Finishing Devising

We finished putting together the final show. I felt as if the role of the women within the show did not have as much as depth as we thought it should have.

The women’s group decided to devise a small section on our own and see if it was possible to add it in. We thought of four jobs/roles that the women would have done during WWI. We chose sewing, machine work, cooking and civil service. We choose a role/job to portray and in groups came up with 3/4 movements that represented these roles. This improvisation gave us a good transition to get into the working women section we had previously devised.

This whole section came in after the soldiers start to march. The women join in the marching. Jack shouts out “jacket… helmet… ready”. As he shouts each of these words the person at the front of the four lines, created through the men’s marching section, mimes an action for each of these words. Everyone turns anti-clockwise in sync with the words whilst marching. Then when the person at the front of the line turns back to the front they are given a “gun” and, if they are not part of the women’s section, they run to stand on the rostra ready for war.

When it was just the women left we would take the cue from kitty and slow down the marching. This is where we inserted our devised women’s roles section. We repeated this three times and then went into the women working section. 

I feel that this whole section worked really well as it not only looked effective but it also had many deeper meanings behind it.

Another section that we changed was the women’s box section. Originally the men stayed on the stage the whole time and left before the women started to waltz. We changed it so that the women sit down next to the men and the men slowly stand up one by one and leave, they then stand on the rostra and look at their “wife/mother”. We continue to do our box section as normal. When we stand up they come back on and stand in front of us. They take our box and then we proceed to drape the jackets over their soldiers. Whilst we are still holding the jackets they slip out from underneath so we are left with the empty jackets. We start to waltz. But instead of just dropping the coats and staring at Catherine we hold the jackets to ourselves whilst still waltzing before we stare at Catherine.

This is my favourite section within the performance. It is a very emotional scene. Visually I think it looks stunning but it is so effective because of the deeper meanings within it. We clearly showed the devastation that the war caused with all of our different story lines. I found it quite interesting that just the way you hold a jacket can read differently to how someone else holds a jacket.

I'm quite confident that this is going to be a very powerful performance and I cannot wait to start performing it.