For the past few weeks my group and I have been devising a piece of theatre around the subject of war. Our original piece was about the effects of war on a small Yorkshire community. It involved a local woman falling in love with the enemy, a German spy. It illustrated the betrayal between friends, emotions and how current affairs can induce decisions. This was influenced by a number of aspects.
In exploring a number of wartime props we got a strong sense of the type of society during wartime. One feature we picked up on was that there was very little to go around, and that the few possessions they had were very precious. For example Maureen, the character I acted, stayed in the same smart clothes throughout the play, unlike the others who changed at least once. We saw this as her trying to cling onto what she had lost, luxuries and comfort.
Maureen
Maureen
Blackadder: Back & ForthTo try and achieve an awareness of character, we looked at a play called Killed by Belgrade T.I.E. The types of characters in the play were quite stereotypical. The character I played, Elsie, was quite a hard, stubborn woman, full of opinions and carried a sad and painful history. This was mirrored by May, a young woman, deeply in love and with her whole life ahead of her. We used some of the ideas in the play when devising our own piece of theater. We set our play in Yorkshire, like Killed and I molded my character Maureen on Elsie, taking on quite a hard front, a sad history and a strong Yorkshire accent. A thin line between love and hate was different from Killed because ours was more light-hearted, it didn't have as many flashbacks and tended to be set around the local...