A multi-media performance by the WRVS and Evolution Youth Theatre
By Julius Smit
In rehearsal
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Marjorie, Ella, Doris, Meg & Len taking a break from rehearsals
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Childhood games: dressing up
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Setting up the party scene
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Childhood days: party in action
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
In performance: a question of bullying
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Rehearsing the silhouette scene: Seven Ages of Man
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
The silhouette scene in performance: Seven Ages of Man
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive
Introduction
The WRVS and Evolution Youth Theatre presented an innovative and exciting multi-media performance which followed and illuminated the progress of ageing from childhood and schooldays, through to growing up and going out to work. Two consecutive performances were held in and around the Redoubt Fortress, during the evening of Friday 28 March 2008.
Childhood
Instead of being passive spectators, audience members were actively encouraged to take part in the some of the scenes they encountered as they wandered through each of the multi-media performances. Scenes from childhood were accurately portrayed, such as in the dressing up as somebody else, or being a member of a tea-party, in addition to which there were audio replays of dramatized childhood conversations.
Schooldays
The issue of bullying in school was brought to life by actors from the Evolution Youth Theatre. Audience members watched a dramatized scene in which victim and perpetrators explored methods of confrontation and of resolving their differences.
Work
With the help of a sound artist, a group of WRVS volunteers recaptured their memories of work and working lives in a series of vivid round-table narratives which were interspersed with sounds of clocks ticking, traffic rumbling and typewriter keys hard at work!
Seven Ages of Man
The 'seven ages of man' speech, in Shakespeare's play 'As You Like It,' was used to great effect as a voice over in a superb mime performance, where each 'age' from infant to old age was accurately portrayed in a stunning silhouette production.
Speech from Shakespeare's play, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Finale
The evening concluded with a video presentation of a studio discussion between WRVS volunteers and members of Evolution Youth Theatre which explored themes of youth, ageing and maturity and how each age informs the other in terms of such things as discipline, tolerance and economic power.