War poetry performance diary

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War poetry performance diary

Rehearsal 1

Today we organized quite a bit but because it was our first rehearsal we didn’t try any of our ideas out. Emma, Amy, Kim and Sam are in my group and we are to perform a devised piece of work based on war poetry. We are thinking about having a recruitment scene at the beginning then showing people fighting and showing peoples reactions when they come home. The poems we are going to include will be ‘Who’s for the game’ by Jessie Pope, this is because these poem is trying to get people to join up for the army, and we will also be including the five souls poem in somewhere but we aren’t quite sure yet it will probably be at the end.

Aim for next lesson: to start blocking.

Rehearsal 2:

We decided today to not have a recruitment scene because we would like to focus more on the actual war and the effect it had on the children of war as well. So the opening scene will be one with children in an air raid shelter then it will go to soldiers fighting. The fighting though will be slow and we have some music to go with it which should be quite effective. After the slow scene fighting will die which is where the ‘Five Souls’ poem will come in.

Aim for next lesson: To think of more ideas and start writing a script.

Rehearsal 3:

We started writing some of the script today. The first scene is based in an air raid shelter with the children pretending to fight. At the very beginning of this scene they are playing hide and seek which adds to the tension. Then everything is relaxed until an explosion goes off which makes the children go into the air raid shelter.

At the end of the children’s scene we are putting in a poem called ‘The Horses’. This poem will be said whilst we are preparing for the fighting scene. It tells the audience what has been happing in the war “ on the third day…”

Our aim for next rehearsal is to start blocking.

Rehearsal 4:

Today we started to show some progress. We came up with several ideas and put the acting area together. As there had been a holiday we had to recap what we have done so far.

Our new ideas were:

  • At the beginning when we are children it will start off with a game of hide and seek, and it will gently merge into a game of war (play fighting with cap guns and guns that fire out foam arrows, and also kitchen utensils such as wooden spoons and saucepans).
  • An explosion will take place to get the children into the air raid shelter.
  • The air raid shelter will be on the platform with screens behind and around the sides of it. These will hold up the camouflage net.
  • When we come out of the air raid shelter we are soldiers fighting in the war.
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Here is what our acting area is going to look like:

Our aim for the next rehearsal is to block the beginning.

Rehearsal 5:

Today we blocked the hide and seek part of the children’s scene although Amy and Sam were away. As they were away it proved quite difficult to block. I will be the seeker and everyone else is hiding behind the screens. I will go looking for them and then they will jump out and we will have ...

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