World War One documentary Project

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Shadow puppetry experimentation

Shadow Puppetry first thoughts and designs...

We have chosen to do shadow puppetry for two of the stories - Cuthbert (gangrene story) and the shell hole story

This was due, not only to the fact that they are personal stories from people in our company, but because the stories are very different and individual. They also contain a larger narrative than the others which means we need to explore their story in a different way to how we have been with the others.

The first story - I noticed this up and down the hill kind of theme. It made me think of how soldiers are just sent up to the front line, go back down home when injured and go back up after they are better. This circular motion; going round and round, really influenced how to do this shadow puppetry moment.

The second story about brothers in a shell hole, this style from the Portuguese 'Sombras Da Asia' book really influenced our designs of how the puppet would move. With sticks attached to the hands or legs to allow them to move..

The Poem

During rehearsals, we have been trying to figure out how to do the poem. We like the idea of using the typewriter and the typewriter ink ribbon but didn't really know how to link it all. Our first experiments looked like my sketch below.

There are four parts to the poem which are read separately throughout the production - this lead us to think for each part, a single person would take a piece of ribbon from the typewriter and walk off holding it to a destination within the set (like a trail) whilst reciting the poem. We want the ribbon to be red to symbolize death and blood - bigger impact and stands out. The ribbon would go through the audience - right in their face - more powerful - gradually more ribbon is released from the typewriter, creating more 'red paths of death'

At the end of the show, we were thinking of having a huge amount of 'red ribbon paths' to come across and through the audience, to represent this MASS of death that occurred during WW1.

After rehearsals, I did some sketches and thought about this red ribbon idea further. This journalistic writing and typing of the typewriter made me think about the idea of communication - how people form connections with each other like pathways. During the war, communication played an important role:

- communication between soldiers and their families

- communication between warring countries

The communication between the countries during the war is, for me, one of the reasons

why WW1 got so bad. I feel that there was a lot of MIS-COMMUNICATION and a lot happened that shouldn't have due to poor communication.

This led me to think about how we could push this red ribbon idea - if the typewriters are representing communication, what about cross hatching or tangling up the ribbon?

Would that take away this chilling 'path of death' idea? Or could it emphasize the mayhem, confusion and frustration of the war - how everything turned into such a mess!

It is interesting creating a line out of ribbon which brings order; and especially symmetry when multiplied a few times - reminding us of order within soldiers and military structure. When this 'order' is messed up, it creates an interesting metaphor of how 'messy' and confusing the war was.

A further idea was hanging letters off these lines of communication - symbolic of each person effected by the war - letters written to families, telegrams, letters to the soldiers etc...

Another way of representing this MASS of people who were effected. Letters are very personal and individual - bringing a lot of meaning and sympathy if they are all hung up together.

Friday, 21 February 2014

Prop sourcing

We are all currently looking/searching and keeping an eye out for 8 armchairs at all times. uckily today I found a cheap double armchair for a tenner! It suits the old fashioned looking theme so I bought it. This will be paid through our 'kitty' where we have all chipped in £20.

This was a very good buy!