Lilies on the Land

Sarah Finch tells how ‘Lilies on the Land’, a play about the extraordinary lives and experiences of the women who worked on the farms during World War II, came to birth and how it is now about to open in London’s West End.

In 2001 the Lions part theatre company began a creative journey which led us towards an understanding of how ordinary lives can become extraordinary through sharing a common goal, and working with all one's effort in harmony with others. Having received about one hundred and fifty letters from land girls from WW2, including memorabilia of all sorts, we set about creating a play.

An excerpt of my diary at the time:

September 29th 2001

Farthingloe Land Army Museum: Meeting with ex land girls.
The company met together first over a fry-up in the café adjoined to the museum to re-read the letters sent by the land girls we will meet today...
But what a joyful afternoon – what diverse people, just as there would have been in the WLA. Plenty of talking at once, different opinions, different experiences.
We try on the uniforms that have been brought along, Mo sings songs.
What a wonderful start to the project.
On the way home, as we drove along the motorway we see an AMAZING double rainbow – a sign….

This was the start of an extraordinary journey. The devising process began...defining characters, visiting land girls whose letters seemed to have a particular link with our characters:

Tues 2nd October.
We all try to compile boards, with our own ‘stories’ which we read to each other later in the day. It is amazing to see how four diverse and interesting characters are emerging!

In all we do we have to be ready to ‘put aside’ our own ideas, and really put ourselves in the other’s shoes…offering a story from our research etc, there is great generosity in this respect.

In the afternoon we meet and start to weave the show together – it is amazing to see all the individual work slotting in, the golden thread of the show begins to reveal itself… …

...we feel that we are progressing by leaps and bounds – the theatrical form is beginning to emerge. Every now and then we get a thrill, and sense how it could be…I feel we continue to grow closer as a team – all working with a common purpose, as, perhaps, the land girls on whom the play is based would have done.

Touring a play about land girls in outer London Churches was never going to pack them in: the response to these very personal but true stories was overwhelming. The resulting tour, in 2003, went beyond our expectation; we started to sell out, and became that rarity ‘a commercial success’! In 2005 there was an attempt to place the production in the West End, and when this failed we thought the journey was over, however following the very sad death of one of our trustees, Phyllida Ritter, we were invited to take part in a celebration of her life at the Linbury Studio at The Royal Opera House, where she had worked. As Phyllida had loved ‘Lilies’, an excerpt of the play seemed an appropriate tribute. There was something marginally comic about four actresses belting war songs, and dancing 40’s dances with little skill and much gay abandon, in the midst of world class opera singers and ballet dancers! However the life of these extraordinary women spoke... a miracle occurred, a producer felt that this play should have an outing in the West End of London, and has sponsored six weeks at the Arts Theatre, near Leicester Square.  The play has been ‘refreshed’, but the stories are the same.

One of the letters that found its way into the play is about Christmas, there are both German and Italian Prisoners of War working alongside the land girls: they start to sing Silent Night, each in their own language… ‘at that moment there was no more war, we were at peace’. It is a moment in the play when audience and cast are one, living that unity desired in the depth of every human heart, and which, perhaps, theatre has the privilege, at times, to share.

Tickets: £35 / £22.50 / £15
Concessions, groups & schools rates available
0845 017 5584
www.liliesontheland.com
www.artstheatrewestend.com