100 YEARS EVALUATION

100 years was an amazing experience to be a part of. I don't understand why most of Y13 theatre were selling it short to potential audience members. The amount of time I heard someone say "it's shit" was ridiculous, and I had a friend actually say "why did you guys say it was shit, it was really good" after watching the show. I think the reason for everyones hesitance to be proud of our work was because we had not seen the whole show put together ourselves, and therefore only had opinions on the bits that we had already seen. Also it is an obvious assumption that the ensemble of a play will have a much more critical opinion of the show than audience members because the ensemble has seen the work in its creation and development stages, as well as the final product. 


I believe that the way we put together the show was very efficient and beneficial way to get a lot of high quality physical theatre work created in a very small amount of time. At the beginning of the process to create our final piece 100 years, all of the duet partners and solo artists were placed into one of three separate groups with separate directors depending on which one was most relevant to the work we had already created. Jacks group were the soldiers, Tim's group were the couples, and Simon's group were the wives. We then spent several weeks in these groups creating physical theatre work by using stimulus from  A LOT OF POETRY (which I loved because I am a poetry fanatic) and also letters and account of war veterans, and using sections or moments within some of the duets and solos created to expand upon and develop into whole group pieces. One example of this was Immie's work: myself and Imogen were both in the 'wives' group with Simon as our director. As a class all the wives watched back Imogens solo performance from last term and then we all discussed the good bits and not so good bits within the piece, the inspiration for some of the movements, and how we could develop and extend on moments within Immie's solo. Over the course of a few weeks we used her work as our main stimulus to create "the bit with the boxes" which was my personal favourite moment in the show. We also read several poems and war veteran letters to use as lines in this section of the piece.



Overall I really enjoyed working on this project and I think it was very important for us as young active theatre makers in london to look back on the first world war and to remember the brave men who fought and died and educate ourselves even more on the facts of the war. Also I think it was even more important to create some theatre inspired by the events of the first world war, and then to combine that historical context with modern values and attributes so that we could show our modern audience that despite the first world war happening 100 years ago it is still as relevant as ever in today's society. I think the show went really really well, and I am so proud of every member of the ensemble. I think the atmosphere created was so tangible and palpable to not only the audience but us as performers as well. I believe this was because each ensemble member was emotionally connected to the moment and emotionally connected to the stimulus of our piece.

Performance Evaluation

Physical theatre Performance Evaluation

Today we performed our physical theatre pieces in front of the whole strand and various theatre teachers. EVERYONES WORK WAS AMAZING! So many people in the strand did really well today. 

*SNAPS FOR THEATRE*

Overall, in my opinion our piece went extremely well, and I am truly proud of what we achieved today. I believe this success was reflected in our BRIT grade 7/10. Normally I find that before any performance I get extremely nervous and start losing confidence in my work, however today I was very calm and collected before our performance. I think this is because the right amount of rehearsal time allowed me to really understand the foundations of our piece and to know every single detail and its significance within the performance. No mistakes were made because of our extensive rehearsals and all of the movement or sections of our piece flowed really well from one to another. Throughout our piece I felt very much like I was "living in the moment" and experiencing the emotions evoked within our piece similarly if not more than our audience. The poetical elements of our piece really brought our work to life and I think our decision to not include any music or backing track to our piece payed off. It allowed the poetry to speak for itself. The only things I can think of for us improving on todays performance are: 

• More  organic improvised moments
• More clarity in transitions
• consistently maintained natural fluidity

I am very happy with the way that our performance went today and look forward to adapting it and creating a whole group piece in the coming weeks. 

Rehearsal notes #5

Today rehearsed all the various sections in our piece, and began to knit them together and iron out our transitions. 

The new updated chronological order of our piece is as follows:

Paper airplanes 
"faces to the foe"
"Charlie team"
Soldier crawl
Explosions
Gas attack
Remembrance
mother sequence 

We then ran through the whole piece over and over and OVER to ensure that we both understood and knew the piece backwards and forwards and inside out. I am very happy with the way today's rehearsal went and i feel like today was the most productive and efficient rehearsal that we have had yet. No distractions, lots of hard work, commitment and energy meant that today we finally got to that stage where our performance piece is ready to be performed and tweaks or edits and no longer necessary. All we can do now is keep running through the movement whilst trying to keep the emotional element of the piece new and different and refreshed every time we perform the piece. 

What went well: Lots of material was refined and lots of run throughs took place which i am very happy about. 

How we can improve: Even more energy and a sense of flow is required before our final performance.

Rehearsal notes #4

REHEARSAL 4

Today we created and rehearsed the gas attack section of our piece.

Myself and Laure began with a warm up, and then ran through all the different sections of our piece. this really helped me as I seemed to have forgotten a few things here and there. We also smoothed out and refined the airplane section of our piece to make it more clear and readable to our audience. We also watched some videos on youtube to help inform our understanding of gas attacks.

Here are are small selection of things we looked at:

We wanted to include some religious references in our piece so therefore we combined the experimental movement we came up with in today's rehearsal with the clearest and simplest physical representation of religion: The cross.

In order to create a transition between our previous movement and the gas attack section, we had the idea that the soldier whom is about to be gassed (me) can be physically preparing for war.

Our thought process behind this was that a soldier dressing, and preparing themselves for war could also symbolically represent a young man preparing himself to die. We want our audience to subliminally anticipate the soldier's death.

What went well: Lots of improvised material was created in today's rehearsal!

How we can improve: Next rehearsal I will ensure that myself and laure do not distracted from our work by other people. 

Rehersal notes #3

Today we created and rehearsed the paper airplane section of our piece. This was originally inspired by the war poem 'To Tony' that laure found as stimulus. The poem is in the form of a letter to a lover in the war, and also has lots of visually evocative stanzas and lines that are ideal for and improv exploration. We developed this into a small section where both used and laure are facing away from one another writing a letter. We then write the words "courage" and "faith" on our pieces of paper and proceed to fold and make paper airplanes and play with them like children. This was created because we want our final piece to have a clear narrative that tells a story of growth and contains a story emotional journey within it. The child like nature of this section feels like it should be the beginning of our piece so that we can grow and show a clear journey and destination in the piece. Also we discussed in great detail the fact that children 'playing with toys' was symbolic of the young naive soldiers of the First World War using their rifles as if they were toys. This discussion was very effective for me because once we had added another layer of interpretation to our idea I found that I could connect with the work more emotionally. This deeper emotional connection with the work allowed myself and Laure to work more physically and efficiently. 

We also went over and ironed out what we created in our last rehearsal today.

What went well: I feel a lot more emotionally connected to our work now I understand what we're doing, and WHY were doing it. 

How we can improve: More feasible material needs to be created next rehearsal. Less improve. 

Rehearsal notes #2

Today after a long and detailed discussion we created and rehearsed the standoff section of our piece. Within this movement section of our piece we both start back to back and then crawl backwards into a laying down at attention position. We then move towards each other three times. This was crated and inspired by our discussion about my own personal time at army cadets. We talked about what it was like, and the exercises and workshops that I did whilst at army cadets. I then proceeded to show and demonstrate to Laure some of the various things I have learnt through my army cadet training. This conversation then evolved and developed into a spontaneous physical improvisation. This was effective as it gave us a chance to take a small idea and run with it. Through this we were able to expand on our initial ideas and develop new ideas. 

What went well: I have a much better understanding of our piece and where we want to go with it. 

How we can improve: less talking, more moving! 

We also decided on what stanzas of our war poems we actually want to use as text in out piece. We were looking for evocative stanzas of poetry that are rich in imagery and passion. We wanted lines of poetry that people would remember, that would ring in our audiences ears after our performance. But most of all we were looking for text that inspired us to create a physical performance piece. 

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

The wheels lurched over sprawled dead

But pained them not, though their bones crunched,

Their shut mouths made no moan,

They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,

Man born of man, and born of woman,

And shells go crying over them

From night till night and now.

The air is loud with death,

The dark air spurts with fire,

The explosions ceaseless are.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

               

Greybeard philosophy has sought in books         

    And argument this truth,         

That man is greater than his pain, but you           

    Have learnt it in your youth.   

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

Music

After looking at the following songs we decided we don't want to use any backing music, in case it takes away from the poetical overtones of our piece.