Author: Callum Pepper

On reflection of the Tanks performance I think one of the highlights was the atmosphere we tried to create once the audience had stepped into the weighing room (Tank Testing Zone). With the sound of a tank rumbling through the battle field and the crew chatting there motto, we tried to create an unease and mixed tense within the audience. Also with the audience being trapped inside the tank once the chairs were at the side as well as the netting over the top of them it heightened the atmosphere. I further developed our idea I would like to have restricted the audience view, by this I would have probably made a replica of the tanks crews mask and had them wear it while inside the tank.

 One of the main aims of our performance was to show how important the tank was not only to the grandstand but also to Lincoln on a whole. Although the tank was not built at the grandstand it was tested on the area opposite the Grandstand West Common and also Burton Park. What we wanted to try and achieve was to show how important Lincoln and the area around the Grandstand was during the Frist World War.  Also how a the design of the machine conjured up by 3 men, Sir William Tritton, William Rigby of Fosters & Co and Major W G Wilson of the war Office, could change the way we fight in war.

 Some issues that accrued during the performance, partly ones that I noticed, the majority of us were a bit shaky on the line and the timing of the dialogue. Noting want had happening earlier in the day, one of the team not making it due to serious illness, we had to change and swap around some of the lines, which didn’t help because we got muddled with the lines and would stress about don’t knowing perfect enough to be comfortably with not having them written done. One of major issue which I would have further developed on was the movement of the chairs. The original Idea was for the four of us in the group to move the chairs one on top of each other, under each other and back around again to signify the movement of the caterpillar tracks movement along the ground. The movement which we did sort worked, but when it was left down to 3 members it was a bit more slowly and sticky in places and felt a bit jagged.

 Overall if had further time to develop our idea, I would experiment more on the movement of the chairs or even try a different way of portraying and building the tank, maybe to the same size as a real one?, and see how that would affect the space we were working in. Another possibly idea would be to involve the audience, make them build the tank without know what they doing and then show them what they have made.

The machine that changed the face of warfare forever.

With our Tank full established and now in a complete form we now felt it was time to do the first test, as we had a preview at lunchtime on the morning of our performance, we could you use this time to see what did and did not work.

One problem which did occur was the absences of one of the crew, so we had to quickly find a solution on how our tank would work with only 3 crew members. After discussing through the possibilities and improvising around having only 3 crew members we came up with a solution.
The solution was just to carry on as normal, do everything we had practised before, but this time with a slight difference. The Tank Officer would hold the netting over the audience at the front by himself and the 2 crew members left would move the chairs alongside the black box. Normally it would be 4 crew members moving the chairs which gave it that caterpillar movement. This decision would make the tank move a little bit slower, but the essence of what he a trying to portray would still be there.
The Tank Officer would set the scene, lead the audience into the testing zone, and place them into the black box, while the tank crew spoke their motto “From the blood, through the mud, to the green fields beyond.’ and moved the chairs alongside them.

Analysing the Preview, (the first test), everything went as we had plan earlier only a couple minor hiccups happening during the performance. One notably hiccup was the back end of the tank (Chairs) collapsed. But all we could do was carry as normal getting through the first showing to the 2 audience members that were involved, and then rebuild our machine for the second showing. The Preview gave us a great opportunity to practise and to see how the machine we had created would affect the space we were working in. The space surrounding the tank, I would say was not affected in our performance, but the space that we had created inside the Tank, were the audience would stand or sit, we had created a kind a claustrophobic atmosphere were by anyone standing or sitting inside would feel trapped with now kind of escape from being inside this killing machine.
What also gave the space its atmosphere was the crew reading out the dairy extracts while facing inwards towards the audience entrapping them in moment of realisation that the machine they were in, eventually became one of biggest changes in warfare. Not only did the tank change the face of warfare, but it affected those who powered the machine into battle and also those who came face to face and lost their lives at the hands of this new machine.

As LT. Otto Schulz of the Germany Infantry said in his diary: “One stared and stared as if one had lost the power to move ones limbs. This big mental monster approached us slowly; someone had shouted ‘THE DEVIL IS COMING’” ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y0ZHESxVEc))

So after months of preparation, the day was nearly upon to test out our tank.
The plan was all sorted; movement and text were set, all we needed to do was the final checks:

Step by Step guide on what action will take place:

1: The Tank Officer sets the scene for the audience
“It’s the First World War on the continent Britain and Germany are locked in a gruelling battle on the ground.
“If only”
Asked Admiral Bacon
“There was a machine capable of laying its own tracks fixed with the means of offences and defences”

Early 1916 Sir William Tritton and William Rigby of Fosters & Co held a meeting with Major W G Wilson of the war office in a secret location here in Lincoln. During that meeting they designed a machine that would change the face of war forever. That first machine was tested on Lincolns Burton Park and the land you see opposite us West Common

Ladies and Gentlemen please step this way to witness the testing of the first tank. “

2: The Tank Officer leads the audience through the weighing rooms curtains and makes them stand inside a black box marked out on the floor, The Tank Crew build the Tank around the audience placing the netting over their heads for roofing.

3: The Tank Crew read out extracts tacked from diaries of those who served in the Tank Corp and those who saw the Tank in battle

4: The Tank officer makes the audience leave the tank and tells them to stand against the wall looking at the outer shell of the tank, while the audience are moving the tank crew, apart from the Officer get inside the tank.

5: The Tank Officer reads out the Men and Machines article from the Lincolnshire Echo, during this the Tank crew interject with dialogue about the tank in battle

6: As the Tank crew finishes of their dialogue and one of the crew leaves the tank, the tank officer leads the audience out of the testing area, while doing so the tank is dissembled

The most important part of our performance is the timing of the dialogue. The dialogue needs to overlap each other as if the words themselves are part of the tanks caterpillar’s tracks moving along flowing within to each other without pausing. After get some constructive criticism from our lecture Michael, we all felt a lot more at peace with what we had created and was looking forward to putting our machine into practise.

When it came to rehearsing our section, now that we had created the caterpillar tracks added some movement, applied some text to the movement, what should we do next? What more could do to give the impression that the audience were seeing a tank from the First World War? After a another trip to the museum of Lincolnshire life and reading more into what it would have been like for the crew inside the tank. The idea that we came up that we should place our audience on the inside of our caterpillar tracks, placing a piece of material over them like a roof and squeezing the audience together to give that Claustrophobic feel that they are inside this killing machine with no way of escape.

Inside a World War 1 Tank

The original Tank crew shared the same space as the engine. The environment inside was extremely unpleasant; since there was no ventilation, the atmosphere was contaminated with poisonous carbon monoxide, fuel and oil vapours from the engine, and cordite fumes from the weapons. As you can see from the video it was a claustrophobic space for someone to be in, although they were protected from any outside force, it was the inside that was more deadly. The crew themselves were only issued with leather-and-chainmail masks plus a helmet to protect their head against projections inside the tank. Gas masks were standard issue as well, as they were to all soldiers at this point in the war. 

Steering a tank was difficult; it was controlled by varying the speed of the two tracks. Four of the crew, two drivers and two gears men were needed to control the direction and speed. As the noise inside was deafening, the driver, after setting the primary gear box, communicated with the gears men with hand signals, first getting their attention by hitting the engine block with a heavy spanner. For slight turns, the driver could use the steering tail: an enormous contraption dragged behind the tank consisting of two large wheels, each of which could be blocked by pulling a steel cable causing the whole vehicle to slide in the same direction. If the engine stalled, the gears men would use the starting handle – a large crank between the engine and the gearbox. Sadly many of these vehicles broke down in the heat of battle making them an easy target for German gunners. 

Now that we had an idea of what we wanted to with the audience, we decide to apply some more text to our piece, this time it was instead of the tank crews motto, we were going use the a newspaper article form the Lincolnshire echo from 1965 entitled ‘Men and Machines’. The article itself was someone opinion on how we now relying on machines to do our fighting instead of an army.

“The improvement in machines far outstrips the improvement in a man as a fighter as so we become more and more mechanized”

Works cited:

www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/tanks.htm (Accessed 14th April 2013)

www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/mark_one_tank/index_embed.shtml (Accessed 19th April 2013)

Linconlshire Echo,Men and Machines,1965

When examining the model of the mark I tank, the main feature that people can relate to is the caterpillar tracks. Caterpillar tracks were first invented for agriculture use from ploughing the land instead of using of horses. The tracks themselves would plough the earth crushing the earth engraving there marks across the land. The tracks were put on the new war machine to help them cross the trenches built by the enemy during the war.

 When it came to replicating a model/ image of the tank, our groups idea was first to find an air fix model that we could use it during the performance, our research and feelings about that the first tank spread around while we were building it gluing the parts together by one following the blueprints that were inside the box. When it came to creating something in the space inside the weighing room at the Grandstand we tried to recreate what we had made during our afternoon session at the village hall, a tank built from chairs. When in the weighing room we decided to turn one chair on top of the other and when look at what we had created the chair legs looked like the Caterpillar tracks that ploughed across the ground. The movement of the tracks when first used were slow and would turf the ground up. Our tanks tracks when moving them along would hit the ground creating a rhythm with the sound creating the motion of a convey belt repeating the action over and over moving along the room from one side to another.

Now that we had the movement for our tank sorted, we  decided to apply some text to our actions. The first piece of text we practised with was the Tanks regiments meaning which we had found at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life.

BROWN       from the Mud

        RED               through the Blood

                      GREEN         to the Green Fields Beyond

 Firstly we would have someone shout out the colour then the group would say what the meaning of that colour was then moving the chairs to their next position repeating the text and the movement until we reached the other side of the room. While doing this process it did make me think, could we have the audience on the inside of the tank and transport them from one side of the room to another shouting out or even whispering our text to them? While working on our movement and looking at the space in between our tracks I kept thinking could we make our audience part of the machine, the inside of the cabin, have them experience what it would have been like on the inside the Tank.

The noise of the engine rumbling behind them, the smell of cordite fumes lingering in the air and the feel the overwhelming heat from the engine. There would have been no escape from what the crew experienced being inside this Killing Machine.