http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0wycVPR_nI

This is a link to the war time song 'Pack up your troubles' which we use in our piece just after the men leave for war.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,

And smile, smile, smile,

While you've a lucifer to light your fag,

Smile, boys, that's the style.

What's the use of worrying?

It never was worth while, so

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,

And smile, smile, smile.

The song was written in 1915 and was a very popular marching song that was used to boost morale during the war because of its up beat cheery tune. Knowing the context of the song we are singing and what it meant to people at the time is important when attempting to perform it in the way it would of been as we can understand the thoughts of the song at the time and their attitude towards it.

The end of the war

In the final section of our piece we see the men arriving home from war to all their families and friends, in this section people are waving flags, cheering and being reunited with loved ones. to make my performance more realistic and to allow me to engage more with how my character and those around me would be feeling.

This image shows a scene very similar to the one we are attempting to create, we can see a mixture of men and women on what looks like a public street waving flags and smiling in anticipation. By studying the people in this scene I am able to see the reaction faces and postures of people which is something I can take on board when creating my own character for the scene.

The women of WW1

For my piece with Eleanor and Alice I wanted to research women of the time in order to create an idea of what we may have been looking like in our scene and where we may have been. I researched images of women such as this one showing a group of women sitting on a wall:

I thought this image was useful as unlike all the other ones I found it showed women in a very casual way not at work or in propaganda. looking at images like these really helps me in performing a scene as I find it extremely useful if I am able to picture my surroundings as it allows me to go further into my characters frame of mind.

This is an example of a letter written from the trenches to a loved one back home. I researched letters like these as I found having a clear image of what they looked like and what they might have said as well as the language that may have been used really helped me to develop the way my character was feeling in the sequence towards the end of the piece when all the men read out their letters to the women. reading these letters allowed me to put more emotion into my movements as being able to picture what I was looking at or hearing is something I find useful in developing a character.