A Season for Marbles

The People’s War
Memories, stories, music, laughter, reflection

 

Introduction

Monologues:
Click on a title to read each monologue
1. War is announced
2. Energetic Ella
3. Gas Masks
4. Magnetic Meg
5. Soft Sylvia
6. Security
7. After
8. Bombs
9. Lucky Louise
10. Group peace Poems
11. Easy Eileen
12. Games
13. Independent Iris
14. Talkative Ted
15. Mixed-up Marjorie
16. Home Cures
17. Shining Sheila

 


Introduction

As creative reminiscence practitioners we were approached by Eastbourne WRVS heritage project coordinator Kirsty Henshall, to run a series of group sessions and to create a performance drawn from participant’s experiences during WW2. Over the six sessions nine WRVS service users shared their wartime memories as children, parents, young people - working, playing, in service, being evacuated – bombings, shelters, food, clothes, dancing, rationing, romance and more.

By using creative exercises, including the popular Name Game*, word games, singing, and reading and writing poetry, fascinating memories emerged – not just the facts but the heart of individual lives. Over the weeks we laughed and sometimes shed a tear or two, but always enjoyed our time together. The stories, words and poems in this book are taken from what people told us in these sessions. They were all included in the performance.

Although they have been edited for and appear in the order of the performance, each story reflects the person as an individual. We hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we enjoyed being with these nine remarkable and courageous people.

Jane Metcalfe, Shaping Voices

Name game

* Every week we would choose an adjective beginning with the first letter of each name to describe how we felt or how we would like to feel that day. You will see some of our choices at the head of each story!

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