My initial response to the script stimulus is that there is a lot of political satire. Satire is a tool that can be used to criticise people through the use of irony, comedy or exaggeration. While reading the script I became more uncomfortable as the characters, some of whom were symbols of countries, talked about the First World War as a method of making money. I also recognised how the war was perceived differently by people of different ‘classes’ and positions in their careers.
The way that the characters were and possibly did make a profit was through the selling of arms. These men need war to make a substantial profit, this is immoral. This is one of the dark sides of capitalism. In today’s world, one of the biggest weapons manufacturers and distributors is Northrop. It reported revenues of $25.218 billion in 2012. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Northrop was the target of many high-profile criminal and civil cases. In 1995, an employee of TRW Inc., a company Northrop Grumman bought in 2002, discovered that satellite parts manufactured for the U.S. Air Force were faulty and likely to fail in operation. TRW suppressed the employee’s report of the problem and hid the information from the USAF, even after a satellite in space equipped with the faulty parts experienced serious anomalies. These cases can be linked to the fact that many guns during WW1 were faulty and there was a lot of close quarters combat with their bayonets.
The idea that the everyday man is expendable is fascinating. The battle of the Somme lasted 1 July 1916 to 18 November 1916. More than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The reasoning behind the battle was to try and break the stalemate and to help relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. This goal was successful but it came with a price, a price that could have very easily been avoided. There was poor planning because the leaders were rushing. Before the battle, there was a five-day bombardment of the German trenches. The aim of this bombardment was to break down the German trenches, also to break down the barbed wire protecting the German trenches. The British Generals were very naive and thought that nothing would be alive on the other side because of the heavy artillery bombardment. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, therefore, ordered his men to walk across no man’s land with 80 pounds of extra equipment. The Germans had hidden in dugouts during the bombardment and weren’t wiped out. They had time to quickly place machine guns ready for the British advancements. On the first day alone the British suffered 60,000 casualties and 20,000 deaths. The generals had failed to notice that the strategy was terrible but due to stubbornness and failure to assess the situation. The machine gun was also underestimated. This lead to a war of attrition. Many people blamed General Haig. Nearing the end of the war people started to lose confidence in the generals and particularly General Haig. Most of the troops had lost all respect for the generals and confidence in them, at the start of the war people were raring to fight for ‘king & country,’ but by the end of the war, the soldiers couldn’t care less. Their own battalion shot many of their men for ‘cowardice’. The troops had lost belief in the generals leading them to victory in the war.
During the war, a government film was made in Britain. It was heavily censored and was used as propaganda. The most memorable scene for me was when a group of ‘soldiers’ were sent out of the trenches and one man was shot down. This scene is famous for being fake. It was included for dramatic impact. Deaths were entertaining to some people. this could be interesting to explore in the performance.
The style of the script is Pierrot. This a style of comical mime found in French pantomime. I believe the writer wanted the play to allow the audience to laugh at the characters, however, there is still a seriousness cast over the play due to the topic. I will try to bring that into my performance.
I will pick the performer (devised) brief.
The distance between the everyday soldier and the general shows an interesting relationship that could be substituted in many scenarios. The lower class being perceived as less significant is a story we hear far too often in real life. This could be used as inspiration for the performance because the social message of equality will be prominent and audience interaction will be possible.
The letter stimuli could be what our performance is based on. The performance could be the tale of a character writing home and looking retrospectively at how he has gotten into his current position of where he knows he is going to die. Lighting could be used to differentiate between past and present. We could also explore the censorship of letters from the front line.
Improvise
When researching, I found a lot of poems relating to WW1 that linked to stimulus ‘Oh what a lovely war’ because they talked about the devastating impact that bromine and chlorine gas had in the trenches. One poem caught my attention, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen, because the description of gas killing a man that didn’t put his gas mark on was very realistic and intense. I brought it up with my group. We improvised and devised methods that we could use to express the severity of the damage that was caused by gas during WW1. We took turns to show the pain that was described in the poem. When one actor was performing the other actors would stand still, however, in a position of pain. Each actor would show a different source of pain, such as eyes, ears, stomach, lungs and heart.
We experimented with spoken thought. The spoken thought allows the audience to tap into the minds of the characters and see their true feelings. When performing, the best delivery was when the characters spoke more personally to the audience. We decided that this was going to be the way we do spoken thought because it gave the audience time to gather thoughts and opinions. This is an unrealistic method of acting, breaking the fourth wall. We will use this opportunity to relate to the characters on a personal level.
When reading the extract from ‘Oh What A Lovely War’, one aspect that attracted my attention was that the characters were sometimes more of an idea rather than a specific character. We decided to start with basic moulds of a character, rich man,poor man. From these moulds, we would develop the characters so that they would be easier to portrayal because we would have a better understanding of them as actors.
SECTION 2
Our final performance will be a series of scenes that are in chronological order. The scenes will focus on the idea of corruption and will try to make the audience feel more sympathetic for the character of lower status.
One of the last scenes will contain a death. Death is difficult to portray on the stage because any suspension of disbelief would become broken. If a character was to die on stage the audience’s attention will be taken away from anything that will be said and will be on the body checking if they are breathing or moving. Anything achieved before this moment will be wasted. If we were to use methods created by Konstantin Stanislavski, which we are, acting death would be impossible since only a rare number of actors have experience of dying. We had to come up with ways to avoid this happening during our performance. I came up with the idea to make the character become a sort of spirit of them self. The characters still alive will act as if the body is still in the position of the original death. There could be a symbol of the character in the place where the person died like a shoe or hat, but the object needs to develop it’s meaning during the performance. When the other characters draw the attention to the prop, the now spirited character has the possibility to talk with the audience and deliver a soliloquy. The characters will not recognise the spirited character. This will give the audience the explanation that it is a sort of fantasy. Another option is to make the death occur off stage and make it implied. We will not have an off stage available so this isn’t an option. We are going to make the dying soldier stand straight on his feet. They will suddenly stop and a track of a heart beat slowing down will start playing. This will symbolise the stopping heart. We will also use red lighting focused on the dying soldier to symbolise the blood and death. During the dying moment, the actor will be able to talk personally to the audience, evoking more emotion.
I came up with the idea for the transition between each scene to be met with a piece of audio. The audio will be a type of narrative that sounds like a radio broadcast. The voice will be one of the actors and will be recorded prior the performance. The messages will either be informative, for example, the number of under-aged soldiers that fought in WW1 and that John Condor was the youngest recorded British soldier to die in the war. I came up with the idea to add names from the audience when calling out the men that joined the army. This derived from Bertolt Brecht’s techniques of making the audience uncomfortable when watching the performance. Hopefully, the impact will be that the audience will feel the shock and fear that men during the time would feel.
Reflection and Evaluation
The intention of our performance is to show corruption in war. We also intended to portray the inequality between different statuses. I believe we succeed in reaching our intention, however, some technological mistakes need to be looked at.
The relationship between the lower class servant and the upper-class businessman, who becomes a general, was shown well. Gabriel showed his superiority more during the dress rehearsal. This allowed me, who was playing the servant, to have more to work off and be more powerless and submissive. Gabriel having a harsher tone is beneficial for me and the audience, since it shows his power and my reaction will be more realistic.
The transition between the skeet scene to the trench scene could be improved. We attempted to make the transition seamless. Both scenes would contain
two guns. This aspect would confuse the audience slightly because suddenly they were thrown in the middle of a battle. The confusion would be similar to the confusion felt by the soldiers, allowing the audience to be more empathetic. I feel that the lighting was ambitious but we should stick with it. After a slight freeze frame, the light will flash white and black and the sound of machine gun fire will symbolise the battle. The problem that occurred was that the lighting was off with the sound. The sound should be simultaneous with the light.
The unrealistic aspects of the performance were successful as well. The red lighting for spoken thought moments makes it clear to the audience that only they are hearing what is being said/thought. The red lighting will be used any time we perform an unrealistic part of the performance, such as the spoken thoughts or the time my character dies, however, stays standing. This will make it easier for the audience to comprehend.
A problem is that some of the dialogue are improvised and that makes it looked unprofessional and sometimes the things said doesn’t make logical sense. We will need to have clear ideas of what we will say during the performance. The initial scene between me and Gabriel has improvised. This caused inconsistency problems. We planned a script and decided to repeat the word ‘millions’. My character is using the word to talk about the number of deaths while Gabriel’s character is talking about money. We won’t say money or deaths because the way we say it should be clear and it’s unrealistic for people to explain what they mean by what they say in conversation. I have decided to use lines from the famous poem ‘lest we forget’ in my final soliloquy (spoken thought). This will give me a better structure when speaking to the audience.
‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.’
I will have to show my character’s anger and confusion, this may lead to me reading this poem in a disrespectful way. Someone needs to question the motives of the men in power and that is what my character will do. Today, everything is questioned and all mistakes by leaders and politicians are noted and they become targeted by social media.
The radio voice overs were very successful and I believe that nothing needs to be improved. The heartbeat soundtrack is really helpful in communicating the idea that the soldier had died.
We had to cut out one scene before the dress rehearsal. We realised that the scene didn’t offer any character development and would confuse the audience. The confusion would come from Gabriel having to play a different character or Gabriel’s character doing something that would not make logical or historical sense. The other two reasons for this edit is so that we can smoothly transition from the skeet scene to the trench scene and some things don’t need to be explained to the audience. The audience would appreciate that we left them with their imaginations to figure out what happened during the scenes. We had to rewrite the light and sound script and delete the unnecessary radio broadcast about conscription.
During the skeet scene, we would hold a freeze frame after each shot. This pose will be visually powerful because it will communicate to the audience the idea that the general and the businessman are more alike than previously thought. The idea that the war and the economy are linked is the main idea we were trying to communicate. They would also hit every clay disc. This would show that the upper class had perfection and did everything perfectly. My character, servant, will open a Champagne bottle. The pose I take will be similar to the shooting pose. We are trying to let the audience see into the future. This can count as chorus of movement. The stance of shooting up will be promenant in this scene.
The final freeze frame for Gabriel and Arthur has been updated. Arthur will now have his hands behind his back with his fingers crossed. In this scene, Arthur is the Prime Minister of the UK. The cross will be visible to the audience. This means that what he says is not truthful, this is a childish thing to do, however, it is understood by the majority and is an unrealistic aspect.
When it came to costume, we decided to keep it simple. We would all wear dark colours but Gabriel’s character will wear a military style blazer with silver buttons to show his higher status. A white military cap will be used when Gabriel’s character is in the army, this with represent his privilege in a time of struggle.
Light and sound script
start off with all lights down.
Sound – Play radio 1 (voice-over) July 28th, 1914
Light – when sound ends fade to white light.
Bruke and Gabriel begin to act when Bruke turns on the radio…
Sound – Play radio 2
(radio) Hello and welcome to the BBC I will talk story Austria-Hungary has declared war on Serbia the possibility of a wider conflict is looming over the rest of Europe.
Spoken thoughts by Bruke and Gabriel.
Light – red + white.
Bruke will go last.
Light – white.
They will carry on acting.
Freeze frame.
Light – fade to black.
Sound – Play radio 4 in darkness.
(Radio) The spoils of War a glorious businessman who own weapons factory across the world are living in a world Of glamour and riches, their only worry, what happens when the war ends.
Light – when radio ends white light.
They act and shoot clay discs.
Sound – After second shots, play machine gun. Until Arthur runs on stage.
Light – flash white with the machine gun.
Sound – When Bruke starts walking forward play heart beat.
Light – flash red with the heart beats.
Hold red light.
Light – When Bruke walks backwards fade to white.
When Arthur and Gabriel shake hands fade red.
Hold.
End.
