Washing line first ever rehearsal... how to do it?

Within this initial rehearsal, we placed the puppets at the front on a high up table looking into the distance where the audience would be. The line would weave through the audience as they began to talk.

 
We had a bucket below the puppets where the handkerchiefs were going to be and the pegs were pegged to our jumpers... one by one we walked up to the buckets and squeezed the handkerchiefs dry and went over to hang up each one.

Once all were hung, we stood at each poll and lifted the line and started moving the line along so that the handkerchiefs started moving through the audience as if each one were following the one in front.








The 'pully' action of the handkerchiefs moving was quite jerky and bumpy and we would have to practice to get it in time and in sequence so they moved off slowly and smoothly. The audience among the handkerchiefs worked really well, the obtrusiveness of the handkerchiefs and the way they blocked the audiences vision was effective... the notion of us hanging the handkerchiefs up as a theatrical action visually also worked as it was repetitive which fits again with this repetition idea of war.