Exeter Blitz Project

Between 1940 and 1942 the City of Exeter was blitzed by the German Luftwaffe 19 times. The worst raid took place in the early hours of May 4th, 1942. Viva Voce, in collaboration with the Bike Shed Theatre, have created a show from the memories of over 20 people who were living in Exeter and between the ages of 6 and 25 in 1942.

It is a complex task to create a compelling narrative from live testimony so I was intrigued to see how this project would manage to mould 40 hours or so of recollections about an event 70 years ago into an evening that would inform and entertain an audience. In this project, all the people lived around the same area but, of course, had slightly different stories and recollections even though they all overlapped.

What was remarkable about the evening was how the five actors, with just subtle changes of grouping and characteristics, reprensented so many voices; each a distinct thread of the overall and never leaving us wondering who was who - the technique was never obtrusive as the many individuals became real before our eyes. The stage was also populated by uniforms hanging from the roof, as each "joined" the narrative a bare bulb was lit above it, one, Walt the ARP, was extinguished later as his young wife recalled the evening he was 'blown to bits' doing his duty - his body was never found and eventually the leg of an unknown person was buried to give his wudow a place to grieve. It has long been apparent to me that we can only learn about war through the stories of individuals, looked at as a big picture life changing events become mere facts, statistics and footnotes.

This was by no means a sad evening, quite the opposite, remember that most of  these memories came from people who were children at the time and the boys, in particular, admitted that they had found it all eciting and had had a "good war". So, woven from these many recollections, came stories of individuals woven into a picture of local communities who formed part of the larger City and who were particularly affected by the worst of the Exeter Blitz. We are taken from just before the war through to the 1948 Austerity Olympics when the torch passed through Exeter and "we turned up, the flame went by, we got on with things" a pragmatic approach contrasted to great effect with the £85,000 the City was spending to do the same thing just after this run ended!

Whilst there was much to entertain any audience there were clearly in-jokes for the locals and things that made people over a certain age laugh out loud. What I shall remember, for a very long time, is the skill with which the voices of the old were reflected in a trully authentic way, by the cast. Of course, the setting also played a part, listening to Blitz stories whilst in a brick basement lends a certain truth and the setting was very clever, less is more so we were given just a hint of a bombed out house, an old radio for some critical wartime recordings and, at the end, some bunting, not bright like it would be now but cut from old clothes as it would have been then. I was lost in tghe 1940s for nearly 2 hours and loved every minute of it.

The surpise at the end, when I was thinking how well the narrative had been crafted, was the final words, moving seamlessly from the actors back to a recording of one of the interviewees - how he remembered that war seemed so "normal" to a child who had known little else and how he feared for children around the world today growing up knowning nothing but war ... suddenly this wasn't history anymore, it was a slightly dusty mirror held up to show how this suffering has not gone away, just moved elsewhere.

I am so glad I caught this .... my thanks to all those involved