Sixteen-year-old Whangarei Girls High School student Rebecca Turner "never really knew much about the wars".
But that was only until she took part in a year-12 drama project on the effects of war through the ages. Now she knows: "War is horrible."
Called Under Command, the production is a compilation of poems, prose and songs chosen by Girls High drama teacher Tracey Aitken and the students. The project is part of the year-12 NCEA study of playwright Bertolt Brecht and his system of epic theatre. Students are required to demonstrate those techniques in performance and carry out the technical tasks of the production.
Cast members say getting inside their roles has opened their eyes to the effects of wars on civilian populations, especially women. Rebecca learned of the effect of war on civilians in her piece, the bitter poem Dulce Et Decorum Est by World War One poet Wilfred Owen, which ends with a warning not to tell children the same old lies about war. "It makes you want to make sure it never happens again," she says.
Jodie Nichol was horrified by her piece - a true, first-person account of an Austrian woman gang-raped by Russian soldiers in World War Two, as recounted to her adult daughter. Pregnant, she had fled in winter to the wrecked city of Berlin. After giving birth she had let the baby die. Later, making her way to England, she had married and had five more children - but never forgave herself for what she had done to her first child. "It really grossed me out. I just didn't know this had gone on," said Jodie. Background study had included learning that at least 10,000 German women were known to have killed themselves after undergoing multiple rapes.
Aimee Wilkinson chose an account from a Hiroshima survivor, wandering through the vapourised city centre. "I thought, `Oh wow, I couldn't have handled that'. It has made us think how lucky we are to live here," she said.
One item had turned out to be horribly topical, said Ms Aitken - a dialogue between two Cockney butchers discussing carnage from the bombing of London in World War Two, of finding severed limbs in rubble. "London was burning again (from suicide bombers in July) when we were rehearsing the piece which really brought it home to the students," she said.
The production also includes pieces as diverse as extracts from the Old Testament of the Bible, Clytemmestra's speech welcoming Agamemnon home from the Trojan war, and songs like Lilli Marlene and The Battle Hymn Of The Republic.
The show is being performed tonight and tomorrow night at the WGHS drama room.
Enlightenment on the horror of war
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