Devised Evaluation

I believe that our “Humanity in Crisis” devised piece went well this year because within our group we had managed to come up with a very effective issue and diverse ways to portray each one of our ideas. I believe that this devised piece went well this year because I was able to come up with many ideas from the devised title, my group managed to come up with multiple ideas to test and research. So I feel our creativity and planning skills have improved as well as been shown during the start of the devising Unit where we experiment with several different ideas, researched them In depth, before settling on the main idea to use. I believe that one of the things we did well was the deciding on our main focus for “Humanity in crisis” because we were all well informed about all ideas we had from research and managed to make mature and interesting choice. Our main focus was education and more specifically behaviour from students, this was a very interesting issue to show to an audience if we can portray the issue effectively even though this was considered to be a very difficult issue because it’s a subject not a lot people other than teacher might find interesting. This is what I believe went well as I think we managed to not only portray our point to the issue we set out to show, we also managed to make it visually appealing to members of the audience who wouldn’t acre about our issue. Another thing we did well was how we made our piece appealing for all types of audiences, we created visually appealing movement segments and thought proving dialogue with humour in to show the relation between student and teachers, what it should be and why it is like the way it is. I also believe that our self-written dialogue was another skill that was well used in our piece. I believe this aspect went well because when we had written dialogue in the past like for last years devised piece we didn’t think much on our dialogue which ended up having written our script in the form of cliché dialogue. This year we had spent more time working on our dialogue so we could achieve a more naturalistic tone, we managed to do this by researching our characters in depth, as our characters were teachers we had teachers look over our script and help us improve them to the more realistic standard.

I believe that what could have gone better with our devised show was the physical theatre pieces we had created, even though they suited the tone of our devised piece and managed to be physically appealing, I believe we could of worked harder to make them stand out more to the audience as most of the pieces had over half of our group sat down in chairs. I would have like to have looked into a way of making our physical pieces bigger and less tame, one of the physically piece we had created was where the students were controlling the teacher, which we had done very well, but the piece was meant to show the decent towards a chaotic future where the children were being destructive which I don’t believe this piece had shown as the execution of the physical piece felt too neat for a chaotic future. I also believe that our piece could have been better if we had looked into furthering our scripted scenes more, what I mean by this is that although we had managed to write effective and realistic dialogue all our scenes were very static or had us stuck in chair, It could have been better if we had looked into a way of getting our teacher characters up and moving around. Another idea would have been too create a few scenes in a classroom or the teachers with their life outside of school so that we could have had movement in our scripted scenes making them less static. Another thing we could have improved with our piece was the choice in staging because although the Traverse staging worked we could have looked further into the types of staging we could have used for the piece. When we talked about staging we originally set out to do traditional staging for our piece but were later inspired by a show called the “Black watch” to try Traverse for our show, which made me feel we had all settled on the idea on traverse staging very early on in the creation process of our show. This meant that we could of experimented with different idea of staging that could of helped set the tone of our piece like we could have had our audience sat on exam desk to help pull them into our devised pieces issues or of had them sat like a classroom to watch the piece.

Last rehearsal

Today is our last rehearsal before we perform our "humanity in crisis" devised pieces. So our objective today is to run through our whole piece as much as possible with props, costumes and lighting. Before we started 2 of us plotted the lighting, 2 of us went to grab of the props needed while the last 2 set the performance space.
I collected the props we needed:
2x wooden rulers
6x books
Glass water poorer
Digestives
Cups

While collecting these props the others set the traverse staging as well as our 6 desk and chairs in opening positions so we can start straight away.
When lighting was in position we started our run through:
Sound scape
Meeting 1
Victorian piece
Meeting 2
Future school piece
Meeting 3
Corporal punishment piece
Meeting 4

We ran through our whole show little to none problems other then just to make sure we know all our lines in the meeting scenes. This was our note for our whole run through so I'm feeling very confident for our performance as I feel we are ready as a group and performance to show of our interesting view of humanity in crisis through education.

Final drafts

Today we decided to finish our script completely today, so we sat down read through as well as perform each script. After this we made little changes to the script in working so that we were all happy with every script except the ending scene where e have a food fight as we came to the realisation that we could hit a member of the audience of injure someone so we wanted to change to a safer ending. Instead we now have meg throw a pen at me  to which we all respond to by getting into a massive verbal argument before Kyle says the ending line we agreed on last lesson. After we were happy with all our script work we looked at one of our physical pieces, future school, then went over it step by step as some of us had forgotten what we do in this piece. After we had managed to piece this together we looked at the opening part of this piece as a member of our group had an idea for the start of the song. At the beginning we all push round our chairs then bang them as they move closer to be he teacher before sitting back down on the chair, this new idea I liked as it made me think of an animal stalking its prey. This was a really useful lesson as we have now completely finished all our scripted work in our devised so our focus is now on the physical side of our piece and as a group we are getting better at collaborating ideas for each other to improve our performance.

Scene 4 + sound scape

Today we sp lit into 2 groups which was me by myself writing scene 4 and the others working on the sound scape that opens our devised piece. Within scene 4 this needed to be the summary of everything we had shown in our piece as well as still containing humour to be appealing to our audience. In scene 4 I needed to write a realistic debate/fight between the teachers, a reason for Meg to get annoyed, my entrance, a food fight and a message to end on. Within the scene I have written that Toby, being the irritating teacher, will start eating biscuits really loud which will annoy Meg but no one else. My entrance I decided would be during the argument where I'd just come in and sit down, not caring about the argument. The food fight would start from Meg, she would have a lecture to all of us about our behaviour which respond to with a stupid comment pushing Meg over the edge to throw a biscuit at me and then everyone joining in. Based around the food fight ending we had the idea that our ending line should "how can we expect the children to behave when we can't". I liked this as it reflects on the teachers we had made during the devised show and is a good message to end on.

The others started work on the sound scape where they decided to just use recordings for the sound scape instead of ourselves. So they have been drained storming and recording noises they can put on a track to set the classroom similar to when we had first come up with the sound scape but having everything recorded.

After we were both done we had a sit down to read through our final script. We all like the ending which now ment we had finished staging everything so for the next couple of lesson we needed to work on perfecting our pieces. So for nest lesson we our going to take one last look at our scripts and make any final changes before going on a polishing our physical pieces.

Production meeting

Today we decided to change our plan we had before this lesson to sit down and talk about the production itself. We decided to write down our running order for the show and staging:

Classroom sound scape
Meeting 1
Victorian school
Meeting 2
Future school
Meeting 3
Corporal punishment future
Meeting 4

All the staging for the meetings is the same with the 6 of us as desks sat in a circle around each other.
We decided to stage the sound scape with all of us sat around the stage in random places and directions.
The Victorian piece we had a desk at the front of our staging with the 5 of us sat in the shape of the 5 on a dice facing towards the desk at the front, we changed this to have the ones of us on chairs around the edge to be facing inwards so the we were each facing audience members.
Future school was stage with 5 of us sat in a semi circle and our teach in the centre of the stage, we change this to improve audience viewing by having the semi circle at the back of our staging so that no view was abstracted.
Corporal punishment future was the 4 desk sat in a square with the guards circling the desks.

We next talked costumes for a characters:
We needed to think about costume changes between students to teachers so we agreed on having black trousers?skirt as the bottom and white shirt for the top with an extra items to turn us into teachers like my was a sweater and another item was a blazer.

Finally we talked about our last scene and what we wanted to happen in the scene. We needed to raise either a clear problem in the world of education or a salutation as our ending note. We also wanted to keep the humour so was inspired by "future conditional" which had a scene where the teachers engaged in a food fight, we liked this and wanted to use it in our devised piece. Finally we also needed to sort my entrance so that it would be comical.
This was a very useful lesson for our group as we have managed to sort out all the extra details in our show we hadn't looked at before today, we also managed to work well as a group suggesting ideas for improvements within our devised show.

Improving scenes 2-3

Today we came straight away and pull out our drafted scripts from last lesson and showed them to two teachers to gather their opinions on how to better the scenes. After reading the scripts they said that we needed to just change the phrasing of some lines as they weren't the exsact way a teacher would respond to each other. Another part we change was a section where Kyle reacted to an inappropriate comment from Toby, we changed this to Meg reacting as we thought it was more suitable wi5h her being the head of the meeting to react to the comment. After letting the teachers read the scripts we made the improvements they suggested before we ran though scene 2. I read in for our absence member in this scene which sets up our Future school piece, he setting was the same as the first scene being sat around a table in a circle so audience could see at least 2 teachers face at once. After we ran this scene we then tried scene 3 which sets up our corporal punishment future piece. This week has been a productive lesson as we have now set every part of our devised show except the ending which we decided is our goal for next lesson. Overall we had worked effectively as a group to get 2 scenes finished today as well as sort out what we can do next lesson.

Script plan

For the next 2 weeks we are absent a member of our devised team so we decided to plan out everything we can do to prepare for the show while he is gone. We talked as a group and said we don't need anymore physical piece as we had a few already. This was good as well because this wasn't something our absentee could learn at home so we decided to talk script work and what we could create. We discussed and decided that we wanted to create 3 more scripted scenes in our devised as the scripted scenes were the centre of our devised story. Within the scripted scenes we wanted to portray a message to our audience about the current problem with behaviour in education. Each scripted scene is going to lead into the physical theatre pieces as the scenes will point out a solution or problem and the physical pieces will show the outcome of the actions. We said that we will decide us so that we can write 2 scripts over the next 2 lessons: me and Kyle worked on the second scene while Meg, Carl and Toby worked on making scene 3. After this we would just have our ending to plan which we said we talk about sorting next lesson. Our goal for the lesson was to get theses 2 scripted pieces first drafts done so we can get a teacher to look at them in our next lesson on how to improve them. Our final discussion came up while writing the script which was my characters entrance to the scene as I had not appeared in the first scene, my character was meant to be the teacher who was late for the meeting so we weren't sure to bring him in the second scene so that I'd have more scene time or at the end for comedy value. We discussed this and I said I didn't mind entering at the end if we all believe it would help the piece so we agreed to have my entrance at the end of the show. Overall I believe this was an effective lesson even though we are now down a member of our group for the next 2 weeks. This lesson went well as we have managed to come up with a plan of action to get our show staged over the next couple of lessons using our scripted scenes. We have also managed to create to drafts for three of our scripted scenes to be looked over next lesson.

Improving Corpral Punishment Future

Today we showed our Corpral Punisment piece to Mr Webb who said he understood what we wanted to try and accomplish but our delivary wasnt the best. He said the guards don't need to be dressed in riot gear or need the shields, he suggested we try the piece with Wooden rulers and that we should use them to move as well as to control the students. We changed the start of our piece from having the students already sitting to having them walking in military style in lines a formation from the back towards their seats. I am stood at the front while Kyle is stood at the back, we will always try to stay the other ends of the class to each other so we can obtain a realistic patrol. When the students reach their seat I lower my hand to show they can sit before moving my ruler left to right to show they can get their books out. We decided that we wouldn't let the guards talk to show a form of power over the students as we don't need to talk to control them. In the piece we show several incidents that happen in classes but how in our future school the guards respond to these incidents.
1. Passing a note
2. Getting out of your seat
3. Lying to guards
4. Arguing against punishment
At the back of the Square Dan trys to passing a note to Meg which I repond to by smacking his hand down using the ruler, Dan then drops his pen so stands up to pick it up at which point Kyle pushes him back to his seat with the ruler. Next Carl shouts out "stop kicking my chair" at which point Kyle extends Meg leg, who is sat behind Carl, then measures the distance between the leg and chair to clear see Meg is to far to kick the chair. Kyle as the guard responds to this by smack Carl's head on his desk. After this Toby stares at Kyle, Kyle goes to hit Toby but he dodges it and tries to attack the guard. Kyle restrains Toby so Dan tries to help him at which I respond by hitting him and throwing him to the ground. After this I gesture Meg and Carl out of their seats to leave before going to strike Toby ending the piece. I now really like this piece as I feel we have managed to create and show a realistic future basses round extreme corporal punishment which will help show the purpose of our devised piece.

Corporal Punishment Future

Today we started to work on our last physical theatre piece we wanted for our devised piece. This piece was going to based round the future where school has become like a prison with guards and extreme rules. We planned out what we wanted in the piece, we decided that we would have 2 guards, 4 students and no teachers to emphasis the fact that they care more about the behaviour then learning. We have the students sat in a square with Me and Kyle as the guards walking around them. For this piece we would like me and Kyle dressed in riot gear holding riot shields, we wanted our guards dressed like this because we wanted to emphasis how school feels like a prison in the future. We started to play Pink flyod "Another brick in the wall" and decided to use this number for the piece. We came up with a three warning idea for the piece where if a student does something disruptive they will get a warning, three warnings equal a taze, we decided that Dan would be the student to get tazed so we started the piece and came up with three idea he could do to get in trouble.
1. Passing a note
2. Getting up from his chair
3. Snezing
While Dan slowly gets each one of his strikes we have the other three hesitantly going to do something like take a drink or ask a question but get a look from a guard which makes them go back to work.
Following Dan being tazed we want the students to get up and start interacting with the guards.
This lesson I feel that we managed to come up with a great idea that works well with our piece but i dont feel like we have done the with creating it as i feel what we made would be rather boring to watch for a audience point of view. Next lesson i feel w eithe rneed to figure out a way to make this piece more appealing or try and come up with another idea to show a corpral punishment future.

Future school, choosing between 2

Today we started by going over what we had created last lesson which was our new version of our children out of control future. We showed our teacher this piece and she asked us why we had changed it from the first piece we made, we told her how we felt it wasn't creative in our opinion. Miss then told us the first one was more visually appealing then our new one which she said was rather tame in comparison. After miss had told us this we sat down as group to talk about the piece and what we can do to improve it. We decided to try and put the 2 piece together to create a very appealing physical theatre piece. We started by using the start of our second piece where me and Kyle have our interactions with Carl and then changed the rest of the piece so that we can get up be more creative with the piece. Meg then gets up and she now takes a control role over Carl where she makes him twirl before me and Kyle get back up. We grab string that are on Carl's wrists and pull them back so that he is restrained while Toby then gets up. Toby runs round Carl playing with the string and forcing Carl into funny faces. Me and Kyle then let Carl go as Dan M starts to make Carl walk towards the empty chair. Dan M then cuts the strings so Carl falls back into his seat, we all get up and leave him there. We still do our piece to the song "shot yourself in your foot again". We like what our piece has become now that we had combined the 2 together. We worked hard this lesson as we have now completely finished this piece and have decided we want to create our last physical piece which is our alternate future piece that's has the extreme corporal punishment.

Change Future school

Today we started to look at our physical piece we created last lesson and how we could improve on it, we ran through the number and we struggled to think of what we could move on to next within the number. We went back to the start and thought about how we could improve the piece as we all weren't liking this piece that much anymore. We started thinking about this piece again and what we could do to make this piece flow more natural to us. We looked through the whole idea we wanted to create and decided to focus on the manipulation of students over teachers, so we started again with Kyle going first in our piece up to Carl. Kyle now turns Carl back to the board and moves his arm to write on the board before walking away. I then go up and we change what me and Carl do from last time to show that I'm more violent and harsh with him, I pull his arms behind him which Carl turn out of which I reopened to by throwing him on the floor. I then pick Carl up by his head to slam against the board before sitting back down. We then all liked the idea of puppetry being used on Carl so we though we would build up to puppetry by using shadow movement first so we had Meg walk up to Carl then slowly lift his arms by moving her arms above him, she would then do the same with walking Carl around before leading to Toby's chair which Toby is standing on pretending to be a puppeteer over Carl as he is lead to Dan M's chair where Dan M cuts the strings on Carl going from, arms to legs ending on head before we walk out ending the piece. I really like our new improve piece and I believe we have stylised the piece in a very unique way.

Future school (children take over)

Today we started to try and work on a physical theatre piece set in the future where the students have become to chaotic for the teachers to control so the students have started to rebel. We started to plan out what we wanted to happen in this piece, we agreed we wanted a big physical piece for this part of our devised because we believed there is a range of possibilities we could create. We talked about who we wanted as a teacher for this piece, we didn't want to use Dan M again as we used him in our previous piece so we thought we would use Carl as he is the teacher in the meetings that favoured the future that had no improvement in punishment so we believed he would best represent the teachers in this 'out of control future'. We started with the five of us sat in a semi-circle around Carl, we started creating our piece to the song 'Arguing with themomiters (Taz Buckfaster remix)'. We started our piece by having Carl writing on the board, he then points to Kyle who walks up to him and turns him back to the bored. I them get up and walk towards Carl and repeat what Kyle did by when I do it I am more aggressive then Kyle was. This is to show the progression of the aggression from the students. Toby is the next to get up but when he does he just stands there and looks at Carl before he kicks his chair back on the drop of the music. We then talk about what we wanted to happen next, Some of us wanted to do a lift with Carl where we would smack him backwards into a lift that would send him flying across the room in slow motion. My idea was for Carl to hit and do a dead drop backwards into 2 peoples hands so that they could fling him back up into a leg lift with 3 people. We tried these two ideas but we struggled to create my idea effectively and we didn't like how the other lift looked. We then tried getting all of us up and moving one at a time towards Carl moving him into strange positions to show power ending with me retraining him. We then split into two groups, Meg and Dan M split off to create a choreographed fight between the two of them. Me, Kyle, Toby and Carl proceed to show a violent approach to Carl where i restrain him and the others take turns beating him. This was the end of the lesson today so we talked and said our objective for the next lesson is to finish what we had started today. I feel that the lesson could of gone better today as we struggled to come with an effective idea for the piece that we all agree on, next lesson we need to be more collaborative to towards each other so that we can get this piece set.

Improving script

Today we had a lesson with Mr Webb who we showed the scripted scene we had created in the lesson priveus to this lesson. He gave his honest opnion on our scene which was that he liked it but said our dialogue was unbelieve as we didn't talk in the same ways a teacher would talk in a meeting so he helped us change our script to a more believeable conversation between teachers who were at a meeting. We went through our script line by line with with the guidance of our teacher where he make small changes to help suit a comedic or believable value for our script. After we had adapted our script we started our run through with the script and agreed that we all like the new version. I feel this was a helpful lesson as it has helpped expand our production creating realistic characters as well as helping us relise that in the future if we create more script we should get a teacher to read through the script. It has also made us relise that we should interview teachers and get their opinons on education, the future of education and what the teachers think is the problem with defiant students.

Group meeting scene

Today we started to script our first scene in our devised piece which is our introduction to our teachers and the topic of the meeting. For the scene we wanted to give our characters a steriptypical teacher role:

Meg: Leading the meeting, reposible, non bias
Dan: Strict teacher, scary, in favour of bring more extream corpral punishment
Kyle: New teacher, nervous, stay quiet about his views
Carl: Constanly interupted, slightly timid teacher, against the corpral punishment
Toby: Sarcastic, having a laugh, not bothered by the meeting
Ashley: Late teacher, not bothered by the meeting, doesn't care about outcome

We sat and talked about what we wanted to happen in the meeting like the serious issue and the recorring jokes between us. Meg starts the scene as we made her head of the meeting where she brings up the issue of how to deal with the children using effective punishements. We continued to have this issued talked about between us all with an odd teacher throwing in a joke or two to the conversation until someone mssions the cane. This causes a second debate to spark up between everyone about whether the cane should of been band as a corpral punishment. I then enter, which is ment to be use as a comical entrance as the debate was grown but i stop it dead in its tracks but interuppting the meeting. We then have one of us as a teacher que us into our victorian piece we made last lesson.
We tried the script out to see what we all thought about and after a run thorugh we had a few points to change. We changed some of the wording and phrases in our script because some of our dialogue either didn't make sense or didn't sound like something a teacher would say. Another change we made was the entrance of my character as we decided not introduce him until later so we could build a more comedical entrance for my character.

Victorian piece

Today in lesson we talked about what we wanted from our piece as well as how we plan on putting all of our alternative schools we want to create. we want to create a Modern school (sound scape), Victorian school (Contemporary) and 2 future pieces that show a version of the future where children run wild as well as a future that has had corporal punishment become extreme. To link all of these piece so that our devised doesn't seem like a school timeline, we are going to create a meeting between 6 teachers talking about the respect that students give to teachers. These meetings will set up the piece that follows and will keep talking about the issue of respect and how it should be resolved.

We started creating our Victorian flash back piece that has Dan M as our teacher and the rest of us as students. Me, Kyle, Meg, Toby and Carl are sat in a square shape with Kyle in the centre. Dan starts our piece walk around us slowly and slapping our chair with an order like "sit up" or "use your right hand". Dan will eventually sit down at the front of the class which is when we wanted to start music but one of us had the idea of using a metronome as our music. So when Dan sits down a ticking of the metronome starts as the rest of us pretend to write. Dan starts a repeated pattern using a book that matches the beats of the metronome that goes:

Smack edge of book (1 tick)
Slam book down (1 tick)
Open book (1 tick)
Write (2 tick)
Close book (1 tick)

Repeat

After Dan completes this movement Meg and Carl join in followed by Kyle. Me and Toby join in after Kyle. This is on repeat until Kyle drop his pen causing the metronome to stop and us all to stare at him. Dan slowly moves towards him then moves him to his desk which starts our next sound effect of a cane smacking someone. In time with the recording Dan canes Kyle until our lights fade out ending the piece.

Soundscape class room

Today we started to work on ideas for our education ideas and decided we wanted to start our show in a modern class room then transition too a victorian school. We thought about creating a physical theatre piece but decided we didnt want to start our piece with a physical theatre piece and we also said the same about a scene at the start. We talked and like the idea of a soundscape in class room so we talked about what sounds and phrases we hear during a class room:

Chewing (Gum)
Nail filing
Scratching
Ring tone
Heavy breathing
Tapping

These are the 6 sounds we agreeded that we would hear in a class so decided for our piece that we wanted to record these sounds and have them played in the background of our piece. For the transition between times we wanted to use repeative dialogue that would build until the person who was playing the teacher changed to Victorian teacher. We agreed that Dan M would be our teacher as we all believed he would portray a very stricked teacher for the transition. This is the repetitive dialogue we came up with:

Dan M: Has everyone got their scripts todays
Ashley: Yes I do sir
Meg: Nah sir, Ashley left his at home with his balls
Kyle: Leave Ashley alone
Carl: Oi bender, crawl out his arse
Toby: Shut up Meg you skank

This dialogue would build while the recording was in being played in the background until Dan M slammed down on the desk with his ruler which would show our transition of times as the students who were just misbehaving would become well mannered students.

Group research

This is research we have done as a group that i have collected from my groups blogs:

megrobinsondivising.blogspot.co.uk

KINDERTRANSPORT, 1938–1940

Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940.

Background

Nazi authorities staged a violent pogrom upon Jews in Germany on November 9–10, 1938, known asKristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). After the pogrom, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees. British authorities agreed to allow an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories (that is, Austria and the Czech lands). They were spurred by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refugee aid committees. Notable among the refugee aid committees were the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany.

The Transports

The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain, on December 2, 1938. It brought some 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in the Kristallnachtpogrom. Most transports left by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in central Europe. Children from smaller towns and villages traveled from their homes to these collection points in order to join the transports.

Jewish organizations inside the Greater German Reich planned the transports. These organizations were the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, headquartered in Berlin; after early 1939, its successor organization the Reich Association of Jews in Germany; and the Jewish Community Organization (Kultusgemeinde) in Vienna. They generally favored children whose emigration was urgent because their parents were in concentration camps or were no longer able to support them. They also gave priority to homeless children and orphans.

Children chosen for a Kindertransport convoy traveled by train to ports in Belgium and the Netherlands, from where they sailed to Harwich. At least one of the early transports left from the port of Hamburg in Germany. Some children from Czechoslovakia were flown by plane directly to Britain. The last transport from Germany left on September 1, 1939, just as World War II began. The last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain on May 14, 1940, the same day that the Dutch army surrendered to German forces.

After the War

Many children from the children's transport program became citizens of Great Britain, or emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most of them would never again see their parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust.

DMsinglePA.blogspot.co.uk

The Kinder transport was an organized rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust.

World Jewish Relief was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews both in Germany and Austria. Records for many of the children who arrived in the UK through the kinder transports are maintained by World Jewish Relief.

On 15 November 1938 a delegation of British Jewish and Quaker leaders appealed in person to the Prime Minister of the UK, Neville Chamberlain. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents.

The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a Bill to present to Parliament. That Bill stated that the Government would waive certain immigration requirements to allow the entry of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17. No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Palestine, the Jewish agencies then increased their planned target number to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Great Britain in this way.

On the eve of a major House of Commons debate on refugees on 21 November 1938, Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing various Jewish, Quaker and other non-Jewish groups working on behalf of refugees. The groups were allied under a non-denominational organization called the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. The Home Secretary agreed that, to speed up the immigration process, travel documents would be issued on the basis of group lists rather than individual applications. The agencies promised to find homes for all the children. They also promised to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child would have a guarantee of £50 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily.

Victorian Schools 

In the first half of the 1800s, classes were massive. Sometimes there were more than 100 pupils in every class.

The Victorian classroom was often referred to as the schoolroom.

Victorian pupils sat at iron-framed desks. These were usually bolted to the floor in rows facing the front of the classroom, the walls of a Victorian school were often completely bare, the floor of the schoolrooms were tiered so the children sitting at the back of the room were higher up than those sitting at the front this meant that all of the children had a good view of the teacher and the blackboard, but it also meant that the teacher had a good view of them.

The windows in a Victorian classroom were high up to stop pupils looking out of the window and the rooms were lit by gaslights which as a result, the schoolrooms were gloomy and often stuffy.

Sometimes different classrooms were only divided from the others by curtains. This meant that it was very easy to hear noise coming from other lessons. Although lots of schools were built during the Victorian era, not a great deal of money was spent on taking care of the buildings. Victorian schools were often quite shabby and in need of repair.

The Teachers

In Victorian schools there were more female teachers than male ones with women occupying the majority of teaching roles. These women were often very strict and scary. The majority of female teachers were unmarried ladies and they were to be called ‘Miss’ at all times. The reason teaching consisted of mostly ladies was due to the pay scale. The salaries were poor and men could be earning more money elsewhere so this was left to the women. The rationale behind it been mostly unmarried women was that once married the women was expected to take care of the family.
The large majority of teachers did not have a college education. The role of teaching was something they picked up while on the job and every new lesson would be a challenge for them too.
The teaching was also passed on to some of the brightest children in some schools known as ‘Monitors’ where they would be taught by the Headmaster and would then pass this onto small groups of children as another way of educating. The Victorian teaching system was much different to the one we have today.

Punishment

Discipline was huge in the Victorian times and this was no different in schools. It wasn’t uncommon for children to be beat by canes made from birch wood. Boys were typically caned on their backsides whereas Girls would take the punishment on their legs or hands.

The reasons ranged from truancy right through to laziness in the classroom. The punishments were usually harsh and painful for children aged jus between 5-10.

Children who were slower than the rest within lessons were made to wear the shameful dunce hats and sit in the corner for over an hour. This was not only humiliating for the child but also not helping them get up to speed with the rest of the class. At the time there was no concept of children with learning difficulties and the uneducated classroom teachers would assume it was purely down to the laziness or lack of effort.

Amazingly children were reprimanded for using their left hand to write! This was seen as a punishable offence and they were made write with their right hand!

In the first half of the 1800s, classes were massive. Sometimes there were more than 100 pupils in every class.

The Victorian classroom was often referred to as the schoolroom.

Victorian pupils sat at iron-framed desks. These were usually bolted to the floor in rows facing the front of the classroom, the walls of a Victorian school were often completely bare, the floor of the schoolrooms were tiered so the children sitting at the back of the room were higher up than those sitting at the front this meant that all of the children had a good view of the teacher and the blackboard, but it also meant that the teacher had a good view of them.

The windows in a Victorian classroom were high up to stop pupils looking out of the window and the rooms were lit by gaslights which as a result, the schoolrooms were gloomy and often stuffy.

Sometimes different classrooms were only divided from the others by curtains. This meant that it was very easy to hear noise coming from other lessons. Although lots of schools were built during the Victorian era, not a great deal of money was spent on taking care of the buildings. Victorian schools were often quite shabby and in need of repair.

The Teachers

In Victorian schools there were more female teachers than male ones with women occupying the majority of teaching roles. These women were often very strict and scary. The majority of female teachers were unmarried ladies and they were to be called ‘Miss’ at all times. The reason teaching consisted of mostly ladies was due to the pay scale. The salaries were poor and men could be earning more money elsewhere so this was left to the women. The rationale behind it been mostly unmarried women was that once married the women was expected to take care of the family.
The large majority of teachers did not have a college education. The role of teaching was something they picked up while on the job and every new lesson would be a challenge for them too.
The teaching was also passed on to some of the brightest children in some schools known as ‘Monitors’ where they would be taught by the Headmaster and would then pass this onto small groups of children as another way of educating. The Victorian teaching system was much different to the one we have today.

Punishment

Discipline was huge in the Victorian times and this was no different in schools. It wasn’t uncommon for children to be beat by canes made from birch wood. Boys were typically caned on their backsides whereas Girls would take the punishment on their legs or hands.

The reasons ranged from truancy right through to laziness in the classroom. The punishments were usually harsh and painful for children aged jus between 5-10.

Children who were slower than the rest within lessons were made to wear the shameful dunce hats and sit in the corner for over an hour. This was not only humiliating for the child but also not helping them get up to speed with the rest of the class. At the time there was no concept of children with learning difficulties and the uneducated classroom teachers would assume it was purely down to the laziness or lack of effort.

Devised piece plan

Today as a group we sat and had another talk about the ideas we wanted to use for our devised piece. We talked about the currant ideas we had for piece which was the ideas of Armenian genoscide or the Kindertransport, we disscussed and decided that we no longer liked either of these ideas that much anymore but we had become very interested in the idea of drugs after our last piece we created. We like this new idea alot and talked how there was alot of potenal in movement piece as well as naturalistic scenes but we then thought that we have done alot of drug inspired piece's in the past from our year 10 and 11 years. This made us start to think the idea could be a little imature for us to perform and we wanted a piece that could be a little more hard hitting. We still liked the drug piece we created and wanted to use it so we tried brainstroming ideas that could link the piece we created into it. I suggested the idea of troubled youth in school as this way we could do multiple stories involing drugs, alcohol, bullying and education. We all like the idea but weren't to sure of it at that moment, someone suggested just the idea of education which was inspired by a play we had recently seen called "Future Conditional". We liked this idea and said we could do a piece around how education has change over the decades to what it is now and what it could become in a few years. We all agreed to furter develop this idea as we all really like the potentail of the idea.

Drugs theatre

Today we were instructed to crate a new piecec of theatre around whatever we wanted to create within humaity in crisis that was different to our currant idea we had for our whole piece. We talked and decided that we wanted to do a physical theatre piece on the ideas of drug abuse. We agreed that I would be the drug user and Meg would be my dealer, the piece starts with us all in the club having Dan M, Carl, Kyle and Toby repeating the same dance moves in the club while Meg approach me and offer me the drug. I hold the drug in my hand while the others travel around me trying to make me take the drug and are pulling the pill towards my mouth. After i take the pill they all circle me and start to push me around slowly growing more franticly as they push faster around the circle till i fall forward. Meg and Toby then pull me up from the ground, Carl hides behind me as Meg and Toby pull on our arm giving it the illution that they have pulled me into two people, me and Carl. Carl is a reprentation of me in the real world suffering while i am my real mind trying to reach for Carl to help him. everyone else forms a wall around Carl seperating me from him as i try to break through the wall. In the wall they throw me back then sit in a circle of 6 six chairs with Carl, Meg comes over and leads me into the centre of the circle. I stand in the centre of the circle as if it is a cage containing me while te others sit on the outside performing a hand routine:

Clap, Scratch, Click
Breath x2, Scream, Clap x2
Puff x2, Breath through teeth,
Stamp, Slap thigh

This is repeted 3 times until I brake out of the centre and Carl collapse down as i try to wake him up. Meg pulls me away as Dan M and Toby as paremedic's who try to save Carl/ the representation of my body but fail as Carl dies. They all back away from Carl, turn towards me and stair at me in disguss to show that my stupid actions have killed myself.

Armenian Genocide, Crisis Time Line or Kindertransport

Today in our group we talked about what humanity in crisis idea we wanted to go with for our overall devised piece plan. We talked about all our ideas we have done or have mentioned and removed all ideas we didnt agree apon pursuing. we removed our ideas of 9 11, hillsbourgh, slavary and trafficing because we all agreed we didn't like these ideas and felt limted in what we could perform. We came up with 3 ideas we liked and wanted to perform as our devised piece. The first idea was a piece based and styalised around the Armenian Genocide as some of us had research this event and said how it was a horrific incident that isnt as well know as events such as 9 11 and Hillsbourgh. The next idea was a Crisis Time Line this was an idea that we could create several different stylised pieces of drama based around different crisises in history and jump between them through out the piece. The last idea is inspired by Kindertransport which would have us playing children on the train heading to safty and then following each child on their journey after getting off the train, traveling with their foster family, dealing with their new lifes.
We disscused these ideas and narrowed our options down to two ideas. We decided that we didn't want to use the Crisis Time Line idea but couldn't decide between the Armeian genocide idea or the Kinder transport so we split in half to research the 2 ideas so that we coud make an informed dission next lesson.

1940s education reasearch

(http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/life_19.html)

As in other areas of society, everything changed in education during and after the war. People stayed in school longer. Especially for vets and rural students, college became more important, and more were able to attend. In agriculture, the research that land grant universities conducted became critical to the advancement of farming. Training future farmers gained momentum. And rural schools began the painful process of consolidation.

Before the war. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1940, only about half of the people in the U.S. had completed at least eight years of school. But rural areas lagged behind urban areas in educational attainment. In 1940 –

•urban residents had a median of 8.7 years of school completed;

•rural-nonfarm (that is, small town) residents had a median of 8.4 years of school;

•rural-farm residents had a median of 7.7 years of school – one full grade less education than urban folks.

The differences were even more striking when you look at the statistics for college.

•In urban areas, 5.7 percent of the residents had college degrees;

•In rural-nonfarm areas, the percentage of college graduates drops to 4.2 percent;

•In rural-farm areas, only 1.3 percent of the residents had a college degree in 1940.

[Source: U.S. Census, 1940]

After the war education became more important in rural communities as well as urban ones. For one thing, the millions of soldiers – known as GIs, for "government issue" – had a chance to go to college on the government's dole. The GI Bill provided tuition and living assistance. Many took advantage of the law.

Because of severe labour shortages during the war, farmers had turned to technology to get the crops planted and harvested. To keep the boom in technology going, farmers turned to the research facilities at the nation's land grant colleges. Researchers responded with advancements in crops, fertilizers, machines and management practices.

Finally, rural schools in Nebraska began to realize that they could not all survive in the face of shrinking populations. The political process of consolidating small school districts began.

The educational revolution that began in the 1940s has continued until today. Again, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Nebraska now boasts that 86.6 percent of the population have graduated from high school – higher than the national average of 80.4 percent. Almost a quarter of the state's residents also have a college degree and 7.3 percent hold an advanced degree.

Sound scape

Today we continued to workshop techniques for our devised piece. Our technique we worked on today was sound scape which was based around another word taken from our mind map on humanity in crisis. In our devising group we talked about what would be the best idea for an effective sound scape. As a group we agreed to look at the Hillsborough disaster as we thought it would be effective to create based around only on our voice. We talked and set ourselves one phrase to keep repeating and build.

Kyle: "Dad!"

Dan M: "help"

Meg: "Can you get away from the barrier"

Carl: "

Toby: "let us out you pigs"

Ashley: "keep carm, stay back"

We build up the pace on our phrase until Meg would do a loud scream, we'd all then stop and do nothing for a few seconds to show an effect with the silence. We'd then each say a fact about the disaster to end the piece.

Kyle: "15 April 1989"

Dan M: "1988-9 FA cup semi-final"

Meg: "Over 100 Injured"

Carl: "Liverpool vs Nottingham forest"

Toby: "Over 100 statements were altered"

Ashley: "96 people died"

We decided to perform our piece in the dark so their would be a focus on our voice and we also stamped our feet to show the crowds charging.

Contact improviastion

Today we chose a second topic from our brainstorm of ideas from "Humanity in crisis" to be performed in the style of contact improvisation. Before we went off into our groups we split into pairs to perform a piece of contact improviastion. I was paried with Kyle to create a quick piece made of 8 movments, me and Kyle decided we would do our piece on a car crash, we started with me on the ground dead and played the event in reverse. After we created our 8 movements we then were asked to add a lift into our piece to end the contact improviastion. We then went off into our devised groups to create our next piece, as a group we decided to base it around slavary with me, Carl, Meg and Dan M as the slaves as well as Toby and Kyle as the guards. We start with the slaves laying down as the guards enter and pull us up from the ground, all the slaves are holdind each other rists to show that they are chained to each other. We then each have our own interaction with the guard, Dan M goes first as he is attacked by Kyle who throws him across the stage. Me and Toby then choragphraghed a fight, in which Toby proceeds to beat me down to the ground. Kyle and Meg then do a lift to the ground that makes it look like Kyle is choking Meg by Kyle placing his hand just below her neck and Meg holding over the hand to make appear as if he is strangling her. Toby and Kyle then kick Carl to his knees and drag him forward, as the slaves we then run up and drag him back then split off into groups of 2 and start our contact improvisation in our pairs. The pairs where me and Carl, Dan M and Meg, Toby and Carl. after our contact improvisation, the slaves are then laid back down on the ground to end the piece.

Hillsborough disater (Research)

As is common at domestic matches in England, opposing supporters were segregated. Nottingham Forest supporters were allocated the South and East ends with a combined capacity of 29,800. Liverpool supporters were allocated the North and West ends, holding 24,256 fans.

When the gates were opened, thousands of fans entered a narrow tunnel leading to the rear of the terrace into two overcrowded central pens, creating pressure at the front. Hundreds of people were pressed against one another and the fencing by the weight of the crowd behind them. People entering were unaware of the problems at the fence; police or stewards usually stood at the entrance to the tunnel and, when the central pens reached capacity, directed fans to the side pens, but on this occasion, for reasons not fully explained, did not.

For some time, problems at the front of the pen went unnoticed, except by those affected, as attention was absorbed by the match. At 3:06 pm the referee, Ray Lewis, on the advice of the police, stopped the match after fans climbed the fence in an effort to escape the crush and went onto the track. By this time, a small gate in the fence had been forced open and some fans escaped via this route, as others continued to climb over the fencing. The police attempted to stop fans from spilling onto the pitch. Other fans were pulled to safety by fans in the West Stand above the Leppings Lane terrace. The intensity of the crush broke the crush barriers on the terraces. Holes in the perimeter fencing were made by fans desperately attempting to rescue others.

Those trapped were packed so tightly in the pens that many victims died of compressive asphyxia while standing. The crowd in the Leppings Lane Stand overspilled onto the pitch, where many injured and traumatised fans congregated who had climbed to safety. Police, stewards and members of the St John Ambulance service were overwhelmed. Many uninjured fans assisted the injured; several attempted CPR and others tore down advertising hoardings to use as stretchers. Chief Superintendent John Nesbit of South Yorkshire Police later briefed Michael Shersby MP that leaving the rescue to the fans was a deliberate strategy, and is quoted as saying "We let the fans help so that they would not take out their frustration on the police" at a Police Federation conference.

Liverpool fans desperately try to climb the fence onto the safety of the pitch while being stopped by the police.As events unfolded, some police officers were still deployed making a cordon three-quarters of the way down the pitch to prevent Liverpool supporters reaching the opposing supporters. Some fans tried to break through the cordon to ferry injured fans to waiting ambulances but were forcibly turned back. 44 ambulances arrived, but police prevented all but one from entering the stadium.

Only 14 of the 96 fatally injured people arrived at hospital.

9/11 (Reasearch)

IT was a beautiful September morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the usual throng of office workers poured onto the subways and streets of Manhattan for the start of another busy working day.

This particular morning Ian Robb was running late. He had been out the night before with a couple of work colleagues and slept through his alarm. “I’d got a taxi back home to New Jersey where I lived but the driver missed the exit so it was gone 1.30am before I got home.”

Normally he was up at six and would be sitting in his office on the 99th floor of the World Trade Center, where he worked as head of professional development for the international financial services firm Marsh and McLennan, by 7.30am. “I ran to the station but I’d missed my usual train and the next one,” he says.

But even though he was an hour late he still had time to admire the view as he took the short ferry ride across the River Hudson. “I vividly remember the sky was crystal blue, it certainly wasn’t a bad start to the day.”

He reached the vast concourse of the World Trade Center at about 8.40am. He just missed one lift by a split second. “Some people in the lift waved at me and I waved back,” he says.

He and six others got into another one but as the doors closed nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. “There was this tremendous noise, the whole lift started shaking and there was this awful whistling noise of air rushing down the sides.” They tried pressing the alarm bells but nothing happened. By this time the lift was full of smoke and dust and there was a growing sense of dread. They were trapped inside for more than hour before they were finally able to prise open the doors. “We had no idea what was going on, we didn’t know whether we’d gone up or down,” says Ian, a former Leeds Grammar School pupil.

As it turned out they’d barely moved an inch. They scrambled out to discover they were still on the ground floor. Firefighters told them a plane had slammed into the tower.

“The lobby of the World Trade Center was massive, it was about four stories high and as we ran up to the plaza level we noticed the windows were red with blood, although we didn’t realise what it was at the time.

“Outside it was like a battlefield, there were bits of bodies lying around, it was horrific. I heard this huge roar and when I looked up I could see an inferno at the top of the building where my offices had been.”

As Ian joined the terrified crowds running for the ferry the south tower collapsed. He tried calling his daughter, Alexis, who was living with him, but the mobile phone networks were dowm.

Once across the river he was among the thousands who crammed onto trains, desperate to get home. “We were all standing cheek by jowl and everyone was exchanging stories. Most people had seen the planes hit the towers and people jumping out of the burning buildings, whereas I’d been stuck in a lift so I was lucky in a way because I didn’t see all that.”

The Kindertransport (Reasearch)

The Kindertransport program was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Kindertransport in German translates to children’s transport. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust.

World Jewish Relief (then called The Central British Fund for German Jewry) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews both in Germany and Austria. Records for many of the children who arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are maintained by World Jewish Relief.

Stories

·         Herbert Kay (Koniec) left Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransport in June 1939. He brought these boots with detachable ice skates with him but had outgrown them by the time winter came. Herbert’s parents were killed in 1942 and he had no other relatives in Czechoslovakia after the war.  Herbert’s foster family offered him a home in Scotland when it became clear that he could not return to Czechoslovakia. He became a British citizen in 1947.

·         Celia Horwitz (later Lee) left Hamburg, Germany, on a Kindertransport in December 1938. Once in the UK, Celia settled in East London. On 1 September 1939, her entire school was evacuated to Cockley Cley, a small village in Norfolk. This is a school exercise book she used during her time as an evacuee. Celia’s father died in 1941, but she was reunited with her mother in 1949.

·         Stephie Carola Leyser (later Stephanie Kester) volunteered for the Kindertransport and left Germany for Britain in February 1939. This Siamese cat puppet was given to Stephie by her favourite uncle and accompanied her on her journey. It was one of the few items that she was allowed to select and pack for herself before leaving Chemnitz. Stephanie’s parents eventually immigrated to the UK, where her father was detained as a foreign national and sent to a civilian internment camp on the Isle of Man. He was released and reunited with his wife and daughter but died shortly after. Her mother lived until 1993.

Devised plan (Humanity in Crisis)

Today in lesson we started too talked about our next unit in drama which is going to be our second devised piece but this devised piece is going to be created through workshopping ideas. We were given the title of our piece which is going to be “Humanity in crisis”. We then split ourselves into 2 groups, my group members are me, Dan M, Meg, Toby, Carl and Kyle. We were also given a couple of pictures of refugees, Serbia in ruins, id of kinder transport and foreigners being denied access to safe areas. With all of our stimuli in mind we proceeded to create a spider diagram on all the thoughts we had to do with our theme.

My initial ideas and thoughts of humanity in crisis is nonbias events that caused suffering like Earthquakes, Tusnamis, my thought was natural disaters as these are event that we have no control over that causes crisies all over the world. I didn't think of events like Consentration Camps, 9 11 or hillsbourgh as these events have bias issues only effecting select groups and were control by another individual or group. To me Humanity in crisis would be an event that effected everyone no matter their race, age, gender or the fact if their good or bad because to me humaintiy is all of us a collective being effected and if were in crisis it would be a event that effected all of us not just a group of us or was caused by us.

“Humanity in Crisis”

·         War

·         Mental health

·         Baptist church

·         extremists

·         Poverty

·         Hillsborough

·         National disasters

·         Government

·         Politics

·         Refugees

·         Conspiracy

·         Slavery

·         Conflict

·         Terrorism

·         Cold war

·         Religion division

·         IRA

·         Nazi’s

·         Homophobia

·         Xenophobia

·         Prejudice

·         Dictatorship

·         Prison

·         Militia

·         Anarchists

·         Hierarchy

·         Royalty

·         Technology

·         Margret thatcher

·         KKK

·         Nuclear weapons

·         Fall out

·         Civil war

·         Financial

·         Overpopulation

·         9/11

·         Torture

We then went off and created a piece of drama using one of the words from our diagram in 20 minutes. We talked about it and chose “refugees” and created a piece inspired by this. We decided that we wanted to do a physical theatre piece around our chosen theme. Our piece started with Kyle and Toby walking on and meeting in the centre; after they meet they fall to the ground, Dan M and Meg then enter and do the same followed by me and Carl. We all then rise and stand in a line to be shot before we fall dead. We then clump together around me rocking side to side to symbolise that we are on a refugee boat, each person slowly peel away from me from and spread around the room. I then run to one of then who covers their eyes and turn around, I repeat this with 3 other people which is to symbolise how other countries turn their backs on people when they need help. The fifth person hugs me to show that he is the kind country who is looking out for others. We performed our piece to the son “I can feel a hot one” by Manchester orchestra.


This is a picture of refugees traveling to a new home. this is ispirational as it was one of our groups first thoughts when we were told about 'humainty in crisis' as well as what we have based our first piece around. the physical theatre piece we created was a nice start to what could potentaily could be our devised pieceon seperate stories of refugees after escapig their country and what happens to them.


This is another idea i had with our topic of humanity in crisis invovling tragic stories based around the natural disaters we have no control over. We could choose any natural disater and created a series of stories around the survivers, what happens to them after the event, them searching for somewhere safe, who they have lost and so on...


This photo helpped me think about political scandels and how as a group we natural try to benefit ourseleves at the cost of others happyness. This idea has alot of potentail for naturalism scene but not as much for the physical theatre side but i still believe this would be a good idea.