We created the scene slowly and continually added different motifs of movement to develop the section. We started just by finding a position in the room and then walking to another place in the room and that was then our pathway for the rest of the exercise.
We then repeated the journey but we had to add another level so this could be getting off the floor and raising upwards or having to creep under an obstruction.
We repeated the exercise over and over adding something new each time to our journey, this could be:
- A noise, sound, word or phrase.
- A balance.
- A roll.
Once we had added all four elements to our journey we started to look at the intentions of our journey- were we injured? Were we marching or saving someone? Everyone had their own intentions and we quickly wrote a small paragraph about our journey.
Here is mine:
I am lying senseless in moist, dark earth. I can not commit to movement nor any sensory touch. Out of the abyss, the cries of the helpless. I impulsively jolt and find my feet and run- where ever I can go. I hide, unable to face the sunlight again.
Because we had both modern and old warfare to consider we needed to link the two time periods together and we thought it would be good to have music to identify this for the audience. I created a track of both modern and traditional war music with a radio tuning switching between the pieces. The songs include works from Nirvana, The Poppy Girls, Eminem and the older, more tradition songs from the early 20th Century.
We then added our central character Dorothy into the sequence. She is curious as to what it would be like to be a man in the war and is getting dressed however is disturbed and stops at the end of the montage.
You can see the sequence below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3k5Vr8Miuc
I think this is an ideal opening in Two Worlds, One War because it sets the scene with the music, showing a large time span and also introduces our central character and foreshadows what is to come.
I think that the soldiers show a time lapse of what it could be like out on the front line and it is a hard hitting, thought provoking opening to communicate how two eras collide, yet both are caught in one war.
CHRIS BENNETT
Mayflower Theatre approached me to spend a day training with the national theatre War Horse Tour Education team to enable me to support local work when the War Horse tour came to Southampton. Having had a fantastic day at the national theatre in London, working with Al Nedjari (one of the original War Horse puppeteers) and Melanie Whitehead (Education Officer for the War Horse Tour) I was then asked by Mayflower Theatre to work with students at Richard Taunton’s College to share some of the things I had learned.
Al Nedjari was trained by Handspring Theatre Company, who designed the War Horse puppets, and he showed me how they focus their own energy and direct it into the puppet and give it the illusion of life.
Melanie worked with a group of us to create our own Soldier’s Journeys. This was a brilliant workshop which gradually built into a performance which could be used individually or as an ensemble piece.
I worked with the students at Richard Taunton’s College and together we created scenes for puppets and developed monologues and poems which they were able to take forward into the devising process of their own war-themed piece. The students worked very hard and are clearly very talented and dedicated. I had a wonderful time exploring ideas with them.
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