Week 1 term 2

In the start of today's lesson we recapped our 'tea dance' section and 'ration line' section. In the tea dance part we added some more sections of us singing 'pack up your troubles'. We varied the tone in which we Sang this, going from really sad to extremely positive and then somewhere between the two. I think this is accurately reflects the mixed feelings throughout and towards the war. I think as part of an ensemble it's important to make sure everyone is taking each section seriously even when we are meant to be being very positive. I also think the section in which we go to sing the song to someone else is important to get right and accurate as people really did have to support and watch over people at the time. With many peoples husbands and fathers gone some women found it very hard and when performing it is important to show this in our faces to each other. I think I personally need to work on creating a clear difference between the ways I am singing the song and what I am feeling in singing it, this is something I can do through thinking about my character and how I can relate what she must be going through to my own life to find the emotions she would be feeling.

We also began work on our pieces in separate classes. In our class we are split into male and female. The boys are working on the idea of 'uniform' and the girls are using white sheets to represent children, washing and eventually injury or death. We worked in groups of three to create a piece showing women talking whilst hanging up washing. In our group we tried not to focus on the idea of the men being gone but instead make it a background feature whilst they have a normal gossip. We had two women gossiping and one women , who I played, thinking more of the negatives of what was going on. I tried to play her in a very calm and collected way not breaking down or going over the top with emotion as I think this reflected the front people would put on to show they were coping to their friends and family even when they  perhaps weren't. I did this by making her speak only a few times and when she did being very slow and quiet in my voice. I think I played the character well however as I group we need to work on writing a script and changing some of our piece as many of them were very similar and we want to show all aspects of war, I think we will do this by perhaps minimalizing even more the mention of the men and where they are and just focusing on the women's everyday lives.