Project Sword a personal reflection of the creation process

The devising process of Northern6’s first performance; Project Sword, has been a turning point for me as an artist in understanding how a company can create work that responds to trauma, but being careful to respect the facts, and still create work that is shocking and engaging. As a theatre maker, my work often focuses upon personal narratives, and as a company we decided that this would be a way to explore the trauma faced by many of the men landing on D-Day 1944.

It was at that moment that the company decided we would focuses upon the creation of fictional characters, allowing us to engage our audiences in true to life stories that do justice to the facts, without recreating the trauma faced by those who were there on D-Day. Not only did this allow for engaging characters that out audience could relate to, it also relived pressure on us as a company allowing us to push the boundaries of the work we were creating without the added pressure of possibly insulting veterans by using real life stories. Yes, our work was always going to be based on real life events and real-life stories, but we wanted to interpret not recreate.

Looking back on this truing point in the devising process it is clear that the focusing of personal fictional narratives, has allowed our work to become more in-depth, and allowed the imagery of our work to have deeper meaning. The development of our work as fiction, allowed us as a company to engage in a notion of ‘re-creation’ to add and to change our work, tailoring it to the needs of our audience. To make work that is both visually and textually striking, whist always interpreting never rein-acting.

Ashley Marshall