Dear Reader,
This is my final blog post and I hope you have enjoyed following our performance.
Pearson, F (2014)
I have loved the process and seeing it all come together as we had hoped. A fantastic piece that I am proud of and nine new friends that I could not have done it without.
Sincerely Yours
Charlotte
xx
Dear Reader,
This is the typical day in the life of a musical director…
7.00 am rise and shine
8.00 am plan todays session
11.00 am attend directors meeting
12.00 am run the music session
This is a version by George Asaf and Felix Powell who originally composed the music.
Asaf’s version is composed for male voices, using a lower key. However, because we are a cast of all female actors, I thought it would be appropriate to make the song more feminine with the use of a higher vocal range and using mainly major chords for the guitar and ukulele opposed to minor chords.
Here’s the movement for pack up inspired by the factory movements.
3.00 pm its the end of the session and I always like to send them away motivated for the next session
The birds like to think of this as a Charlotteism, today I said they were all ‘SPECtacualar’
3.00pm get home
5.00pm tea time
11.00 pm bed
11.05 ZZZzzzzzzzz
Yours Sincerely
Charlotte
xx
Works Cited
BBC(2014) Photograph taken of the sheet music for Pack up Your Troubles[online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25968407[Accessed on May 3 2014]
Dear Reader,
Send Me Away With A Smile. Pearson, 2014
As this is the finale song, I wanted to get as much energy into it as possible, this meant getting the girls up on their feet.
We came up with actions to help learning the lyrics and had lots of fun learning it.
I gave the girls options for the final song and this was by far everyone’s favourite, for two reasons. It was apt in our piece about saying goodbye but not wanting to. It is also the end of an era for all of the girls in the show because it’s the last song we will sing at university, so it holds great emotional ties for all the girls, I hope all of this emotion is conveyed.
Sincerely Yours
Charlotte
xxx
Dear Reader,
My Granny Biscuit, found in an old album in the dining room, she was about 25 when this photograph was taken.
This is my Granny Biscuit, she is now 86 years old and is one of thirteen children. The story that she tells in the video is of my great Grandad Freeman(her father) and great Granny Mooney (my Grandads mother). My Granny discovered when it was nearing her wedding day that when Grandad Freeman was going off to war he had left his job as a postman. In the absense of Grandad Freeman, Great Granny Mooney took over the job of delivering thousands of letters from the front line to the houses of their loved ones, sometimes delivering good news but often not.
Great Grandma Mooney
Great Grandma Mooney took on the role of a Postwoman and my Granny and Grandad found out near their wedding day
Granny and Granddad on their wedding day
that their parents had had a connection from the war, in that they had exchanged jobs. I found this out on a night at the beginning of the process where we were having a game of scrabble ( that she won hands down)and wanted to know more.
I called my Granny and asked her if I could do an interview with her to learn more about it.
She found it incredibly hard to talk about but decided to go ahead and tell me all she knew. Here’s a section of the interview that I will show to the girls and see if we can use it in the show
Hope you have enjoyed having a look at a bit of my family history
Sincerely Yours,
Charlotte
xx
Mooney. C (2014)
Day. R (2014)
Works Cited
Dear Reader,
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]
Dear Reader,
World War One Re-enactment Mooney. C (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.
Sincerely Yours
Charlotte
xx
Hello 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:
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.
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.
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.
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
Dear Reader,
Ours was the fen country by Dan Canham struck us all as a piece that we could us in our own show. The way he used verbaitum voices from the fens and used the nautral rhythms from their voices to create beats to dance to really inspired us and our work. I loved the way that they faded up the actual voice to the actors speaking the words because it made the performance come alive. Also the way Canham used the rhythms of the fen country voices to create movement gave an intertextual element to the piece, providing the piece with layers; the pre recorded, the live voice and dance.
londondance.com
Another piece that provided our theatre company with inspiration was Michael Pinchbeck’s piece The Trilogy (Michael-Programme-Guide-Web) who looked at the past present and future self. It inspired me through use of the text and the way Pinchbeck approached different elements into his piece.
Michael Pinchbeck Performance|Physical/visual theatre|Devised theatre Photograph taken by Julian Hughes
Pinchbeck used a live feed so the audience could read what was written on the cards, it was commical and allowed the audience to become a part of the satire. Pinchbeck also stripped back the stage so it was a bare space, the actors filling the space with props and tech equipment.
They put the tech on stage which gace them the ability to control the internal elements; repeating sound cues, enabling microphones. Having the tech on stage allowed them to have a lot more control over their piece and this is something we are interested in taking forward in our own piece.
We talked in our last rehearsal about the prospect of his a live feed and what advantages it would have for our own work. We also love the idea of stripping back the stage so it is bare, this would be to create a sense of honesty in out piece. Honesty in our piece is important because we are telling the stories of the past and we are not hiding anything in our staging it is bare and visable for all to see.
Yours Sincerely
Charlotte
xx
Works Cited
Canham, D. (2014) Ours was the Fen country, [performance] Dan Canham (dir.):Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 30 January 2014.
Mayk, K. (2012) Audience Feedback from Pulse Fringe[online] Still House Available from: http://stillhouse.co.uk/stilhouse/stillhouse_-_ours_was_the_fen_country_files/HERE.pdf [Accessed 28March 2014).
Pinchbeck, M. (2014) Online Programme[online] Triology Available from: http://michaelpinchbeck.co.uk/assets/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Michael-Programme-Guide-Web.pdf[ Accessed 30 March]
Pinchbeck, M. (2014) Trilogy, [performance] Michael Pinchbeck (dir.): Lincoln Performing Arts Centre.
Pinchbeck, M. (2014) British Arts Council [online] Available from :http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-performanceinprofile-2010-michael-pinchbeck.htm[ Accessed on 30 March]
Dear Reader,
Our main focus as a theatre company as you can tell from the title is letters. As Bird’s Eye View Theatre are celebrating the centenary we delved into the archives (I now have my own membership) and found old letters sent from loved ones from Billie to Dora and from Harry to Alice, we were excited by the prospect of holding these old letters and falling in love with these characters of the past and their stories Ellie, Louise and I were shocked at the amount of history we could hold in our hands, actual letters that were sent that talked of the stonebow in Lincoln and Barclays bank,places that as students we walk past every day and now they have some hidden history and story that we can share.We desperately wanted to give history a stage and let voices of the forgotten past be remembered.
We found some amazing things in the archieves including embroided post cards that the soilders either bought or made and sent them to loved ones.
Forget Me Not Mooney. C (2014) Taken in the archives
The Birds also had the pleasure of Louise and Lauren’s grandparents checking in their attics and finding lots of old embroided post cards which made the whole experience feel a little bit more real. Touching the cards that were passed through so many hands in WW1 made it a little bit eerie but made the Birds feel like we as a company were beginning to become apart of bringing the stories to life.
Yours Sincerely
Charlotte
xxx