Workshop One – Scene Entrances & Exits/ Physical Levels
In the novel Stanhope has the most physical status, not just because of his rank but also because people look up to him. Stanhope may rank the social hierarchy level amongst his fellow comrades but inside he is emotionally distraught, he does not show this and somehow stays head strong, on the other hand there is Hilbert who is tired and has lost all hope and hates the war and then decides he would like to pull out claiming that he has neuralgia but he is just trying to find ways to get home. To create a dugout like entrance we set up a few plinths on top of each other and the lined chairs up behind it creating a walkway which was on the width of our shoulders, this helped us to show great emphasis in our gestus as we clambered in and out of the trench.
Workshop Two – Lighting/ Staging
Our stage set was very minimalistic so that we could re-create what it would be like to be in a trench, to help us adapt and realise this we set up chairs as a border and them established a rule stating that venturing outside the border was ‘forbidden’. For our play we had only a few lights on stage, we did this to try and achieve the same amount of minimal lighting just as it would be in the trench. In one of our lesson we even used live candles to help build the low lit and damp surrounding of a trench and we also cramped all of the furniture together to make ourselves adjust to such a small so space just as the soldiers would have had to in journeys end.
Workshop Three - Crosscutting
In our third work shop we focused on the dramatic explorative strategy of cross-cutting, first we assembled ourselves into groups with sizes of 2-4 people and then we had to take a scene from the book and re-enact it using the dramatic strategy of cross-cutting. My group chose the scene where Riley dies from a battle wound. To add the element of cross cutting we showed a small part of the scene where riley dies and