Month: April 2016

O What A Lovely War is a musically-themed play that refers to the scenes and figures of World War One. It displays the ups and downs of the war and how certain characters dealt with the conflict that went on from 1914 to 1918. The play uses a satire method, which exaggerates the shaming and abuse of individuals, mainly because of the status and power that is presented between the characters.

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement.

There is much controversy in today’s world, with many people thinking that there is a massive presence of political satire. For example, many people believe that western countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom are highly active in gaining profits from wars that go on today. But then again, this cannot be confirmed as the satire seen today is not as clear as that of the First World War.

Because of the setting of the play, it is crucial to mention how government’s use of propaganda affected people in war

The story of the play clearly surrounds events during the First World War, giving an insight on the mainly the profits made by manufacturers and bankers. This led to many of the rich wanting the war to be prolonged and not ended as soon as possible, which would help many of them gain even more and more money, as more and more poor people died during the war. Part of the plot also targeted the likes of General Haig, who was associated with the Battle of the Somme, which held 400,000 deaths of British or Commonwealth soldiers. The catastrophe was seen to be in the hand of Haig, who had orchestrated the tactics and formations used. Haig was Britain’s commander-in-chief, meaning he held a massive account for this.

Themes found in Oh What A Lovely War:

Corruption – During the conversation between the Scottish Ghillie and the grouse-shooting party of British, French, German and American munitions manufacturers with the Swiss banker, there was definitely a presence of corruption and money being the centre of attention. This being part of the first few scenes, it would go on to show the contrast between the rich people (who weren’t directly involved in the war) and the poor (who were the ones that would be in war, endangering lives of themselves and several others.

Arms Sales in the First World War – Just like the previous theme, this was also involved in the conversation between the powers. They had wanted the World War to carry on, as it provided them with the power to gain money from the distribution of weaponry and gas. The picture below is a representation of the masses of dangerous equipment that was prepared by workers. These production units kept weapons that made the rich gain profits of millions and millions of currency.

Rifles were by far the most produced pieces of weaponry during the First World War, along with machine guns, which had a massive impact on the destruction of sites and other areas. German soldiers would usually carry 7.92 Mauser rifles, whilst the English were exposed to the use of Lee-Enfield rifles.

7.92 Mauser Rifle

Stimulus:

The stimulus is one the most important pieces of information leading up to our performance. We decided to take the situation of General Haig in the Battle of the Somme and base our work around this, hence the reference made by the Private (Eugene) in his spoken word. The loss of men was a figure that stood out and we felt as though it would give out the strongest message to the audience. Sites such as BBC and the History Learning Site were used, as they provided a lot of information on how so many men were lost because of General Haig. The booklet containing the extracts from O What A Lovely War was incredibly useful, as it gave some scenarios where Haig was mentioned, and they did in fact have an impact on how we acted ourselves.

Also, we used the fact that there were rich war profiteers to make the soldiers (the poor) quite scared and emotional, seeing as they didn’t live the good life.

Planning & Development: 

Characters –

Josh Ali – Herbert Smith Sr and Jr

Eugene Panton – Private

Amjad King – Sargent

Our initial planning began with us devising our own improvised scenes in small groups, which would then expand into what we have now. We gained helped from our teacher Mr Waugh mainly on our methods of acting. We were taught how to perform spoken words, Stanislavsky’s methods, different statuses and a few more that definitely had an impact on how our performance turned out.

Costume –  The fact that (Herbert Smith Jr) Josh wore a different type of colour, highlighted the difference between him and the other characters, which was essential in creating a negative distance between his and my character. We also wanted to keep the military look, but it was modernised with the type of wear we had. Here is an example of what we wore during our dress rehearsal:

The costume is quite straightforward, as there was only one type of clothing we could use.

Lighting:

For the lighting, we decided to keep a constant scheme. For spoken word, we would use a faint blue or red light. Judging on the tone of the speaking, we would change the colours. Blue would be for more sentimental tones and red would be classed as anger, which is how both colours are normally perceived in real life. For the usual acting, we would always use the white light, which made it easy to signify that the acting was set in present day First World War. For our flashbacks, we also used the red light, which could also symbolise death, because the father of Herbert Smith Jr had died, in the arms of me (Sargent).

The lighting cue was incredibly important in making sure that our performance would go as planned. Our decisions on the lighting were though about thoroughly, to show the difference between flashbacks, spoken word and present day scenes. For the flashback when Smith Sr (Josh) died in war, we decided to use the red light, as it indicated danger and death, two themes the colour red is normally associated with. For the spoken words and reading of the letter, we decided to use a the blue for all of them, as they presented a melancholy and depressing theme, which is what we aim to provide for the audience.

These lighting techniques played a great role in changing the mood of the play as a whole and how the audience perceived each three characters. The lighting cue is written below:

Start of performance

Begin with darkness

When all props are set, put up the red light only

When Josh finishes talking on the ground, dim the light down to pitch black

Dim up to white light when Josh and Eugene are sitting down beside the blocks

When Josh begins reading the letter, dim up to blue light only

When Josh finishes the letter, put up the white light only

Wait for everyone to leave the stage and dim down to black

Put up to blue when Amjad is centre stage.

Dim down blue when Amjad leaves the stage

When Eugene and Josh are on the floor, bring up the white light.

When Eugene begins his spoken word dim the light to red only

When he’s finished his spoken word, dim the light to pitch black

End of performance

Props and Objects –

The prop that our scenes were based around was the letter that was written by Herbert Smith Jr (Josh). I had written this so that it would cause Josh to look quite weak in front of the audience, which was a success. The letter also included Smith’s desire for his dad to be there with him, telling him to keep on going. The letter was also made so that it looked like quite rubbish, brown paper, adding an effect to the conditions of the war and the environments around Herbert Smith Jr.

We had also decided to take out the appearance of a fake gun, as it made the scenes less realistic as I gave it to Lieutenant Rodgers. This was beneficial as it made the performance less comical, seeing as the prop had an orange tip to it. Making this change also provided us with a chance to focus more on how carefully we acted out this scene, because this part in particular showed how much the Sargent disliked Smith Jr.

Presenting time with lighting  –

Creating a difference between time and scene was incredibly hard to perform smoothly. The lighting came out as an essential factor in doing so. For all the scenes, we would dim all the lights right down only for a few second, so that we were able to get the stage ready and for the audience to understand that a new scene was about to come up. I think the flashback was hard to signify, but the red light definitely showed some sort of ‘past’ or difference to the present day scenes.

Reflection and Evaluation –

During our performance, I felt that we were strong in showing many of our feelings, which was also affected a lot by how the lighting changed throughout. The scenes flowed incredibly well in my opinion. There weren’t many stutters or faults. We made a beneficial move to leave out a scene of the death of Herbert, which would cause suspense upon the members of the audience. Even though this was the case, it was still incredibly likely that people knew he would die anyway, because it was previously stated that General Haig’s tactics caused a total of 400,000 men to die during the Battle of the Somme, which was a massive number, considering how long the battle was.

There were a few negative aspects to the performance which I believe we could have improved significantly though. I feel that even though we picked the correct lights to use for our performance, we should have made our light cue sheet even more presentable, so that the person responsible for the lighting would have better timing. Because of this, I decided to rewrite the lighting cue sheet, so that it’ll be much more straightforward for us and the person responsible for the lighting, which’ll benefit our performance very much.

The dress rehearsal audience’s response was quite positive. They tended to be incredibly focused mostly on the spoken word moments, suggesting they were interested in a bit of our character’s own stories and how we felt as individual characters.