Trust Your Fellow Troops!

Movement is such an amazing tool of expression and visual story telling. With an age range of 11 to 21 in the company, there is a wide variety of skills between them. Their experience in different types of dancing, gymnastics and athletics came in useful whilst creating this section of the play. The inspiration for the segment of movement was the poems ‘The Toll of War’ and “The Waste” with the harrowing imagery of what happened to troops in the trenches when a bomb blast went off. The cast branched into small groups and began devising moving tablos. After a lot of initial giggling at the prospect of bending in strange shapes and reiterating the trust that the other members of your group won’t drop you by accident, the cast found their focus and tried out lots of different things. By using the strengths and advantages of individuals in their small groups and supporting each other, they came up with fantastic shapes and created flowing movements which when held in a brief tableau were eerily powerful and reminiscent of old photographs of the battle-strewn trenches. Having now covered nearly a quarter of the script, it’s really starting to look and feel like a show. The powerful messages that come from the poems is driving raw emotion from the company and their understanding of the responsibility of what they are conveying is both humbling and honest.