Synopsis:
Journey’s end is a realism play depicting soldiers’ journey in the trenches in WW1. It follows an army company commanded by Captain Stanhope. This play is based on the real-life experience of RC Sherriff when he was in France in 1918 WW1. The costumes and set are also realistic as they share similarities to ones used in the real war. The men within the play have intimate relationships with one another and show a real and raw recount of WW1
Directorial Vision:
As a collective, our Drama production and play class wanted to follow the script ‘Journeys End’ that was beautifully and meticulously written by Robert Cedric Sherriff. The style of the play is realism as many of the events were recounts from veteran Cedric Sherriff’s time in the British army during WW1. Our foremost intention was to do the play justice as WW1 was a dramatic and sensitive event that depicts many repercussions that many veterans face. Such repercussions depicted in the play are real issues and topics, which include PTSD (Shell Shock) and militarism. Our intention that follows next importance, was showing the true and genuine relationships and friendships that were made in the trenches, showing true brotherhood and unity between the soldiers. This was also important because it showed a less deep topic that balanced out the seriousness of the issues shown. Both of our intentions helped shape the costuming, set design, lighting, and music, helping emphasize the influence the play had on the audience.
Character:
I played the character Raleigh. He was a shy boy entering an army group led by his best friend, Stanhope. Raleigh cheated his way to get into the group by getting his uncle to send him to Company C. He is a shy character and looks up to Stanhope highly. He is one of the main characters and is very important throughout the play. He has much love for Stanhope, but Stanhope does not want his best friend to go through the pain of being at war and is mad at Raleigh causing a rift between their friendship. The final scene of the play really captured this love of the two as Stanhope cared for Raleigh very deeply, and the thing he didn’t want to happen to Raleigh happened.
Character questions:
Please discuss the movement techniques you selected and how you applied these to create your character.
As my character Raleigh is very shy, my movement was slow and not large and exciting movement. Raleigh also was a nervous person as he shuffled his legs and looked down many times while speaking. Playing Raleigh was a hard task for me to do as I’m usually louder and bigger but Raleigh as a person is quiet and tries to stay small. The only time Raleigh took a major step in his walk was when he was happy to see Stanhope as he raced across to greet him. Throughout the play, the movement techniques I used were slow movement to show nervousness and a shy personality. I also shuffled my feet at tense moments and looked down a lot to show nervousness.
Which rehearsal processes and/or techniques did you apply and use to help you during the rehearsal process.
As my character Raleigh is of a lead role, my words that were said during the play were of 700+. A big way I helped learn movements was to write them down onto my script. This helped me remember movement patterns in my character. Also, I wrote down Raleigh’s mood during the scene to help with movement and facial expressions. To remember my lines, I wrote every single one of them onto a word document and printed it out to help remember my lines. This helped with me being able to read my lines when they are right next to each other instead of flicking through multiple pages. Having all my notes on a single piece of paper also helped with me being able to place them into my pocket and use it throughout the day. Just keeping on repeating the lines until it was in my memory also helped.
Overall, The Journey’s end production was a very fun experience for me in semester 2. As a person who isn’t involved with drama, I found this experience very fun and developed skills for the future. I also made new friendships and learnt things about others I didn’t know before. I bonded with strangers who I now call friends. I loved this play so much and I will miss it deeply. Thanks for reading.