Stage to screen: War Horse

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (From stage to screen mini-series, episode 172) is a short documentary about War Horse and how its story travelled from a village to the page, the stage and the screen. It starts with Joey, a horse puppet made of cane and leather and moved by three people, then goes back to Devon in the 1970s, where Michael Morpurgo listened to old men who remembered the horses of the First World War, and to his 1982 book, told by Joey. It follows the 2007 play at the National Theatre in London, with puppets made by a company from South Africa, and the 2011 film. The war is told gently: horses carried food and pulled guns, many never came home, and a memorial in London says "They had no choice". No weapons and no fighting are shown. No grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 9 on facts and 1 on vocabulary (puppeteers). The study topic is how one story travels from the page or the stage to the screen, and what changes on the way.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a drawing of Albert and the young Joey on the farm, a photo of Joey with his puppeteers on stage, a photo of the Joey puppet in a museum), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: Would you rather see a real horse or a puppet horse on stage? Why?). Teachers may want to check beforehand that learners can read dates. The pack's key words explain the new words (cane, leather, village, remember, army, theatre, puppet, puppeteer, tail, breathe, soldier, memorial, choice).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged artistic-languages-and-messages (axis 5, "Langages et messages artistiques"; objet d'étude "Des planches aux plateaux de cinéma"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.