Tag: Oh What A Lovely War

Connections to the GCSE, AS and A level specifications 

• Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing
• Social, cultural, political and historical context
• Use of theatrical conventions
• Theatrical style
• Significant moments in the development of theory and practice
• The relationship between actor and audience in theory and practice

PC: Let’s return to her most famous production: Oh What a Lovely War. How did they devise the play?

NH: Improvisation was used to generate the material. They worked with lots of research: materials would have been brought in. Lots of books were coming out about the First World War, a TV documentary had been on about it as well. So there was lots of documentary material that they were trying to work their way from, to find the best way of articulating it on the stage. Improvisation was used as a way to devise from that material. How do we devise from this material to make this work?

PC: Are there records of that process?

NH: There aren’t records of the process but there are people who worked on the show. There are various interviews with people who worked on the show. It wasn’t a formalised process at all, there was no document. She kept notebooks in the early period that I have seen but there is nothing from the later periods at all. She was just making it up as she went along. She kept herself in the moment of creating.

PC: So how did she control her approach to making the work?

NH: The research process was quite academically orientated although she didn’t necessarily like academics. She’d go and do lots of reading, bring source material in, she would give the company particular areas to research: maybe a particular battle or a particular period in the war or a particular figure like Hague or Marshall and people would then bring that material into the rehearsal room. They’d see something that was interesting and follow that.

PC: And how did they logistically make sure that they repeated things. Did they have a writer working alongside. How did it get set?

NH: No, it just got set by doing. There wasn’t a scribe taking down notes. It was an organic process that evolved until the scenes were relatively set.

PC: Did the spirit of improvisation spill over into performance? 

NH: In performance it was used to try and keep things sharp and alive. One of the differences with the majority of the theatres of the day was that you rehearsed something, you blocked it, you set it, and then it was about repeating that night after night, after night. For Littlewood that was deadly theatre. She wanted to keep a frisson going in the actual performances: she would invite moments of improvisation just to shift things up a bit. Sometimes she wouldn’t even tell the rest of the actors on stage, she would give somebody an instruction to do something completely new, which would make the other performers have to respond to this new piece of action that was going on. An example of that from Oh What A Lovely War, is a rugby team that had taken a block booking and she organised for them to walk on stage when Barbara Windsor sang the We’ll Make A Man Of You song. So she gave Barbara something to deal with in the moment of performance just to constantly keep things fresh and alive and in the moment of performance. Rather than just regurgitating what had happened the night before and the night before that. So improvisation was important for those things.

PC: How did the popular tradition of variety and the Music Hall influence Littlewood’s work, specifically in Oh What a Lovely War?

NH: The Music Hall was seen as an authentic working class, popular cultural form by Littlewood, that is why she warmed to it. There was a relationship between the stage and the audience, a back and forth, that goes on in those forms. As well as literally being about variety. What happens when you have lots of things happening on the stage at the same time? Or that idea of the collision montage in terms of Oh What A Lovely War. There is something in the format of Music Hall and variety, a series of turns, that is quite theatrically effective. Whereas in Music Hall and variety they were individual turns she kind of flips that idea around. What if the theatre event is effectively a series of turns but they are all thematically interconnected, like in Oh What A Lovely War?

And the Pierrot show, which she obviously used in Oh What A Lovely War, that again is part of that popular seaside tradition. The Pierrots were around during the period of the First World War. They get referred to as the Merry Roosters and there actually was a troop called the Merry Roosters during the First World War. So she is taking that popular form and reference very clearly into the play.

Summary

• Lots of research was done during the creation of Oh What a Lovely War and improvisation was used to generate the material.
• Littlewood was making it up as she went along. She kept herself in the moment of creating. There aren’t records of the process beyond anecdote.
• Littlewood wanted to keep the thrill of performance going so she would invite moments of improvisation just to shift things up a bit.
• There was a relationship between the stage and the audience, a back and forth, that goes on in Music Hall and Variety that appealed to Littlewood.
• Littlewood’s later work shows her interest in a theatre event that is series of turns that were all thematically interconnected, like in Oh What A Lovely War – the collision montage.