Hardships of war fuel song and verse

GALLIPOLI REMEMBERED: Izabelle Brown will be among Greytown Little Theatre members to read war poetry as part of a performance for the Greytown Arts Festival. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Greytown Little Theatre actors and the Featherston Gentlemen's Choir will evoke the hardship and sorrow of war through a series of poems and songs performed to mark the Gallipoli centenary this year.

The readings will begin at 11am on Saturday and Sunday as part of the Greytown Arts Festival, which starts tomorrow.

Five actors - Margaret Jesson, Narena Olliver, Rita-Anne Penhale Cashmore, Colton Stuart and Izabelle Brown - will read poems written by soldiers and women involved in the war effort.

The readings will be interspersed with offerings from the choir, who will perform songs that were sung in the trenches. Actors will be dressed as nurses, soldiers and in period costume.

Former Kuranui College head girl Izabelle Brown, 18, who will take on the role of a woman awaiting the return of a loved one, will read two poems by Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth and Futility, as well as After the War and Lamplight by May Wedderburn Cannan.

Miss Brown hopes audiences will gain an insight into the effects of the war.

"I hope they will have a greater understanding of how the war affected different groups of people.

"It's important that we remember everything that they went through as a way to prevent it from happening in the future, and why we are here today, and why we have the freedoms we have got."

Remembering the loss of loved ones close to her had helped her channel the emotion of the poems.

"I had people who are close to me who have died and it's sort of relating to that experience when I'm reading.

"There are a few [poems] that really capture the sorrow of having someone close to you die."

Miss Brown's two English great-grandparents were involved in the war effort, with her great-grandfather working as an in-flight radio operator.

"They never talked to me about it ... [but] it makes it easier to imagine because we think about the ones we love in similar conditions."

Entry to the performance is by gold coin donation.