Four Stagedoor students have been treading the boards this week as part of On The Mend – a play written and directed by Bryn Holding, and produced by the Everyman as part of Cheltenham Remembers – a programme of events commemorating the centenary of the end of World War 1. The play featured nine community performers alongside three fantastic professional actors, and was performed in five different venues between Tuesday 23rd and Saturday 27th October.

On The Mend focuses on the stories of William Davy and Grace Atwood – fictional characters, living in Cheltenham during the Great War. As William enlists to fight, optimistically hoping that the whole affair will be “over by Christmas”, his fiancee Grace signs up to be a VAD nurse. There were 8 VAD hospitals in Cheltenham during World War 1 – these were set up by the Red Cross and run by Voluntary Aid Detachments which were made up of local women, working for free under trained nurses. During World War 1, 15,852 soldiers were treated in Cheltenham’s VAD hospitals. Whilst William tragically dies at the front, Grace is allowed a happier ending, eventually falling in love with one of the Belgian soldiers she has nursed, and, finding hope in a place of great sorrow, finally moving on with her life.

The play told this moving story beautifully, with well-known songs as well as original music by Tamsin Kennard woven through the plot.

As community performers, the Stagedoor students had an awful lot to do – not just extras, but integral characters to the plot, with lines and songs, and, in Saskia’s case, an enormous monologue which told the end of Grace’s story, bringing her right up to 2018.

The play was performed in five different venues during the week, each close to the site of a VAD hospital, and, in the case of Gloucester Road Primary School, in the actual hall where soldiers were nursed back to health a hundred years ago. Performing in each venue, and knowing how close we were to the real settings of the story we were telling was incredibly poignant.

The whole experience was incredible, and the Stagedoor students (and their teacher!) learned an awful lot from working so closely with the professional performers and production team. We are very grateful to Bryn Holding, Tamsin Kennard, Hannah Louise Howell, Jack Quarton and Jack James Ryan for welcoming us so wholeheartedly into the company.