The Eight Moon Journey

Welcome to ‘The Eight Moon Journey’, the website associated with The Crescent Theatre’s production of ‘Our Country’s Good’. Here you will find the thoughts and opinions of the director and cast and will, hopefully, lead to an insight into the process of bringing the play to the stage. Each of the links on the left take you to a different aspect of the production.

Students studying ‘Our Country’s Good’ and the work of Bertolt Brecht should get a lot out of this site as we outline many of the directorial decisions taken during rehearsals, look at the techniques used during rehearsals and how they affect the work of the actor and explore some of the Brechtian theories that we have chosen to apply to the play.

Not only am I the director of the play but I am also a drama teacher. As such I am using this production as a means of exploring the play with my students but also to give them the experience of seeing a play influenced by the work of Bertolt Brecht that can guarantee Brechtian performance and rehearsal methods have been used, useful for both units 5 and 6 of the AQA course.

Postscript

Overall, I am very happy with the finished performance. There are things that have changed or evolved in ways I didn’t expect, and things that should have happened but didn’t, but overall this is as close to what I wanted as I could get. I hope you enjoy or have enjoyed the performance.

I hope this site proves useful.

Mark Thompson
Director.