Throughout the year events will be staged up and down the country to commemorate WW1 and The Lights in Andover is joining in by marking the anniversary with a variety of creative activities and performances.
During January Lights based Test Valley Arts Officer Alex Hoare has been working in partnership with Jayne Stillman, County Inspector/Adviser Visual and Performing Arts, to run a series of workshops for teachers that explore different ways of making poppies, the symbol of remembrance.
Participants have explored different creative collage and textile techniques suitable for children of all ages and abilities as well as staff and schools’ communities, which will be used to make poppies to contribute to hanging displays for both Romsey and Andover. The Poppy hangings will be on display in The Lights from Monday 4th August.
In contrast, three very different pieces of theatre will be performed at The Lights this year. The first on Tuesday 4th March is Woyzech by Scene Productions. Set amid the backdrop of WW1, this is a startling depiction of the lowly soldier plagued by visions of the apocalypse and plunged into homicidal lunacy by the world around him. Disturbingly atmospheric, darkly comic and heartbreakingly poignant.
Then on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19th March The Lights welcomes Forest Forge Theatre with their new production entitled Battle Lines. Three plays within a play which depicts the way three wars have shaped the lives of generations of local people. Extensive research by the writer David Howorth, some gathered at a reminiscence Tea Dance at The Lights last October, has resulted in a unique work with which many will empathise.
Not About Heroes on Saturday 29th September is presented by Blackeyed Theatre in association with South Hill Park and is the story of two of the “Great War” poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sasson. Through the letters and poems of these two men Not About Heroes paints a vivid and moving picture of their friendship and the conflict that brought them together. One hundred years on from the beginning of the First World War, Not About Heroes is both exhilarating and uncompromising in its exploration of love, war and a friendship that changed the face of British poetry.
Further details can be found at www.thelights.org.uk or by calling the Box Office on 01264 368368
