Last Wednesday night, I wandered around the streets of York in the rain with several hundred other people. It didn't take long before we all forgot the drizzle. Inspired by the people of York's experiences during the first world war, Blood and Chocolate is a large-scale collaboration between the Theatre Royal York and two of the region's most interesting companies – Pilot and Slung Low. It takes theatre out of the theatre where it is hidden, and makes it visible. Angels stopped the traffic; people got up from their seats on buses so they could see what was going on; children played around the edges as if it were the most natural thing in the world. People hurrying by suddenly slowed, stopped and smiled.
As Matt Trueman has suggested, what makes this performance so moving "is the simple fact of its happening; that, a century on, we should gather to honour our forebears. You don't see public memorials to the mud and the terror, to grieving mothers and ardent pacifists, yet here the 180-strong community cast stand in for them, albeit temporarily."
The evening, which involves a large community cast and turns us all into witnesses, is affirmation of Slung Low artistic director Alan Lane's observation that "theatre is something we do, not something that happens to us". The show conjures the ghosts of the men of York who went off to fight in the trenches and the women who took their places in the chocolate factory and waited for their return. We marched behind the men, and we walked step by step with women. At one moment, one of the women from the vast community chorus slipped her hand into mine as we walked along, so it felt as if I was touching the past.
Last Wednesday night, I wandered around the streets of York in the rain with several hundred other people. It didn't take long before we all forgot the drizzle. Inspired by the people of York's experiences during the first world war, Blood and Chocolate is a large-scale collaboration between the Theatre Royal York and two of the region's most interesting companies – Pilot and Slung Low. It takes theatre out of the theatre where it is hidden, and makes it visible. Angels stopped the traffic; people got up from their seats on buses so they could see what was going on; children played around the edges as if it were the most natural thing in the world. People hurrying by suddenly slowed, stopped and smiled.
As Matt Trueman has suggested, what makes this performance so moving "is the simple fact of its happening; that, a century on, we should gather to honour our forebears. You don't see public memorials to the mud and the terror, to grieving mothers and ardent pacifists, yet here the 180-strong community cast stand in for them, albeit temporarily."
The evening, which involves a large community cast and turns us all into witnesses, is affirmation of Slung Low artistic director Alan Lane's observation that "theatre is something we do, not something that happens to us". The show conjures the ghosts of the men of York who went off to fight in the trenches and the women who took their places in the chocolate factory and waited for their return. We marched behind the men, and we walked step by step with women. At one moment, one of the women from the vast community chorus slipped her hand into mine as we walked along, so it felt as if I was touching the past.