Character Research - Army Ranks

In this play, my character is lieutenant George Johnston and after the "a day in the life of" improvisation we did in class, I realised I had absolutely no idea where my character stood in the army hierarchy. To understand the attitudes my character would have towards his other colleagues and the attitudes they would have towards him, I decided it would be wise to research the food chain of the marines.

(Starting from the top dogs)

1. Field marshal
2. General
3. Lieutenant General
4. Major General
5. Brigadier
6. Colonel
7. Lieutenant Colonel
8. Major
9. Captain
10. Lieutenant
11. Second Lieutenant 
12. Officer cadet

From this we can see that George (my character) is third from the bottom and isn't rated very much. He would have to be respectful to almost everyone else because most of the officers in the play are of a higher rank than he is.

Nevertheless, he has a role to play. First lieutenants command platoons of around 30 soldiers and normally get promoted within three years of being in the position. They can sometimes take on jobs that are outside their field and develop skills there and work in fields such as machinery, aviation and medical.

Of course in the 18th century, there wasn't a great deal of machinery let alone planes, so my character would have been more planning attacks and helping injured soldiers.

Initial Reaction to the Script

Today, we had the first read through of the script and it wasn't too different from what I expected. I already knew that the play was set in the late 1700's (1780's to be exact) and that it was based on the settling of the British in Australia, but not much more.

After the read through I found out that the play focused more on whether they've traveled all the way to Australia to punish the convicts or to rehabilitate them - punishment vs rehabilitation. The punishment was typical of the time using methods such as flogging, decapitation and hangings or just imprisonement. Rehabilitation was a resolution most unheard of at the time and in act 1 scene 6 (the scene I'm in), the marines are discussing Ralph's  idea of doing a play with some of the convicts. Some of them are for it and some of them are against it. Some of them were saying that a play can put their ideological society into their heads for the future and others are saying a criminal is a criminal and should be punished, not given opportunities. Most of the convicts were illiterate so that was also an against factor.

The characters in the convicts have strong cockney dialect and the marines are well-spoken. At first, the convicts are quite eager to be in the play and there is some conflict between them, especially liz, ralph and the other women but they come closer together as the all have the love and passion for theatre that brings them together, especially towards the end where it is announced that liz will be hung. At this point, the theatre becomes like a therapy for liz because it might be the last thing she may ever enjoy and it also brings the rest of the cast together when sideway proposes creating a theatre group after the show. There is a sense of sweet unison towards the end.

The themes in Our Country's good are crime and punishment, death and love. I think it'll be interesting to see how this play will grow and develop but this is a kind of play that needs to be energetic and made understandable to the audience, or it'll be boring. The play is set in a time and society that is irrelevant to ours but we can make it relatable.

I'm also quite excited to see the set too. I'm hoping that it's modernised with the Georgian essence, easy to work with but also aesthetically pleasing.