War and Theatre

Graeme Rose, 7 October 2012

convened by Megan Holloway

attended by Craig Stephens, Derek Nisbet, Graeme Rose

With the centenary approaching how can we use theatre to remember? Megan conscious of this approaching anniversary.

Her assertion that factual record should not be the only way that this is marked but theatre has a role to play. More familiar cliched representations need invigorating with new ways of presenting material, in partic. to demonstrate the experience of individuals. There are great examples of plays, eg. Journey's End or the poetry legacy of Owen, Brooke, etc. but how can we look at this differently? In particular the relationships.

Question of the contemporary currency of Verbatim materials. It is no longer poss. to obtain first hand accounts of the front line from the ‘Great War’. Have opportunities gone to document. An acknowledgement that the stories are still relevant and that it's important for us today to rediscover our own families' stories from this time.

Is it the role or duty of theatre to convey that sense of what it was ‘really’ like? It being the last war to be fought principally on the ‘battlefield’.

We are infected whether we like it or not by the National myth, but we need to redress this against personal account.

Discussion of the ~ Olympic opening Ceremony as an opportunity for re-mythologising the National ident.

Derek discussed the relationship between Cities - esp. twinning opportunity withy respect to Coventry and Stralingrad (now Volgograd). Talking Birds conducted cross-cultural project using the links enshrined in the post-war twinning. Normally reserved for mayoral jollies / chambers of commerce.

But good opportunity to re-establish cultural links through the experiences of War.

Small gestures come to symbolise a lot. eg. Cov's letter of solidarity to the people of Stalingrad, 1941, which becomes a vital living object.

Megan from historian/archeologist perspective considering the power of the object or artefact as stimulus for work.

Also discussion of the power of the Rice Show (Of All the People in all the World - Stan's Cafe) as a medium for expressing relations between seemingly abstract figures; a dry fact-based mechanism which has a huge emotional impact by its very objectivity.

Is there a problem with ‘plays’ that they can sentimentalise? ct. Brecht's approach.

Objects can come to be associate with a person - true of personal heirlooms. The potency becomes greater with time; meaning shifts through time.

Monumental Art. the monument as a representation and also a place for ritual. A discussion about the rebuilding of cities/sites and the politics of whether ruins are preserved or removed. What is the relevance to our practice here?

Comparison of Auschwitz (intact) and Belsen (park memorial). - but we are revisionist in our reading of history and we today desire to feel and re-enact the viscerality of it.

After the War our ancestors chose to erase these things for a reason - because it was too painful and because the business of rebuilding our cities / communities was paramount.

Should it be about Remembrance or considering where we are now?

Do people want some things to be remembered at all? Truth and reconciliation takes time. But personal memories don't necessary come forth until later, if at all.

A discussion about the cultural event of the Military Funeral. marking the reality. A community event which many people take part in - the spontaneous clapping of a cortege as it passes through forces villages.

Today, in contrast to 100 yrs ago, information is fed instantly from the front line. We have greater access to the horrors, but that ‘reality’ is still controlled utterly by media interest.

But with this communicative technology why is theatre still good mechanism for presenting this material - and if so, how.

Warhorse success. V. successful / accessible, in which the Individual story is balanced against the Universal. It is too overwhelming to capture the whole, so important to tell the story of the individual.

The personal is more engaging, more interactive. Engaging audience in the story through the mundane, detailed personal.

NB: changing technologies of warfare a common way of demonstrated the drama of change.

How about getting people / audience to finish the story with their own experiences.

Increasing the quality of engagement in the idea.

Discussion of re-enactment. Is it valid to relive the experience? Of the trenches? Of grief?

The twinning project (qv.) allows those communal conversations between different parties. 

comparing parallels of time, and place. Comparing contemporary warfare therefore?

Note that War is not an event. But a process. Or a state of being?

The Tweeter from Coventry who re-broadcast the daily events of the War but 70 years on…..“On this Day”newsfeed.

If we attempt to recreate an immersive experience of ‘living memory’ this could end up as a patronising theme park done badly but we recognise the value of embodied memory; ie. in immersive environment the audience are asked to play a witness to the events. They have an engagement which asks them to adopt a perspective with responsibility - with which goes a duty to the future.

cf. Dellar's Battle of Orgreave as a way of engaging communities in an historical re-enactment. The doing of this event had it's own catharsis, reflecting on a painful history but one very much still in the folk memory.

The event of Remembrance Day. Opportunity for large numbers of people to engage in a collective act / ritual.

Theatre as healing / reconciliatory. eg. EAT! - B'hamRep/BCT telling a painful story which refuses to go away. Important to keep telling the story as a reminder, so that other's might help to avoid the scenario.

But is listening to an interview from a kid in Afghanistan today a better way of getting the truth about WWI? Better than a history lesson about the trenches. Perhaps both in tandem?

Nature has it's own way of healing the scars. Grass grows back over the battlefields.

The enduring image of the poppies should be a reminder that these flowers only grew because the land was disturbed.

GR