014, http://www.lincolntankmemorial.co.uk/aboutus.html.

Emily Cox, 2014.

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Creating a backing track

Birds Eye View Theatre, 2014

This is what my desk looks like at the moment.  It feels very professional with two screens, two keyboards and a Laptop Performance Keyboard.

Louise's Desk

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].

Pearson, L. (2014) Louise’s Desk.

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Taking the Social Media Reign

“The Social web is an oasis“

(Evans 2008, p. 15)

Now, I have been involved with marketing a lot throughout my three year degree in Lincoln so you would think being in charge of the social media for a few days would be like a second nature. Wrong! Emily has gone home for the Easter holidays and so I have taken the reigns of the oasis that is Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I am not the best with networking sights and the pressure really has been on as Emily is so good at it.

I became very ‘snap happy’ taking photos of everything the birds did and videoed all the singing and dancing that happened from multiple angles and with various filters. Okay, so maybe I went a tad overboard but hey, you can never know too much about our fabulous show! (Great plug there for you all)!

Here are a few of the snaps I took throughout my three day reign…

Works Cited:

Evans, D. (2008) Social Media Marketing: An Hour A Day, Indianapolis, IN Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Simpson, L. (2014)

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Waltzing through life

The Waltz we know today began its development at the beginning of WW1 when the Boston, an American dance brought over to England, began to evolve into both the classic English Waltz and the ‘more theatrical’ (Ballroom Dancers, 2014) American Waltz. Originally the English Waltz was a ‘step, step, close’ (Dance Universe, 2014) eventually changing to ‘step, side, shut’ (Dance Universe, 2014) in the late 1920s which is still used today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcIV-K7gpFg

Downs, 2008

The Waltz is danced in a slow 3/4 time signature with a basic step consisting of a forward step, side step and a close all on the beat. The first step on the strong beat is a fall, followed by two rises to the beat
    2    3      2    3
1            1             and so on.

BBC, 2014

For our performance we are concentrating on the basic step, the Natural and Reverse turns and Whisk and Chasse. They may be fairly simple in their technique but when executed correctly they are very effective and beautiful to look at, especially the Whisk and Chasse.

Long, 2011

The Waltz is now a classic ballroom dance synonymous with romance and reserved love as opposed to the passion of the Tango as characterised in films such as Moulin Rouge (2001). The strict rhythm and movement of the Waltz makes it an excellent beginner’s dance.

I love Waltzing, its strong steps make me feel graceful and elegant even with limited dance experience.  It also feels like I am carrying on a family tradition as my Grandparents were Ballroom Dancing teachers in the 1950s.

Works Cited:

Ballroom Dancers (2014) American Style Waltz. [online] Available from http://www.ballroomdancers.com/dances/dance_overview.asp?Dance=AWA [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Ballroom Dancers (2014) Slow Waltz. [online] Available from http://www.ballroomdancers.com/dances/dance_overview.asp?Dance=WAL [Accessed 14 April 2014].

BBC (2013) Abbey Clancy & Aljaz Skorjanec Waltz to ‘Kissing You’ – Strictly Come Dancing 2013 Week 1 – BBC One. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN4dXenlxbI&noredirect=1 [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Brett Long (2011) Waltz Whisk Chasse’. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db4tzhx8BCY [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Dance Universe (2014) Dance Styles & Histories – Modern Ballroom and Latin American. [online] Available from http://danceuniverse.co.kr/style.htm [Accessed 14 April 2014].

John Downs (2008) Margot and John B. dancing american waltz. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcIV-K7gpFg [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Luhrmann, B. (dir.) (2001) Moulin Rouge. [film] Twentieth Century Fox.

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The Ripples Grow

photo 1

(Chapman, 2014)

From the casting of our pebble a few months back, the ripples have grown. As our ideas have developed, our confidence in ourselves and as a company have also strengthened. With this ever growing confidence with our work, we have seen refinement to some of our original ideas and also used  influences from other professional such as Michael Pinchbeck’s The Trilogy and Still House’s Ours Was the Fen Country plus our own research to create original and exciting new work.

We have stuck with the idea of presenting a Documentary piece of theatre as it seemed appropriate for our desired subject we were looking at, World War One, rather than producing a straight play. It has also allowed us the liberty to spread our wings, as it were, and discover the multitude of information and resources about World War One and utilise it to our own ability and effect. The main purpose and point in our manifesto is to create real theatre.

“We are committed to creating REAL theatre. Honest theatre. Truthful theatre. Theatre that uses real people’s voices. We want to give history the chance to speak again” (Manifesto)

With the chosen path of our work we have stayed true to this as much as possible. All of the text we have used so far, mainly the letters we found, have not been edited with embellishments or alterations. We have taken the raw text and used other elements such as music and movement to stylise the presentation of the texts. The influence of verbatim theatre came from Dan Canham’s performance Ours Was the Fen Country, which used real people’s stories and voices to create a representation and atmosphere of the Fens. This is what we are trying to achieve with finding stories and letters from World War One in order for the audience to gain an insight into Lincolnshire’s place in World War One and also some stories that are personal to members of our company.

LincolnCathedral

(Chapman, 2014)

Links to previous blog posts:

Works Cited:

  • Birds Eye View Theatre Company (2014) Manifesto [online] Lincoln: University of Lincoln Blogs and Social Network. Available from: https://birdseyeviewtheatre.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/sample-page/manifesto/, [Accessed on 14th April 2014].
  • Pinchbeck, M. (2014) The Trilogy. [performance] Michael Pinchbeck (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 30th January.
  • Stillhouse (2014) Ours Was The Fen Country. [performance] Dan Canham (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 6th Feb.