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After watching a play called 'Not about heroes', a two man play about the relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, I was enlightened to use one of these to poets as my stimulus for my physical solo. As poets their writing styles used rich and vivid literature that portrays a clear picture of the horrors of World War 1. However, I had a particular area which I wanted to explore at that was the life of a soldier. Therefore, I began looking at some of the wartime poems written by Sassoon and Owen. It didn't take me long to find the perfect poem entitled, 'The troops', which uses a variety of adjectives to increase the brutality and horror within the text. The poem explores how a soldiers life in the trenches replicates a  sort of living hell and who slowly are sucked into the war to the point where there is no return and they merely become 'dust'.

Using this poem I came up with the idea of following the step-by-step process of a soldiers life before and during the war. I pictured an artist who lives a quite life in the English countryside who eagerly enlists himself into the British Army when the war begins. During his training he slowly becomes a product of the British army thus losing his identity as an artist; he and the war are one now. Finally, when he is introduced to the life in the trenches he becomes mentally and physically lost. He has reached the point of no return and slowly becomes the monster that is war.