Kay Rouse
Character Presentation
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This presentation was first designed for Colchester's 'Through the Ages' event at St Botolph's Priory - adjacent to the railway station of the same name which was the town's main wartime evacuation point... Undertaken with my much younger colleague Sarah Gilkes it draws much on the wartime memories and experiences of my mother and her grandmother respectively. |
Each one of our (up to) six sessions is given as a short stand alone piece by two moaning women equipped with garden chairs, shopping baskets or other appropriate articles: as the day progresses so can the course of the Second World War.
To offer all six topics does need a long event day at a venue that is not too crowded! Visitors may otherwise feel hurried along to the next session without the chance to talk with us or to share their own real memories and experiences.
Each session may begin as a brief presentation in first person character before inviting the audience 'in' to a more conventional third person conversation. Discussion, with show and tell, continues between timed sessions - always allowing for our necessary set dressing and quick changes...
Alternatively, a whole day's presentation can be given on just one of our Home Front themes whether tailored particularly to venue, time of year or age group of visitors.
Using facsimile documents and with both original and replica objects we explore the impact of world events on aspects of life on the Home Front - and look at changing attitudes and aspirations:
- Summer 1939: The Phoney War & Evacuation
- Dunkirk & After: The Blitz & Fur Coats for Fire Watchers
- On the Ration: Home Cooking & A Guide to Points Shopping
- The Yanks Are Coming: Over Here - Tap pants and Yankee Bags
- Toward D-Day: It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow?
- Victory in Europe: Street Parties & Jobs for the Boys
Each session begins as a brief presentation in first person character before inviting the audience 'in' to a more conventional third person conversation. Discussion, with show and tell, continues between timed sessions - allowing for our necessary set dressing and quick changes...
- Though sometimes...
Just One Woman or Beyond Make Do & Mend
When working on my own this is one of those presentations that segues swiftly into a craft demonstration and/or hands on activity: Depending on the flavour of the event visitors may try their hand at suitable games to occupy the kiddies through long hours in the shelter, develop skills in bandage rolling or - for the brave and energetic - master effective use of the stirrup pump... (Recent projects have included 'An Austerity Christmas' and springtime 'Dig for Victory' themes)
My solo presentation particularly explores aspects of the Wartime philosophy of adapting, adopting and simply 'making do' - perhaps in leading an experimental darning activity or by showing how to make a little girl's dress from a picnic tablecloth...
There are even many parallels with our own times: Wartime strictures prompt the question 'Is Your Journey Necessary?' to prefigure current concerns about carbon footprint; wartime exhortations to save kitchen waste for local council retrieval clearly echo our modern composting collections.
Games
Games Workshops can include many of the earlier activities but also incorporate the make do and mend/all pull together ethos of both the wartime Homefront or recessionary times:
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A wind spiral can be cut to deter birds from allotment crops (works in the 21st century garden, too...), waste or brown paper decorations made, fiendish tangram puzzles created and solved. |
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