The History of Voyage:
Formed in September 2006 this year sees the third year of Voyage at Debden Park High School. The company was formed because I wanted to create a theatre company in the school that would help the most talented performers to develop their acting. The idea became reality after the first auditions at which over 40 people turned up to try and get in.
From this, 30 pupils were selected and they became the first ensemble cast of Voyage Theatre Company. Their debut was in the Winter Wonderland Christmas Concert 2006 where they performed a five minute devised piece entitled Happy Ever After? This featured many of the now trademark Voyage style techniques including drama to music, physical theatre and tight unison ensemble work. In February they performed all of the drama pieces from the much loved Valentines cabaret, Be Loved which featured some devised pieces about love as well as some poetry readings.
They finished the year by performing a scripted piece called Night of the Living Beauty Pageant in July which gave many of them a chance to show off their comic acting abilities.
In September 2007 we said goodbye to some much loved members of the company from year 11 and auditions began to top up the numbers for the coming year. This year again over 30 people auditioned but this time there were only 15 places available so competition was fierce. This year saw the production of Outsiders a collaboration with Madame Mann’s DYD company. We thought as Voyage was a physical theatre company and DYD was contemporary dance that is would make sense for the two to work together on a joint theme. This production was a huge success with DYD and Voyage producing two original twenty minute pieces in one evening. ( Check out the photos in the Visuals section).
Later in the Year at The Loughton Literary Festival, Voyage also performed extracts from local poet Granville Barker at Loughton Methodist Church. This was shown to an audience of poetry fans including the writer’s wife who was blown away by the piece by Voyage.
In September 2008 the process to continually find new talent continued as again Year 11s left and auditions took place to top up the cohort. This year only a handful of people managed to get in to the company as it was very competitive. The focus this year was again to produce a short devised piece for the Winter Wonderland concert and this resulted in the production called One Day Like This which featured a snow shower in the final moments which can now be seen hung above the English corridor.
Due to the “Dirty Dirty Princess” National Theatre project featuring so many of Voyage’s members ,the company was suspended for a few months as this production took up everybody’s time. However when the Year 11s left the remaining company members got together to devise a piece called the Seven Sins for Expressive Arts Week. This was performed 7 times to every student in Years 8 and 9 as well as parents.
The next Chapter in Voyage’s History begins this September with the next set of auditions and hopefully another group of talented, committed and imaginative performers will grace the stage at Debden Park and beyond…….