Day 7 - Somebody hit the lights...

What is your favourite thing about Christmas?

Is it the little green triangles in Quality Street? Is it the way that last year the whole family ("all 22 of them"), gathered to eat around a table where the odd chair sizes meant that Granny couldn't reach her plate of pigs in blankets? 

Do you love singing Christmas songs in October? And are you of the opinion that Frozen is the best Christmas film ever? (evidently, the person who said that as the last session had never experienced the fabness that is Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone)

How do we express ourselves opinions like these to an audience? It is narrating or engaging in a conversation where we do all the talking? Simon did some great training exercises at the last session. 

The last session was mostly used as a way for the group to learn how to engage with an audience. Rather than just reading lines and returning to resting-resty-face for the rest of the performance, the group have to learn to always be engaged with the audience even when not directly having lines to read.

Day 6 - "Let's go from your line, Leon"

So the blog post about last week's session is finally here. I have no excuses, I've just been a busy little bee (the stars also aligned and it was my 21st birthday this Saturday!). With another gravitational orbit around the sun in the bag, I'd like to begin by mentioning that we were joined at the last session by Dr Victoria Nesfield, a research fellow at the University of Leeds, and also Dave Murray, a musician at the Leeds College of Music who is currently creating a musical piece to accompany the production. Together with Stuart Taberner, Victoria has written the conference exhibition panels and has done extensive research for the project, in collaboration with other academics internationally to create content.
After explaining to the group her own role within the project, Thomas asked Victoria, "will be be asked questions on our thoughts after the show?" I know that I'd like to see the group answer questions based on the focus material of the exhibition in relation to the performance piece.

I'd like to know what they really felt and thought about the content that has been covered.
For example:

• What has been learnt about Nazi persecution of the Jews? (Is there anything you didn't know before?)
• What was your favourite part of the performance and can you imagining it happening in real life?
• What do you think the passport puppets really represent?
• How can we learn from the experience of presenting a historical piece? (e.g. Acting can be a process of understanding)

If Anthony repeated the scenario from Day 1 where he asked the group "should a memorial be brutal or beautiful?", I wonder whether the group's opinions would change. Perhaps it can be deduced that most of the young people would now say, "memorials can be brutal and beautiful at the same time. We presented something brutal with the intention of making it beautiful". 

Do we give more worth to objects that are beautiful, or just to things that make a big impact? 

Apart from jobs I've had in the past directing students for a project in Ulm, Germany, I've never had experience directing anything of this scale. Okay, 'Falling to our knees' may only be 15 minutes long but there is a huge amount of text and ideas to work through in a really tight space of time. It needs to have a high impact on the audience, flitting between brutal and beautiful scenes of memorialising.

Rehearsals seem to be going well. The group are focussed on the text except for a few moments of excitement during the warm-up games (I'm looking at you, Jonah!). Lyle and Alfie have been working on their duologue as Rudi and Horst, two young boys who reach a conflict between life as a Jewish victim and life as a by-stander. For tonight it's time I stepped up to my role as Assistant Director and work through their lines with them, just Lyle and Alfie.

Day 5 - If you love someone who is guilty, do you become entangled in their guilt?

Last Monday's session was a BIG ONE. Jam-packed, even. After a rather silly and energetic start playing warm-up games, Simon got the group to focus on creating images. Not only did we rehearse a section in the play where these images would be later installed, but the group also thought about how perpetrators could have been anyone.

There's a brilliant book by Bernhard Schlink called Der Vorleser (The Reader), which was also adapted into a film. I urge you to either read the book or watch the film. It is a retrospective account from a middle-aged man reviewing his life as a young man at a stage in his life when he had an illicit relationship with a woman (whom he later found out had been an ex-Nazi worker). It is a novel about guilt, perpetrators and the fine line between perpetrator and victim. For instance, the protagonist could also have been a victim of the ex-Nazi worker's seduction. Above all, the quote with the most impact is, "was hätten Sie gemacht?" or "what would you have done?", when the ex-Nazi worker questions a court in a post-War trial where a group of Nazis perpetrators are being punished for their actions.


“If you love someone who is guilty, do you become entangled in their guilt? And can we choose who we love? It would be simple if the people who commit monstrous crimes were always monsters. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are just ordinary people, our neighbours, our lovers, our teachers and our friends” (from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – Operation Last Chance)


Texts like Der Vorleser often make the reader or viewer ask themselves questions. What if Nazis were just following orders, like dehumanised machines? What if normal, average people like you and I would have been too scared to resist Nazi persecution, out of fear of being branded as a Jew sympathiser? If pressure was being put on us by the government, and influences by the Nazi-indoctrinated education system were making our children question, "Daddy, why are you not saving our country like Elsie's daddy?", then surely we would have had no choice but to concede?

Lightbulb Moment...pun intended (ding ding)

The solution to last week's logistical nightmare of illuminating the stage to create a visual lightbulb memorial? A handheld, string-pulled, battery-operated lightbulb; donned by our very own Anthony. Isn't it jazzy!? (model not to scale, and not on Anthony's head for that matter, either)

Seriously though, when all the lights in Lawnswood's theatre had been turned off and passport puppets began to flit and dance around the test bulb like moths drawn to a flame, the effect was dreamlike and hypnotic. The test run was not without flaws, however it only makes me more excited for the finished product: the performance for the Transnational Holocaust Memorial on 26th and 27th January 2015. 

Below are some photos of our test run. Apologies for the poor quality; as usual I've been taking pictures using my phone.

As keen as ever to participate, Lyle is the first of the group to try out the lightbulb.

Perhaps an idea for staging would be that the young people hold the bulb further away from their face, so the audience doesn't see a modern version of the 'Mirror on the wall' from Snow White.

Although it can't really be transferred to computer screen in these stills, the movement of the passport puppet butterflies was spot on and I like how the light reflected onto the open pages.


The section might need to be slowed down slightly to show the audience that the puppets are actually zoomorphic passports in a portrayal of fluttering butterflies.

Next week, it's important to address that the group should not have their back's to the audience. Without realising it, one of the players stood in front of the light and completely blocked the image - as pictured below. Although it could be effective, the image was also too crowded but that is something we can work on in the next session.

Historical Accuracy in Drama Documentaries

I was doing a bit of googling today (because apparently 'to google' is a recognised verb now) and came across a really helpful BBC website on dramatising historical events.

It's been so useful having access to the exhibition panels for this conference; because even though I live, breathe and study German here at the University of Leeds, I've learned so much just from reading the exhibition content. That being said, just reading and taking notes on a subject does not particularly engage my brain as I am a kinaesthetic learner. Addressing texts with a view to putting events into a dramatic context really furthered my understanding of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and memorialising.

The problem with creating a historical drama, though, is making sure we don't mystify the past. There is a team of experts and academic staff working on the conference, who have provided extensive content and images. On this basis an accurate historical drama can be created.

Disappearing without a trace

My auntie Gill has recently returned back from a celebratory trip to Budapest in Hungary, and whilst she was there she saw many tourist sights: including the citadel, synagogue, the parliament building (the 3rd largest in the world) and also many memorials. I want to focus on the memorials that she and her friend visited in this post, and as it happens, I'm going to London this weekend to visit her. I intend on visiting the Imperial War Museum for the Holocaust Exhibition that is currently on display there.

Shoes on the Danube


Gill explained in a phone call that during 1944-45, hundreds of Jews and co-workers of Raoul Wallenberg who lived in Budapest's ghettos were lined up on the bank of the River Danube and shot by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen...leaving only their shoes behind. The image to the right shows the memorial, created by Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer, honouring the hundreds of people who were forced to remove their shoes and were murdered at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. The memorial represents the shoes that were left behind on the bank and the different sizes and styles of the cast iron shoes reflect how nobody was spared from the brutality of the Arrow Cross militia (the shoes depict children, women, businessmen, sportsmen etc.).

At first, Gill and her friend came to see the memorial at night and although the memorial was not illuminated by street lights, onlookers had lain night-lights into the well of the shoes or flowers and trinkets as pictured above. She described the atmosphere as 'poignant' and 'moving'...apparently it lost none of it's impact on the second viewing but contrasted to the atmosphere during the day when the memorial was surrounded by clicking cameras and their tourist owners.

Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat and humanitarian. He was born in 1912 and died in 1947, and although his death is largely disputed - his body was never actually found therefore the reason behind the title of this post. He is celebrated for having resisted the Nazi regime and for having saved thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary in the later stages of WWII.

In the rear courtyard of the Dohany Synagogue in the memorial park dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg, lies a creation made by Imre Varga: the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs. It not only resembles a 'weeping willow' and forms the Tree of Life (whose leaves bear inscriptions with the names of victims), but also represents an overturned Menorah. Perhaps it can be interpreted that the leaves symbolise the life of a human being and the overturned Menorah portrays the destruction of Jewish lives and faith: for at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. According to Gill the branches sway if there is a breeze, as a real tree would and she said it was very calming and peaceful to be there. 

Linking back to the first few sessions of the project, I'm sure the young people in the group would classify these memorials as beautiful, especially the willow tree. Although I have never visited either of the memorials in Budapest, I'm sure that I would have felt the same emotions as my auntie Gill, her having long been an advocate of silent contemplation before memorials. I can feel it in my chest, a kind of sadness that runs through my body but is peaceful at the same time: knowing that a handful of the people who were murdered by the Nazis are being thought of on a daily basis. Personally, the problem with these kind of memorials though, is that they are very photographable. There's nothing to stop you taking hundreds of pictures in front of the memorials and I highly doubt a 'selfie' in this situation is appropriate. Again, there is a very fine line between mystifying the past and creating a long-lasting, hard-hitting historical artefact to commemorate those lives lost to war and Holocaust. 

You might be thinking, 'she's a student, what does she know about it? She's no expert historian!'

But I'm human and we are put on earth to be human (and also to have confused, conflicting ideas about memorials).

Peace. 

Thanks to the lovely, one and only Gill Willians for background and pictures.

Session 5 snippet

I've recorded a lot of videos for these sessions. It's always good to have 'fodder' to work from when writing these posts because I don't often have time to write down everything I see or hear in the sessions.

 I'm uploading this particular video with the knowledge that by the end of the rehearsal, Jonah and Sam had massively and noticeably improved their delivery of lines, confidence and understanding of the situation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17riYAQ2HCc

Day 4 - from Schmetterlinge to Passports

The session this week brought the start of rehearsals and without giving too much away (we do want the project performance to be a surprise, after all), the group really got their teeth stuck into the new script entitled, 'Falling to our knees'.

With the the skeleton of Anthony's script in one hand and a passport in the other, the group worked through the first few pages in which a metaphor is formed: a bridge between the flight of butterflies and the ability to travel the world using an efficient, little burgundy book of joy called a passport. Did you know that the British passport ranks 1st in the world in terms of freedom of travel? Brits have access to 173 countries and territories. Handy, that.



Her Britannic Majesty's
Secretary of State
Requests and requires in the
Name of her Majesty
All those whom it may concern
To allow the bearer to pass freely
without let of hindrance,
and to afford the bearer
such assistance and protection
as may be necessary.


You will find these words printed on the inside cover of the most recent issue of the British Passport, along with a a purple butterfly with wings out stretched. But imagine not having that kind of protection. Brits usually just go past GO  without even thinking about being trapped behind an invisible pane, tapping on the glass trying to escape...like a butterfly.

Of course, staging all of this was the focus of the session. It was so interesting to watch Simon and Anthony map out the visual mechanics of frame and blocking. Simon asked the group to manipulate the passports, so that they formed a very visual metaphor of dancing butterflies, landing freely without 'hindrance'. I will keep the rest of this section secret for now, but for future reference in this post and blog (mostly for my benefit) this section of the piece will be called Passport Puppets.

I really don't want to spill the beans at this point, although it is so exciting to be part of something like this. I shall only divulge that the next section of tonight's session involved verbal sparring between two characters: one Jewish youth; one anti-Semitic youth who seem to know each other from childhood. With the German boy in a tight spot in front of his friends, his only option is to refuse recognition of the Jewish boy.

Questions/issues that I'm interested in finding more about for next week:

 - Two characters. 14 actors. How is that going to be blocked on stage? What if actors swap stage blocks during dialogue?

 - How will actors focus on synchronising lines? If it is decided some of the dialogue will be chorused, how can the actors maintain stresses and emotion?

 - Volume: less shouty-shouty of lines, more listen-to-each-other-lines

 - Town hall will have microphones, will the narrators be in front of microphones like in last year's Millions of Kisses. 

Highlights of this week:

- When the gold lettering of a passport was reflecting onto the face of one of the young people. Lovely image, if only it were this easy to show on stage!

- Advancement of Lightbulb memorial idea

- I feel as if we've made great progress

IF....

you've made it this far down this post and you're interested in coming to see the performance in January then feast your eyes upon the link entitled 'Upcoming Events' or just click here and it will direct you to a page where you can register for the conference. Remember, that although there are some free events - you will still need to register.

ALSO.....

I have been playing drama games each session with the group and want to try something new and super energetic. If you know of any fun games then please comment below.

Any feedback on the blog itself is also really appreciated.

Not Halloween, or Wembley, or even a fan-crazed One Direction concert...

Remember last week, when I blogged about the group of young people creating their own memorials? Well it has been agreed that Group 2's very visual and high impact memorial idea would stage very well. However, 24 lightbulbs on stage could quite possibly be a logistical nightmare.

We might have to kick it freestyle and don some torches or battery-operated lamps but let's not go too far down this route. There's a fine line between the performance ending up like this:

or this....

To something like this....

Or even this....

We're not trying to mystify the past by using a grand and clichéd metaphor of light, we're trying to create a really important memorial, to pay respects to millions of people who died. Personally, I think the performance could look stunning when the stage is illuminated with light from hand-held lamps or lightbulbs. 

I'll let you know how we get on with just the one lightbulb as a tester but right now, I've just risked the double-dip and my Rich Tea has well and truly fallen into my brew. 

Biscuit down.