15 Aug 1945, John Charter's wartime journal

The rumours of peace are still persisting! I feel, as usual, it is just another rumour. I do not think anything will happen till the end of September at the earliest. At least I have schooled myself to that thought – beginning October the earliest; more probably during Nov. or Dec. If it happens earlier, well so much the better, but now that I have ceased to worry about our speedy release and have managed to get back into my rut again I feel less restless.

During the last few days I have been thinking of producing ‘Hiawatha’ in the form of a choral reading. I have read through the poem and made a selection of the parts that are more or less necessary for the story and have made out a rough list of people I should like to ask to take a part. I think 6 or 8 sopranos, 6 contralto; 4 or 6 tenors and the same number of basses – unless I had two groups of basses on opposite sides of the stage, for there are quite a number of parts which would sound well if spoken by basses and it would perhaps, give added interest if these parts were spoken by two separate groups. I have cut it down to about 1/3 of its full length, for the whole thing would take about 4 hours to read and I don’t think a Stanley audience could stand more than about 80 minutes actual reading with a 10 minute interval. The metre and rythem in which the poem is written might become monotonous after a time, but one could avoid all monotony with choral reading where you can have all the soloists of different parts speaking separately or in unison.

I have never before attempted anything of this kind, but I think there are great possibilities in it and a narrative poem like ‘Hiawatha’, I think, would be especially suitable. The advantage would be that it would not need so much rehearsing as a play and the rehearsals themselves would be less tiring. Getting the parts copied out would be the chief difficulty. People would have to provide their own paper for it. Well, if nothing happens soon I must really see if I can collect together enough interested people to do it.

We were medically examined again yesterday and I am now 130 lbs – just a little underactually – my lowest in camp. My blood pressure was only 108 over 60 which is also lower than my usual here. But the blood pressure guage has sprung a leak now and the readings are only approximate.