AAS (15) - "Not Waving but Drowning"

We were given the poem "Not Waving but Drowning", by Stevie Smith, and told to make it into a physical theatre piece. The poem is as follows:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

We decided that we would discuss what the poem made us think of and how we would interpret it. We considered an old man in hospital who dies during the night. However, we didn't see how this would connect to "waving" and "drowning". We then though that we could do suicide. This would link to the "dead man" part and the "drowning", as we could say that he was "drowning" in stress and pain.

We then thought about what could happen to the man and came up with the following: bullied at school, abused by parents, break up with girlfriend and fired from his job.

We are using "useless information" by "Apparat". However, we begin and end our piece with sirens. This gives our piece a cyclical structure. In our piece we use unison with Charlie (who's playing the man) doing something else to show that he is different and doesn't fit in. We have used Frantic Assembly's technique of "round-by-through" in our "office" section. To include the actual poem, Ollie Kelly and I read certain lines - we are playing the mum and dad. We say the whole of the first stanza at the beginning (apart from the "dead man" line as we didn't think this would work). When Ollie and I sit down on the blocks he says "and now he's dead" as he can't believe it. There is then a pause and I say "it's cold" as if trying to change the topic. We then say the last two lines of this stanza. We thought that we should only include fragments of the poem rather than reading the whole thing as it worked better with what we had created - it was more creative and avoided someone reading the poem with a dance happening behind them.

Our piece is as follows:

• Opening - Death
• Childhood bullying
• Child abuse
• Break up
• Office
• Death

Next lesson we shall polish this piece and then record it.