Womens working scene

We had a piece which represented the women working. Today in our run through we got to incorporate this into the final piece. We went into another room just the girls to recap this piece. We then decided to create another short section we could use as a transition, because we hadn't had much of a part in the overall show. We decided to pick 4 jobs women did in the war; seamstress, driver, factory worker and baker. We then got into groups and created short sequences of 3 or 4 movements to represent this job.

When we came to show the women's work section we asked if we could use the motif section to transition and it worked really well. I think the women working section was really important to add. This is because women during world war 1 were often overlooked as they weren't sacrificing their lives. But they did enlighten themselves on the fact that they could work for their own money and they liked it. World war 1 was a platform for ladies to develop from housewives to women. It was the start of a movement and revolution in gender roles which has totally changed the way we live today. This also allowed for are group to have more of a shared responsibility in the overall piece.

Refining

This session we went through and refined all the work we had created. We spent a lot of time devising the beginning so we had a strong group opening. This opening involved one by one starting to enter the space and speak about 'when I think of world war 1 I think of...'. Then a track of recordings of veterans and students from the school speaking about what they thought of world war 1. When we hear this we exit the stage leaving the couples on-stage ready to begin their duets. This is a strong opening and leads really smoothly into the couples duets, which are really dynamic and powerful pieces of work.

We also added in another section which me and partner had in our duet into the final piece. This involved walking up to the soldier and tracing their outline. This piece was meant to represent a women smartening up her husband and saying goodbye to him before he leaves for war. It is a very simply gestural piece but if everyone commits to the emotional content behind it, it could be really powerful.

The rehearsal was hard, people couldn't focus very well on what we were doing and it took a long time to get through all the pieces. When we got to the end we realised we needed to fill the women's boxes with letters for the end section so me and another student volunteered to address, tea stain and stuff 100 or so envelopes for this section. This is the sort of envelopes we made except the final ones were plain white without the airmail stripes.

Recap Session

Today we all met in the new theatre for our first physical theatre rehearsal in over a month. We had all been busy with the Christmas break and the other common ground plays, but now we have all had our opening nights we can focus on 100 years again. We left off in a really good place last term where we had set the order of the entire show. Today all we needed to do was to recap everything we had set in place and remind ourselves of the material. This was particularly challenging with the 3 male solos as they all had to remember very specific choreographed movement which they had not performed in a while.

This rehearsal wasn't particularly challenging for the girl group as we are only in the beginning and end section of the entire piece. It was just a case of remaining focused so they could get through the material as quickly as possible. It took a while but eventually we got through all the work. I think the main thing we need to bring back to the piece is the importance of the story we are telling. We need to connect to every single character we are playing with as much emotion and depth as we have been for the other plays we are in during common ground. People need to realise that this piece is now just as important as the other plays and we should all start taking our role within it more seriously. On top of that we need to remind ourselves of the significance of the stimulus we are working with and the history of world war one and the legacy these books and poems and memoirs have. Our piece is just one of many other artistic and historical celebrations which will be happening over the course of the next 4 years to mark 100 years since world war 1 and we should all take a minute to realise how special that is.