Big Brum toured 'The Balancing Act', the fourth in a series of plays written by Edward Bond for the company, to schools, colleges and arts venues from 9th October-December 2006.

A young woman stares expressionlessly at a spot on the floor across the room. "That’s the spot that holds the world in balance. If it was trod on the balance’ld go." Her boyfriend wants to know how long she will lock herself in a condemned flat in order to save the world. He turns to the demolition Foreman for expert assistance…

With the world precariously balanced, we follow Nelson on a journey in search for a reasonable explanation: he encounters a power crazed DSS official, a top-hatted thief, a frustrated wife and the mysterious Mr Pringle. Can the world be saved or will it end in a frantic tango?

The Balancing Act is a riotous black comedy exploring what happens when the world, dominated by irrational ideas, obsession and fanaticism, descends into chaos.

'The greatest of post-war British playwrights.' (The Guardian, 2005)

To view the current tour schedule Download file

A half-day theatre-in-education programme for Key Stage One.

In spring 2006 Big Brum will take young people on a journey of the imagination…

Things are hotting up. The smoke from his oven is choking us all. Even the great rains can’t put it out.

The Giant is always hungry, always on the lookout for what he can take and put in the pot. The earth shudders beneath his feet, he’s tearing up the ground, root and branch, house and home-devouring all to fill his great belly. He swallows everything that gets in his way. What about the little people? What to do? We’d better teach him a lesson before he starts on us…

This innovative and exciting new programme for KS1 explores the challenging and urgent issue of sustainability, the virtue of delayed gratification and the value of common sense.

To make a booking, or for further inquiries, contact Claire at Big Brum.

Click here to see the publicity image of The Giant's Embrace. View image (47 KB)

A new play by
Edward Bond

A city suburb, 2077. Joan discovers a stranger from a foreign land in her flat. Outside soldiers patrol the streets. She demands an explanation.

The stranger's story changes her life forever. Joan relises she too is an immigrant, an immigrant in her own country. They seek a solution to their problem.

Jack can offer a new identity, a pass and a passage across the border to the North. "I do it for money. Makes me reliable." But who is Jack and where will this transaction take them? What follows is a journey of self-discovery and denial for all concerned.

"I have crossed a frontier. Perhaps many should cross it. It is between where I am now and all other places."
Profound, electrifyingly dramatic, tragic and comic, the Under Room is the fifth play by Edward Bond commissioned by Big Brum for young people.

Praise for ‘The Under Room’:
‘ … A work of unflinching purity…compelling…’ (The Guardian, Nov 2005)

‘…Burn[ing] with a passion and power often missing from today’s theatre.’ (Metro, 2005)

Photos by Jo Tucker & www.acquismedia.com


Click here to see poster

A new TIE Programme for KS 2/3

"This wall has ears. This wall has eyes. Its foundation stones are in all of us.

Since they built this wall we have been separated from our land, separated from our past, separated from our future. When I grow up I will tear it down and reach the other side."

This new half-day TIE programme, devised by one of Britain's most renowned Theatre-in-Education Companies, uses theatre and participatory drama to explore how walls separate people from each other and themselves. Separation Wall is a story of loss and the desire to break free from containment.

A new play by Chris Cooper

Athens, 418 BC. A General proclaims to the assembly that their polis, built by the courage and virtue of its citizens, is the envy of all other states. In the market place a teacher exhorts his pupils to beware rhetoric.

On the quayside the victorious fleet returns laden with booty and their fallen heroes for burial. A child watches.

Athens, the greatest of City states and the home of democracy is at war with Sparta; a perpetual war of relentless brutality.

This full day theatre-in-education programme for KS3 and 4 students explored the difference between rhetoric and philosophy, training and teaching, and the relationship between freedom and knowledge in an era of perpetual war.

On tour between October 2004 - January 2005

You can download the first three scenes of the play from Resources.

A half-day theatre-in-education programme for KS1
on tour in Spring 2004

My name is Jackie. I live by the sea. I like the sea. The sea is huge. Sometimes it frightens me. My dad has a boat called Kittiwake. We use it to get food. When I grow up I will sail it. I use my net to catch things too. My dad says I am the Sea Child.

This participatory TIE programme brought the sounds and smells of the sea into the school hall. Sea Child tells the story of a fishing community and the struggle of generations to survive the changes around them through the eyes of a child, exploring the relationship between human beings and the sea, the tides of history and the changing environment.

You can download parts of the soundtrack from Resources

Read some feedback from teachers of students who participated:

Elaine Wood – Broadmeadow Infant School

At first I thought it was a difficult concept for the children, but I was surprised at how much they assimilated and how well they responded. They rose to the occasion and enjoyed it. They completely accepted the imaginary world and they described it as "real" although they knew it was fabric and an adult playing the part of the child. A- a child on the autistic spectrum – was with it all the way and didn’t notice that there was no break. We’ve done some extended writing about the sea and the children are proud of what they’ve done.

June Parry – Bells Farm Infant School

Brilliant – not seen them sit and listen for that long – they found it far less complicated than I did. We followed it up with the cave, fishes, and wishes and memories for the thinking space.
It wasn’t over with the day or even the week – it’s carried on. It wasn’t a ‘one-off’ and it was as much a training session for the staff as a great experience for the children.

Anita Twyman – Kings Norton Primary School

They took it all on board – even H, who takes everything literally usually. It caught her imagination and she was chatting away about it to a visitor to school. I can’t speak well enough of the performers – they were so supportive of the children and so well prepared. Since then we’ve been working on our own thinking space and the children have decided there has to be a part of it for thinking about loss – dead grandparents or even pets.

by Edward Bond

A young woman stares expressionlessly at a spot on the floor across the room.
"That's the spot that holds the world in balance. If it was trod on the balance'd go." Her boyfriend wants to know how long she will lock herself in a condemned flat in order to save the world. He turns to the demolition Foreman for expert assistance….

With the world precariously balanced, we follow Nelson on a journey in search of a reasonable explanation: he encounters a power crazed DSS Official, a top-hatted thief, a frustrated wife and the mysterious Mr Pringle. Can the world be saved or will it end in a frantic tango?

The Balancing Act, part of Edward Bond's Big Brum Quartet for young people, is a riotous black comedy. What happens when the world, dominated by irrational ideas, obsession and fanaticism, descends into chaos? How can young people take responsibility for themselves and the future, living in a world that is so palpably out of kilter?

Performed by: Katie Baxter, Bobby Colvill, Richard Holmes, Jo Underwood
Director: Chris Cooper
Design: Ceri Townsend
Dance Director: Ian Yeoman
Sound: Dan Lawrence
Set Construction: Andy Marshall
Stage Manager: Ian Lewis
Outreach and Development Worker: Maria Gee
Administrator: Jane Woddis
Admin. Assistant: Sylvia Coates

One

Viv sits alone in a windowless room, empty except for a crumpled blanket. She sits with her back to the wall staring expressionlessly at a post. She makes a calming gesture with an outstretched arm.

There is a knock. She doesn't respond. Nelson is at the door. Carefully Viv gets up and staying close to the wall edges to the door which she unlocks and opens to let him in. She relocks the door.

Nelson steps into the room. Viv signals for him to go to the blanket. Nelson has brought a bag of goodies, including her favourite 'cheesebiks'. He unpacks the food and tells her to get stuck in. Viv refuses.

Nelson wants to know how long this, her being alone in the room, is going to go on. He gives her can of pop, she drinks from the can.

Nelson tries to get Viv to explain why she is in the room but Viv won't. He tells her he's been to see her Mum. Viv is angry with him because she told him not to. Nelson asks if she is in trouble. If she's in trouble she should go to the police, "they'll sort it out." Viv tells Nelson repeatedly that he wouldn't understand. Nelson retorts that he'll go to the police because he's implicated in her being missing now. Again Viv will not relent. Nelson loses his temper and begins to sort out the food telling her to eat.

Nelson catches Viv making the calming gesture behind his back. He wants to know what it's for. Reluctantly she explains that it's because of the spot she been staring at. Nelson gets up to look. Viv panics gesturing frantically at the spot trying to calm it while screaming at him to get away from it. He grabs her. They tussle. Viv breaks away and starts to throw the food at him telling him to go away. She calms herself and begins to explain, because what she has to tell is better shared with the one person she trusts enough to do it.

Gradually Viv begins to explain that the world in unbalanced. "Too much traffic. Accidents. Crowds too big. Messages flying through the air. It's never quiet. Even at night. Wars . Bombs. Rockets. It's all unbalanced."

She explains it another way:

"I've dreams to explain it. A huge ship is on the flat sea, stretches forever. The ship goes through the water n' crunches it like bones. The passengers don't 'ear it. They're dancing t' the orchestra. High up in the sky there's a grain of sand. It falls on the ship. The ship sinks. Straight off. Goes straight to the bottom. The people go on movin' - the water pushes them. They think they're still dancing. They don’t know they're dead."

The spot Viv is safeguarding is the only remaining spot that keeps the world in balance, the slightest movement could upset it and the whole world will explode. Viv spills a packet of crisps onto the floor.

"They'd [people] go like that. Dead n' silent like the crisps."

Nelson tries to reason with this, but Viv has an explanation for every objection to her theory he can raise. He is very concerned for her well being, "What yer do if they pull the 'ouses down?"

"Lie on it - 'old it against me s'if it was a kid in me body. Be like covering the whole world. What else could I do?"

Nelson decides that Viv is potty and he is going to jump on the spot. Viv retreats under the blanket howling, and then remerges throwing it open exhorting all the weak and vulnerable to come to her. She then calms herself deciding that if it’s the end so be it, if it isn't then she's got the wrong spot, that's all.

Nelson gathers the food back into the bag. He scrapes up the crisps back into the back and carefully puts the packet on the spot. Viv calms it.

Nelson tells her "Yer get away with this lark cos I feed yer. Ain no more". He leaves her. Viv calms the room, edges to the door, locks it and carefully returns to watch the spot. She is exhausted. She strokes her blanket as if they were chains.

Two

Viv is still in the room. The crisp packet is still on the spot. She is under the blanket. She has made a hole in it for one eye to look through.

Nelson returns. The door is locked. He rattles it. She calms the spot.

Nelson is very anxious as it has been three days now since he left her. He's brought her cheesebiks again. The men have come to knock the house down. Nelson desperately tries to persuade Viv to open the door, and he has asked the Foreman to come to speak to her to prove it.

While Nelson begins to plead with her, Viv quietly gets up and edges her way once more towards the door along the back wall. She catches the blanket on a nail and has to tug until she comes loose with a jerk, nearly collapsing in fear at what it might have done to the spot. Viv reaches the door and quietly removes the key. She slowly takes off her blanket and neatly folds it before placing it on the floor.

Nelson has now been joined at the door by the Foreman. The Foreman is completely inadequate in this situation, he trivialises the crisis, patronises Viv and panics Nelson.

While the Foreman spouts forth Viv quietly lifts a floorboard - she has already prepared a hiding place. She climbs in and disappears from view as the Foreman breaks the door in. The Foreman stands on the floorboards above Viv and declares, "She's given you the slip young man. If you ask me she needs her bottom smack."

The Foreman goes leaving a stunned Nelson. He stares at the crisps on the spot. He picks up the crisps gingerly. Nelson is about to stamp on the spot but thinks better of it. He picks up the blanket and presses it to his chest and goes towards the door. Suddenly, Nelson turns, runs to the spot, jumps on it and dashes out shouting "Elp" as he goes.

Three

Nelson is in the DSS Office. He is in a state of complete shock and carries the blanket and the packet of crisps. The Officer explains that while they provide a healthy free sandwich for visitors, they do not provide crisps. Nelson puts the crisps in his pocket.

The Officer begins to talk at him. Nelson cannot answer. The Officer wants to know about the death of Viv. She knows of his movements courtesy of CCTV cameras and from some squatters in "illegal occupation" in the building opposite to which Viv "immured" herself.

The Officer knows how many times Nelson visited Viv and that he brought her "life threatening consumables." The Officer wants to know why this girl with everything to live for is dead.

A mobile phone rings. The officer answers and swiftly deals with the caller before returning to the matter in hand.

"Dante tells us that over the gateway of hell is written: abandon all hope you who enter here. He might have been quoting from the entrance to his local DSS Office….. A fair proportion of the misery of the world passes before me. But this (taps the file) is different. A novelty has turned up in my workload. I should like to understand."

The silence is broken by the mobile phone ringing. The Officer explains it’s a woman who rings up 20 times a day threatening to commit suicide. She responds, telling her client to leave a note because it will be cheaper than the phone bill, before switching the phone off.

In the ensuing silence, following the next question Nelson is unable to answer,
the Officer begins to hear something we cannot - the West Indian woman in reception with the noisy earrings. "You heard the ear-rings? She wears them to annoy me." This woman is the Officer's bete noir, a sycophant who pretends to be in "ecstatic agreement with everything I say." The officer is aware that Nelson will have discussed winding the Officer up with his mates by mentioning the ear-rings, but nevertheless she is keeping a file on her, and the Officer intends to produce it when her hour comes.

The Officer switches tack in yet another strategy to break Nelson's silence: she decides to sit in silence too. The pressure however becomes unbearable because she can still hear the ear-rings, even though they are five stories up.

Then another approach. "I hate you. Actually I hate everyone who comes through the door." The Officer launches into her innermost thoughts that seem to transport her into another space.

"I hate them all for their helplessness. They let themselves be victims. This city is a giant jigsaw where none of the pieces fit. I feel the world's spinning out of control. The chaos. Confusion. I am dizzy. If you ask me - which seems improbable - the world will end in an hour or two. Just before my long weekend break."

But she is no longer addressing her victim and Nelson is not able to hear what she is telling him about the world, neither is she able to hear herself explain why Viv is dead.

In a final sortie she rallies herself to her conclusion: Nelson is the murderer, who probably poisoned the crisps.

According to the law Nelson is innocent. But not morally. The Officer accuses him of abandoning her, trying to starve into submission. Not once did he seek help for her or in the absence of anyone to turn to like the girl's mother, the police, or indeed herself. He failed to lie down in the street or shout from the roof tops, which is after all what rooftops are for.

"You sit in silence. It doesn't matter now. You were silent then - and someone is dead. Why were you silent? Because you know nothing. Are nothing. Do nothing. The law has let you off - I have ruined your life. My good deed for the day. You will never be free of the torments of your conscience. It will pursue you day and night like the hounds of hell let loose on a greyhound race track. Remove yourself from my office."

Nelson leaves.

Four

Some time later Nelson is begging in an empty street draped in the blanket. He is wretched, wretched with guilt and despair over the loss of Viv. Day turns to night. Desperate he takes out the packet of crisps, apologises to Viv for what he is about to do and goes to eat one. Nelson is stopped in his tracks by the wail of a police siren. "It was only one Viv."

A one-legged Thief using a crutch and wearing a top hat runs on. He asks Nelson to hide him. "I'm innocent. Yer can see from me imposin' head gear. 'Ide me."

The Thief gives Nelson the crutch and the hat and hides under the blanket by his side just as the police screech to halt. A polite young officer shouts over from the car that they are looking for a one-legged Thief with a top hat and a crutch. Nelson tells them he has seen him run past. The officer politely thanks Nelson before speeding off in pursuit.

When they have gone the thief explains that an old woman had accused him of snatching her handbag, "bold as brass." He points with a handbag to indicate the scene of a crime. Nelson asks him whose handbag it is. The thief tells him,

"[It's]...me mother's. She gave it to me t' 'old when she went into a shop. We were separated. I was twelve at the time. I've been looking for 'er ever since. I shant give up. I'm a man of resolution. "

The Thief asks for a crisp. Nelson tells him they belong to his girl and they aren't his to give away. They are interrupted by the return of the police. The Thief hides beneath the blanket. This time Nelson is holding the crutch wearing the hat and the handbag. He informs them that he hasn't seen the Thief pass back this way. The police drive away reassuring Nelson that they'll never give up on such a slippery customer and apologise for bothering him.

"I'm an orphan. Pity me. Give us a crisp." The Thief resumes pursuit of the crisps when the police have disappeared. The Thief learns that the crisps are liver and bacon flavour and that although Viv didn't like them, Nelson explains, "It was all they 'ad." The Thief tells Nelson that he must let go. "She's dead. Clingin' to a bag of crisps won't bring 'er back. Especiually Liver n' Bacon. Give us the crisps - I'll eat 'em for yer n' yer'll be free."

The Thief devours the crisps as Nelson weeps - an outpouring of guilt and remorse and loneliness.

Having eaten the crisps the Thief introduces himself - "I'm Bernard the one-legged dancer." He tells Nelson that he could afford to retire on his earnings to the Costa Del Sol, but that he doesn't like the sun, then offers to teach Nelson to dance. The Thief dances and in doing so he finds his other leg. Both are shocked. "I'm off me balance. Dizzy. The world's spinnin round!....Yer 'avent got another packet a crisps? To 'elp me get over the shock of finding I got two legs."

The Thief gives Nelson some loose change from the handbag and sends him to buy some crisps. He would of course have done it for himself but it could be dangerous on account of the old lady loitering on the corner. Nelson leaves, the Thief offers to look after the blanket, to buy Cheese and Chives or Provencale Olives 'n Tomato "in an emergency".

Alone, the Thief examines the blanket, but drops it because its full of holes. He picks up the handbag and hat and his crutch and hops off just as the police screech after him sirens flashing. Nelson returns with some crisps, "Liver 'n bacon. That's all they 'ad."

The police car roars up and the officer is delighted to inform him that, "We caught the one-legged thief with the top hat. He fell over his crutch and broke his neck. Goodnight sir. Keep well."

Nelson is left bewildered and alone. He bawls in the direction that the Thief has just taken. "Liver 'n bacon! 'S all they 'ad!"
Nelson leaves with the blanket and a new bag of liver and bacon flavoured crisps.

Five

The wife is setting the table for dinner. Immediately there is a tension between her setting the table and a pile of dust in the corner of the room. She goes over to the dust. Nods her head, a decision is made. She carries on setting the table.

The Foreman enters in his work clothes to which he has added the bow-tie. He carries a parcel. His voice has changed - it is an affected changed. He puts the parcel down and goes to look at the dust before announcing his arrival.

The first exchange between him and the Wife is fraught with antagonism bubbling beneath the surface. The Wife tells him her mother is coming. This unnerves him. The Foreman says an involuntary "Ole".
"Stop saying that," the Wife replies.

We then learn that the mother is not staying long because they live in a pigsty - a reference to the patch of dust which is messing an otherwise spotless dinette. She also explains that her mother never did understand why she married him; his feet smell and he was never a high flyer. The Foreman defends himself - he is more than a high flyer, he lays buildings low, he is a demolition man.

While the wife is out of the room he cleans the cutlery - he is fastidious about hygiene. The dust he has allowed to gather on one spot of the dinette is part of the burden he bears, along with a Wife who does not provide clean cutlery.

They battle over the cutlery. He claims his table knife has egg on it. She replaces it with a large bread knife. He is faced down and settles for cleaning the bread knife on the tablecloth when she goes back into the kitchen. She remerges with a large meat knife. He is about to point out a speck dirt on a glass tumbler but changes his mind as the Wife reappears once more in a dust mask. The foreman is very edgy. He twiddles thumbs and another involuntary "Ole" escapes him. For the Wife it is a declaration of war.

She goes out and returns with the dustpan and brush to go with the mask, she is now fully armed.

She declares victory is hers. They will come to blows. She says she has put up with the inconvenience of the dust when others don't, she knows because she has asked around the estate. She demands an explanation for the dust. He will not give it. The Wife tells him he will have to explain to her mother, thus persuading the Foreman to tell her the truth. The dust he explains is the balancing point of the world. He tells the Wife about Viv and how she had picked the wrong spot, this is world spot.

Formally clearing his throat he outlines a world imbalanced - the horrors trivialised. There is disease but also there is youth. There is blood on knives - sneaky reference to the meat knife - and deforestation and dried egg on knifes. In short anarchy. The spot is now sacred - a hair could trigger it - he has appropriated Viv's vision of destruction but it is trivialised, reduced to an impending disaster on the estate and a threat to the Wife's dinette, "Ole".

To underline his point he unwraps the parcel he has brought in. It is a rope barrier he got from a monastery that is closing down. "But why my dinette" she asks to which he replies that it is he, the demolition expert, who "is the chosen one."

He asks for his tea. She rebuts him.

He refuses to move aside as she brandishes the dust pan and brush. She threatens to starve him of his tea. But his suffering knows no bounds, the world deserve it, and he is prepared to forgo his tea. He will bear it stoically but he asks her if she could provide a few chocolate biscuits instead.

He puts on his shoes and as he speaks - the lace snaps. "See anarchy everywhere." A grotesque moment of final confrontation has arrived. He knew this would happen. He has contemplated it while lying awake at night snoring, while tolerating the wagging of workmates over his bow tie his one concession to his status as world saviour. He has struggled with destiny but now she will witness his apotheosis.

"Stand back. Ole!" Grabbing the cutlery he performs his tremendous flamenco in a futile show of virility. His fanaticism is expressed through complete fantasy, his face in dancing mode is a complete mask. The dance climaxes in a gloriously vulgar display of his powers, stamping round the dust while not disturbing it. He is reckless.

She warns him that his stamping will bring a complaint from Mr Pringle downstairs who has already complained about his snoring.

He tells her from now on her life will be hard. He threatens her with the butter knife. She says will not give way to a terrorist. Destiny has arrived. She goes to clear the spot. He stabs her. This bends the butter knife. He picks up the bread and the meat knife weighing them up in his hands. He deliberates, "Choices, choices." He chooses the largest knife and kills her. Mercifully her hard life was short.

He tidies up the mess. Buries his Wife under the floorboards and wipes the knife on the tablecloth.

There is a knock at the door. He opens it. Nelson appears with the blanket and crisps the Thief has given him ... he enters. Nothing is now as it seems, we have descended into complete chaos - the Foreman inhabits another reality. The Foreman remembers Nelson and offers to feed him. The Foreman returns from the kitchen with a smoking frying pan and a burnt offering. There aren't even any chocolate biscuits.

The Foreman cleans his nails with the butter knife as Nelson tries to explain why Viv shut herself in the room and believed in the spot. If only he could make one person - a normal working man - understand. The Foreman does not hear him, he stares at the butter knife.

Nelson has a map of the world. It is a newspaper. This is how he knows Viv was right. On every page there is a catastrophe. What does our society do with this knowledge - uses it to wrap chips in? What drove Viv mad were the people who turn away. You can't change the world on your own. The spots are everywhere…..in every house…in every street.

The Wife crawls out from under the floorboards. The Foreman tells Nelson to ignore her. She is crawling towards the spot sweeping with the dust and brush as she goes.

Nelson calls for a doctor. Foreman warns him that Mr Pringle will be listening. Nelson goes to the door. The Foreman knocks Nelson out with the frying pan, spilling the charred food across the room. Foreman blames Nelson for this. Wife continues to struggle over to the barrier.

The Foreman ties Nelson up in a chair with the blanket and gags him with a napkin. He hurries over to the wife and snatches the dust pan and brush from her just in time. She dies. The Foreman tidies up again. He puts the wife in the other chair. Picks up the food and offers it to the unconscious Nelson.

The Foreman addresses Nelson. He has saved the world twice today and the butter knife is bent. What is the pattern in that? Life and history are now beyond comprehension even to a demolition expert. He uses Viv's image of the cliff edge. He can take no responsibility. Unappreciated and under threat from the looming presence of Mr Pringle he now has nowhere to sit and nothing to eat. "Has the time come to end it?" He is too tired to make a decision about the fate of the world and decides to toss a coin. Tails. The world must end.

Nelson comes round to the terrifying spectacle of the Foreman's second fantastic flamenco. His grand vainglorious finale performed largely on the table without disturbing the cutlery….The climax comes as the Foreman pauses, his foot raised in the air above the spot ready to crash down when there is another knock at the door. "Destiny always comes. It’s the second time it's tried today." Another quick tidy round the room as he worries whether it is destiny or Mr Pringle coming to complain about the noise. There is no food, not even a biscuit, to offer, he is in a sweat, but at least destiny will know he lived life to the full.

Mr Pringle arrives. He is in fact a she, the DSS Officer.

"Don't your colleagues notice?"
"Certainly not. They are civil servants. They notice nothing."

She wears a short blonde Hitler moustache for formal occasions which she puts on now.

Nelson recognises her instantly and tries to speak to her through his gag.

She recognises the blanket - rather than Nelson. And his crisps. Pringle says he once insulted her with silence and that she can see he is at it again. She says she heard everything from downstairs, the attack on the Wife was frenzied. "Is he not the perpetrator of the notorious Bent Butter knife Murder?"
Mr Pringle explains that she has comes to compliment him on his virile flamenco.

"Since I was a slip of a girl I have dreamed of marrying a demolition engineer who wore a bow tie. They are few. That is why I have remained spinster all these years - for no other reason. Now you have made a literary reference. That was another of my girlhood dreams. That the demolition engineer in the bow tie must make literary references. And we meet on the day when your late Wife has created a gap in your life. It is the hand of destiny!"

"Ole!"

"Ah! Ecstasy! - you speak Spanish!"

Nelson makes a sound of despair.

Mr Pringle tells her client on mobile phone to kill herself. Pringle proposes to the Foreman and hands him the crisps as a wedding present. She is transformed and throws away her phone as it rings. A union of bureaucracy with demolition. They dance a furious Tango. The third and final climatic dance of death, the world is cast aside for their insane pleasure.

As they crash through the barrier Pringle falls onto the dust patch and the world ends.

A half-day theatre-in-education programme for Years 5, 6 & 7
on tour in Summer 2003

Prospero, exiled noble, lives with his daughter on an enchanted isle. He holds those bound by the power of his books in servitude. Prospero is master of this fantastical wilderness.

But the power of his enchantment is tainted by the injustice of the world of men.

A passing ship draws the shadows of the past closer. Seizing his chance, Prospero conjures a storm that wrecks the vessel and casts his enemies ashore. In the eye of this man-made maelstrom a moment of reckoning awaits.

Eye of the Storm, drawing on Shakespeare's The Tempest, combines theatre and music to free the imagination to explore the essence of citizenship: the relationship between nature and nurture, freedom and bondage, knowledge and ignorance.

The central metaphor of the raging storm at the heart of this programme was inspired by Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. It was an artistic expression of our collective anxiety about, and opposition to, the onset of war in Iraq which was unfolding throughout the devising period. Shakespeare provides us with a world of contradictions, an exploration of society and the psyche and images that mirror other images and refract ever-deeper meaning. Through this we were able to explore our world. At the heart of our concerns of course was Caliban. He embodied our learning area for young people to explore: what makes us human? And, in particular, the role of social class in determining what is humanising and dehumanising in the storm. It was because of our preoccupation with Caliban however that we were left unsatisfied with Shakespeare’s resolution. Prospero forgives his betrayers and returns to Milan with them, leaving Caliban forsaken - for us this was an unspeakable act of cruelty. We wanted to bring this unresolved contradiction back into the heart of Milan. An image. The programme begins with an image of an aging Prospero in Milan. He clings on to a manuscript, a drawing of the social structure of Milan, a feudal pyramid depicting the ‘natural order’ from the nobility down to the common people. Noted down as being outside of society are vagabonds, criminals, and rogues. In reference to the pyramid the Duke has scrawled- 'how can this be improved upon?' The class is asked by the actor/teacher facilitating “What do you see?” To the children he looks “paralysed...” he’s “trying to fix Milan”. We hear the sounds of the city floating into the Duke’s chamber: people bustling, crying, hawkers selling wares, a scuffle, people begging. The children are invited to speak his thoughts. What begins to emerge is a picture of a man who is at the end of his life and re-evaluating his life’s work, looking at himself and the society he embodies. From image to action. We are witnesses to Prospero’s torment about the storm in his mind. “How do people fit in?” Then his realisation. He will send for the Scholars, he will beg them for their help with this puzzle. The young people reflect on what they have just seen. Socially the group establishes the meaning of ‘scholar’. At first there is hesitancy, too often an unfamiliar word to school children, but eventually each group begins to define scholar, the uses they can have: “They know how the mind works and use their knowledge to help others”. The Scholars Prospero is seeking assistance from have rules of debate to help themselves help others: A good scholar is a good listener to others; A good scholar waits his turn to speak; A good scholar thinks before he or she speaks; A good scholar is not quick to judge others; A good scholar wishing to speak must stand; A good scholar addresses others in the debate as ‘fellow scholars’. Stepping into role. The young people discuss the importance of these rules and as they discuss the last rule of debate they are suddenly addressed by an actor/teacher as ‘fellow scholars’, and invited to take up their scholarships, a medallion of learning on a ribbon which is ceremoniously placed around their necks. In half an hour the young people have completed a journey from Birmingham back arriving in Renaissance Milan as the finest scholars of Europe and experts to a grateful Duke Prospero. The rules of debate were critical from the point of view of our teaching objectives for the young people we were working with, particularly the following: To give them authority and responsibility in role as Scholars. To enable them to engage in a structured debate over something that matters to them. To enable them to empathise with the situation of others. It was never a matter of managing behaviour, but creating the conditions for debate. To provide a space for the young people to hear themselves and each other. To transcend the notion of debate as simply adversarial but also dialogical, where one can develop the ideas and contributions of each other in pursuit of solutions to our problems. To do this through the role of Scholars provided the young people with a vibrant use of the imagination, providing freedom from the every day constraints imposed by reality and the ability to image the possible rather than the actual. Insisting upon observing the rules of debate re-enforced the role at every turn. Such a mode of enquiry felt very relevant to the lives of the young people and the times through which we are living. A change of scenery. The scholars are invited into Prospero’s garden of knowledge, built along classical renaissance lines, beautifully crafted, the geometry mirroring nature’s patterns. Where the Island of his exile was wild, this space, the centre of his realm, is ordered, awash with vibrantly coloured marble, formal arches bearing plants, a bee hive (a natural order) and a caged bird (a man made structure for a natural being). The set brilliantly embodies the learning areas of the programme. Here the Scholars take their seats and begin their deliberations on the state of Milan. The garden is calm but the storm, the chaos of the struggle to live in Milan, is never far from its walls. The Scholars are in the eye of the storm. They never forget it. At this point an adventurer intervenes. This rogue has a man-monster in their charge, captured on an island and toured as a cheap circus act around the houses of the nobility. Prospero is amused by this stranger, one of those who lives outside of society, an illustration of the problem that the Scholars can draw upon. Prospero’s curiosity cannot resist the temptation to see the burlesque the adventurer offers. After an exchange of coin, the beast is hauled before the assembled scholars wrapped in sacking and bound by chains…..and so is revealed Caliban; bitter, vengeful, frightened Caliban, his wits clouded by the drink used to pacify him by his captor. The problem of how people fit in to society was made concrete. The Scholars were confronted by distorted humanity and the inquiry into the state of Caliban allowed them to explore the aims of the programme. Prospero's story. In the face of the aging Duke the Scholars see someone who is confronted with the ghosts of his past, and his unresolved present. Unable to avoid what crouches before him, this “Caliban, a devil, a born devil whose nature, nurture cannot heal”, Prospero consents to share with them how this creature has come to be before them. The programme moves in two time frames between the present, the Scholars meeting Prospero and his nemesis, and a retelling of the story of Propsero's life, from his usurpation at the hands of his brother to his exile on the island and his triumphant return to Milan. The Scholars’ task is to interpret the past in order to address what needs to be done in the present. Our telling of ‘the Tempest’, recreated in the garden through Prospero’s eyes, focuses on the relationships in the play that shed light on our learning areas: nature and nurture, freedom and bondage, knowledge and ignorance. The narrative is pared down to a careful use of dramatic action and objects. Thus the Scholars can follow the use of a cup to shed light on how knowledge can be sued to keep another in bondage: Prospero teaching Caliban to drink from a cup which he then uses to poison him with as punishment for his attempted rape of Miranda. This is then mirrored by the adventurer's poisoning of Caliban with alcohol to control him when he is reduced to a performing beast. The interaction between the Scholars and the actor/teachers, utilising direct exchange, depiction and the manipulation of objects, revealed an incredible drive within the young people to meet the problem Caliban presented with justice and integrity. They had to deal with how Caliban can fit in to Milan. The final task of the Scholars was to produce a decree addressing Caliban’s needs and what needed to change in Milan to accommodate all of those outside society. These were forthright assertions about what makes us human. Prospero was bound by their knowledge. At times we struggled as a Company to meet the challenge posed to the working as actors in role. We underestimated the ability of the young people to read images and dramatic action which at times found the complexity of the theatre on offer wanting. But, we truly learned that the more we were able to trust the young people as Scholars (note as Scholars here) and allow all of us, Company and young people, to be active from within the drama, the more the children were able to be active, the more they invested absolute belief in the importance of what they were doing. It was an invaluable lesson. The investment was extraordinarily serious playfulness. And furthermore, it demonstrated that the young people had a consciousness of what they were learning while engaging in the drama as Scholars. This is how one child articulated his experience of being Scholars in interviews to us afterwards: How did it feel to be a Scholar? “Strange in a pleased way. Inside my blood was like bubbles popping [in my blood], as they popped they were kind of telling me this is good. I had a good and a very good feeling. The good feeling was being asked to help, the very good feeling was being asked to help by Prospero. But also there was a bad feeling because I also had a feeling of not wanting to help Prospero. It was like my veins squeezing my blood, but I was so excited it felt like my bones were getting flat, as flat as they could. It was like two sides were fighting, one side wanting to help, the other didn’t.” How did this make you feel? “It was like my bones were fighting about which side they would really go. I could feel it but it didn’t hurt. Like my blood was bone and the blood pouring out, still popping in my arms, in my legs and where my ribs were. It was trying to force me to go up and say something, but the other side stopped me, not to prove Prospero wrong, it was stopping me.” This boy is statemented, he has learning and behavioural difficulties. Working as a Scholar unlocked a different form of perception for him. It was a different kind of schooling. By giving him something that mattered to resolve, something that made human sense, he found a new language for himself. He was able to feel, and then beautifully express, being physically torn in two by the dramatic situation. He was experiencing what we call felt understanding, a unity of thought and feeling. And through his empathy for Caliban's situation he was exploring his own situation. This child was meeting his human need for justice and exploring head on what makes us human. This was the response of another boy we interviewed. When we asked him about being a Scholar he replied: “Good. Learned more things from it. If you do a play you can do more things. If you do a Tudor play and if you where Henry VIII you could learn more things than were just in the script. You get better at learning, because you are in a smaller space.” How did it feel like to talk to the other people in the story? “Interesting. That it’s a part of the play. I liked it I don’t know why. It was fun. Me and Jamie did a play yesterday to Reception, The Secret Garden, we let them talk to us, they asked Mary why did her parents die? Because of the earthquake. Took us about a week to do it.” What did you enjoy the most? “Being the Scholars, because you can learn, tell people what to do, could tell the actors, the people in the play what to do. Could have a stretch. So they can listen and be listened to.” Have you spoken to anybody else about Eye of the Storm? “Family” What did you tell them? “We had a play with Big Brum that work in our school, we were Scholars that could listen, could tell them and answer, you could stand up so everyone could see who was speaking and wait their turn.” What is really striking from these excerpts is how the child has understood the form of his own learning and then applied it for himself in his own production of the Secret Garden. He recognised and enjoyed his freedom to “stretch”. He enjoyed the space that the set provide him. He appreciated the importance of being seen, respected, listened to, and of waiting his turn. It was fun and playful, and therefore essential because a child cannot create him or her self without play. This TIE programme was both searching and inspiring because above of all the things it offered, The Eye of the Storm made Scholars of us all.

A full day theatre-in-education project based at Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove, for years 5, 6 and 7. February 2003.

In 2000 the Company had a brainwave; why don’t we do a site specific project where we put the children in role as evacuees and create a drama where we bus them out to somewhere in the country so they can experience what it was like? We were all thoroughly excited by the idea but quickly realised that we had nowhere to do it, a bus, or anything like the amounts of money required to give young people such a wonderful experience. By January 2003 the money had been raised and Avoncroft museum and the bus company had been booked. For the first time at Big Brum, a team of five actor/teachers was ready to begin devising for a project that would work with two groups, one primary and secondary, each day.

Avoncroft is a fascinating ‘village’ museum consisting of historic buildings covering seven centuries, restored and rebuilt on a beautiful open-air site in the heart of the Worcestershire countryside. Furthermore the company had exclusive access to the site for the duration of the project because we were prepared to brave the elements in shorts and wellies during the museum’s winter break.

We began our exploration of the impact of war on ordinary people’s lives at the same time as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were explaining to the world the necessity for a war against Iraq. This proved to be a useful coincidence because we knew that young people would have very serious questions about this war and how it would impact upon them and their lives. This became evident during our devising. Bev Hayward, the Year 6 teacher at Pegasus School, decided to prepare her class for the project by bringing her mother Joan Bygrave, a child evacuee in the 1940s, into school. The Company sat in on the session. One young girl raised her hand and asked of Joan “What will happen to us when world war three breaks out?” It was not the last question of this type and we began to cognise that the impending war was at the forefront of these young people's minds. Joan was deeply moved that these questions are still being asked but she could only speak of her own experience that still had the rawness of a recent trauma for her. On the 31st August 1939 the order “Evacuate forthwith” was issued and within a week ‘Operation Pied Piper’ as it was, to our minds unnervingly, called moved a quarter of the population from towns and cities to places of safety in the countryside. Unfortunately for Joan it was a deeply unhappy experience:

“I had this feeling right here in the bottom of my tummy, I still get it, feeling sick even now talking to you. It was a physical pain like a depression. I wrote a letter home it said, 'Dear Mom and Dad, Fetch us home, fetch us home, fetch us home……all I wrote, pages and pages, just sayin’ fetch us home…'”

Our aim was to create a piece of theatre-in-education that developed the work of Big Brum both artistically and educationally, providing young people with a powerful learning experience through theatre and drama.

We arrived at our objectives:
· To provide the young people with the opportunity to explore the concepts of being displaced and dislocated through the role of evacuees.
· To allow them to explore their own sense of displacement and dislocation.
· To encourage the children to play through role.
· To give the children a felt understanding of what it was like to be an evacuee.
· To give them a unique experience of visiting the site of Avoncroft.

Whilst the purpose of the day was to give the young people an experiential drama it was not enough to have them wandering around for three hours bumping into actor/teachers dressed as local villagers. As with all our work, the event needed to have a specific purpose to it. There needed to be a particular task through which the young people could explore the universal. So, we created a young girl, Ruby Barker.

Preparatory Session

The class teacher was asked to dedicate a corner of the classroom to the preparatory work. An effigy of a child was created by drawing round a member of the class who were then told:

This is Ruby’s story. Ruby was eleven years old when her mother was told that she had to leave Birmingham. She was to be evacuated. These are her things. This is the box she had to carry with her at all times.

The young people began to build a picture of Ruby through exploring the objects she had to take with her. They also had to decide three personal things that they thought Ruby would take:
· something which holds a memory of her home
· something which offers comfort
· something that Ruby thinks will be useful to her

There were many responses to this task: a photo of Ruby being held by her mother when she was a baby, an old battered teddy bear which had belonged to her grandmother and her mother, a diary – so she may tell her family about her experience of the countryside.

The separation of the child from its family was of utmost concern for the young people. Through deciding which objects Ruby would take they were protecting the child into, as far as they were able, this unknown environment.

The final task was for every member of the class to create an identity for themselves, a child with a history and background compatible with the 1940s, a child to be evacuated.

The Journey to Avoncroft

One the day of their participation, the class were awaiting the arrival of the Company in costume, grasping a picnic of jam sandwiches (spending money, crisps and pop etc were specifically outlawed) and their new identity cards.

The children were met by an evacuation officer who distributed gas masks to each child and marched her charges out of the class. In the playground they were then drilled by Mr Blewitt, an over zealous ARP warden, who boarded them onto the bus (at some schools parents participated by waving their children off while the ARP exhorted the children to smile and give three cheers for his majesty the king).

Throughout the journey, which could take up to an hour, they were taught numerous do’s and don’ts, vigilance in the face of a formidable enemy, wartime songs, and Mr Blewitt held forth on why all had to dig for victory! The journey to Avoncroft was an essential element of the programme. It created space for the children to bed into the drama and suspend disbelief. The young people were fully aware that they were in a drama, but they were able to gain a felt understanding of what it would have been like to be evacuated.

Avoncroft

On arrival at Avoncroft, the children were marched through the village, stopping to engage with different roles, catching fleeting glimpses of ‘incidents’, to the village hall where they were to be billeted.

Whilst it was important to give the young people a sense of what it meant to be billeted with their new foster parents it was not necessary for them to experience the whole billeting process as this was not the function of the day. We used a variety of drama conventions to stop the drama such as thought tracking to reflect on what the evacuees were feeling and thinking or narration to move time on.

The young people were introduced to Mrs Willis, their teacher in Avoncroft. Mrs Willis was deeply troubled. She read them a letter she had received from the mother of a young girl who had been staying with her. The girl’s name, Ruby Barker. The ripple round the room at the mention of the name was very tangible and immediately the drama took on a qualitatively new dimension. Mrs Willis explained to them how Ruby had tragically died in an accident when she fell through the ice walking over the frozen Avoncroft village pond. It happened one evening. Nobody saw her. She was found the next day.

In her letter to Mrs Willis, Ruby’s mother, desperate to know all she could about her lost child, begged to know what life was like for Ruby in Avoncroft. Mrs Willis asked the new arrivals if they would help her to understand what life in Avoncroft was like for Ruby, after all “You understand what it is like to have to leave behind all that is familiar….”

And so, following a break for sandwiches accompanied by music from the radio and supplemented by plain biscuits, a slice of apple, milk or water, the evacuees set off on a journey of discovery.

With Mrs Willis as their guide the evacuees visited those places which were a refuge for Ruby: the old barn where she would seek out the company of Violet and Bessie, the landgirls; the windmill and Mr O’Grady the miller, who befriended Ruby by sharing his bread with her; the dovecot where Ruby used to go to listen to the soft cooing of the birds.

As Ruby’s life began to unfold the evacuees broke off into smaller groups to follow up numerous trails they unearthed: the earth closet where Mrs Archer sent Ruby for persistent bed wetting during her first weeks in Avoncroft; the police station where Ruby befriended a child who was not picked by any family and had to spend their first night in the cells. There were those people in the village who remembered Ruby and the things she got up to: Mrs Lonsdale the farmer’s wife, and Mr Smith the chainmaker.

Each group of evacuees were asked to bring back an object from all the places they had visited to the school room to help build a picture of Ruby’s life in Avoncroft.

With everyone assembled, the evacuees shared back their findings. Through narration, Ruby was recreated, walking those last fatal steps across the ice. The children were invited to place the significant objects they had found one by one somewhere on Ruby. They were able to encode their understandings of what life was like for Ruby as evacuees and in doing so speak as young people today about their own sense of displacement and dislocation in the world. Their comments as to why they had selected their objects were recorded and these provided Mrs Willis with the raw material to write the letter to Ruby’s mother. The following is one example:

Dear Mrs Barker……

Ruby felt like she wanted to die. She missed her parents so much. She wanted to be a normal child. She tried to make things better for her doll, to make her own special place, where she could feel special. But in Avoncroft, Ruby herself felt abandoned. It was as if the pain in her heart would split her in two.
She was breaking down, like a nervous breakdown. But then she danced and she pictured her Mum dancing with her, smiling and laughing.
For Ruby some lessons appeared as punishments. Punishment didn’t help her. She used to try to take her mind off her problems by remembering her Mum when she was alone in the dark with the smell of the pillow. She never forgot the smell of love. She held it in her arms.”

The shortcomings of our vision lay in the mixed success of pairing secondary and primary children, which would need more careful preparation in future, and too much dependence on the ability of the class teacher to take on the level of preparation for the day we required. Above all, however, Avoncroft was an unforgettable experience for all of us and has left the Company hungry for more…

Some photos:

A full-day theatre-in-education programme for secondary schools. Based on the play Semmelweis by Geoff Gillham.

Do not think that science and history are just things we read in books.
Oh no. They are active, alive, changing...
What is history? The continuous, eternal process of man's struggle to live.
And science? The continuous, eternal process of man's struggle to know the world we live in.
This is a story of science.
And the struggle for science.
The time: 1844.
A time of the greatest struggle for survival;
A time of poverty and of disease;
Of revolution and reaction;
Of birth and death of old and new ideas.

from Semmelweis by Geoff Gillham

This programme was targeted across the curriculum to groups studying Drama and English, History and Science. Our aim, however, was not to teach these subjects within the limits of the curriculum. 'Of Birth and Death' was an exploration of history and science, both philosophically and, as they are in the world, totally interconnected and at the heart of the struggle for social progress. What is history? What is science? What is the relationship between history and science? We also wanted to explore cognition and the process of learning. The programme, constructed around the play, was structured in three parts. It is a complex narrative based on the story of Ignaz Semmelweis the 19th Century Hungarian Doctor. Semmelweis devoted his life to eradicating puerperal or ‘childbed’ fever, which was responsible for the deaths of millions of women and their babies throughout Europe before the introduction of antisepsis. Section One prepares the young people to watch the play by engaging them with the concepts underpinning it. Our objective is to enable the young people we were working with to understand what drove Semmelweis, and in doing so become conscious of themselves as human beings with the potential to become active agents of change in their own lives. We begin the programme by presenting the young people with a contemporary image: a father sat by a hospital bed somewhere in the Middle East. The ward is bare of equipment and dirty, the father is wearing relatively new casual clothing and in his hand is a tarnished metal jug with water in it. On the bed lies his child, it is dying, the child has chronic diarrhoea. The mother has died. On the wall, in Arabic, is written ‘the pharmacy will be closed until further notice’. They hear the father bear witness to his child’s death, in most schools we cannot understand his language, in others the children can translate. The young people investigate the image, explore the empirical evidence. Our method is scientific. Together the young people and the actor/teachers explore the symptoms (effects) of diarrhoea and its causes. Cause and effect are concepts at the heart of the programme and we want the young people to make use of them in the work; as the narrator Dr Underwood tells us in the play, “When a child does a wrong thing, the cause is not because he’s naughty. Just another word for the symptom! The cause it what makes him naughty.” We go on to explore the conditions, the history of the hospital and the child’s struggle to live, and the state of science in this place; cause and effect – conditions – history and science – all inter-related, the building blocks of our learning for the day. Having recorded our findings the facilitator explains that there truth is objective and that these findings bring us closer to knowing the truth of the situation before us. It is then acknowledged that although the truth may be knowable, seeing it is often very difficult because we are affected by our relation to it, our feelings about it, and our vested interests. Time is moved on. The child dies and the father offers a prayer. We explore the truth of the child’s death through the perspective of the doctor who delivered it, the government minister responsible for the hospital and the head of state of a western country. Finally, we socially construct a hypothesis based upon all that we have discovered as to why we think the child died. Section Two shifts the dynamic, the facilitator becomes Dr Underwood who is a professor of midwifery with expertise in the history of her field. She speaks to the children reflecting on the image of the father and child they have been interrogating: "Perhaps you like me are sickened by what happens to children like that; sickened that mothers die unnecessarily when we have the knowledge to stop it from happening; when Doctors know what the symptoms mean, and their cause, but cannot change the conditions that disease thrives in. Throughout history hospital wards have been littered with the dead and dying, proof that science is too often under the control of the ignorant and indifferent. Let us learn from our history. I wish to share some of it with you. An awful truth I have found buried in the official records, disguised by brutal facts. Ignaz Semmelweis was a great man of science and medicine, a friend to mothers and their children. He was a friend to us all because his story is our story. For the sake of that child and its father, and all those who have struggled to live, for all our sakes, please pay attention to every detail, investigate, observe, analyse, hypothesise and let us learn." The play begins. Semmelweis is a man for whom “to see, is to feel, is to act.” As a young doctor, working under Dr Klein in the maternity clinic of Vienna General hospital, he is appalled by the suffering of the women and children who die in agony from puerperal fever. Although the clinic is quite rightly regarded throughout Europe as the most progressive of its kind, doctors cannot explain the terribly high death rate from ‘childbed fever’. There are numerous theories, Dr Klein’s own is that the disease is spontaneously generated, it just happens, the vast majority of medics are in agreement that there is no cure. Semmelweis wants to know the cause. We are witnesses to his life’s struggle to find it. He does not succeed, although he comes very close. But for the first time in medical history he establishes a theory of a single causative agent for a disease. In the process of his endless search he revolutionises his field. By implementing a regime in which doctors and students must wash their hands and instruments thoroughly in chlorine before examining patients, the death rate plummets from what is now understood to be septicaemia. Yet, throughout his life Semmelweis remains thwarted by the orthodoxy and prejudices of the medical profession he tries to transform. For although “the pride of the Austrian Empire”, the Viennese medical establishment is, like the Empire itself, conservative, resolutely patrician and resistant to change. Furthermore, Semmelweis is a Hungarian and a nationalist with a ferocious temper. Branded as a troublemaker, zealous crank, an atheist, discredited and dismissed as mad, eventually he is destroyed and indeed mentally unbalanced. He dies of septicaemia after cutting his finger with a scalpel, the disease he spent his life trying to prevent. His theory of a single a causative agent is rejected and the practice of thorough hand washing with chlorine largely ignored. As a result, both during his life and for years after, thousands of women and children died unnecessarily. The hospital authorities have the autopsy record that, “The brain itself was surrounded by an evil smelling fluid, spontaneously generated by a malfunctioning of thought. It brought on a fever which could not be reversed.” In Section Three, Dr Underwood and Dr Saber, a leading obstetrician from Jordan, Mr Holmes and Ms Stott from the Coroner’s Office put the children in role as Investigators for the Coroner Office. Mr Holmes asks Dr Underwood and Dr Saber what exactly she wants from them. "The truth." The Doctors want to know why the autopsy recorded a lie. She explains that if they can persuade the Coroner to re-open the case on Dr Semmelweis it will become a public investigation, this history will be in the public domain and the truth will become the property of every human being. Semmelweis belongs to us all, Semmelweis is not just a subject for a history lesson in the classroom, he is a subject for the living. For Dr Saber the lessons of the past are not being applied to his situation today. For the next hour to two hours, depending on the length of the school day, the investigators hypothesise as to why this lie was told. They build the body of evidence using labelled exhibits, the objects from the play, "We can't speak to any witnesses because they are all dead but these things did bear witness to this life. They can speak to us about what happened. Is there any piece of evidence here that will shed further light on your hypotheses, on why the autopsy told a lie?" They build a body of evidence for their hypothesis by placing objects in relation to Semmelweis’s corpse on the slab, speaking their reasons for placing it where they do. The image builds slowly, giving them time to think on their feet and craft it, the actor/teachers, in role, amplifying and making connections between each contribution in order to elaborate on the whole. Where can we see cause? Does this part illustrate the conditions that the autopsy was written in? From then on the session unfolds in relation to the needs of the investigation through re-creating moments from Semmelweis’ life (the play), playing and replaying them, speaking to the roles, giving voice to the objects in the action. The facilitator brings a variety of drama conventions to bear upon the investigation in order to deepen the learning. The final task is to make an initial written submission to the Coroner on the investigation’s findings. It is done in the form of a rubric, which is completed in groups. The sharing of this work is critical because it encodes the understanding of that group of young people at that time, at times a deeply moving ritual. These are the initial findings of the (Year 10) Investigators at St Paul’s School: 'Dear Sir If history is the struggle to live, then we who live now owe…our lives. If we renounce it then those who follow will be…ignorant of the past and therefore ignorant in the present and in the future. Semmelweis struggles to live in a world where…people weren’t equal, doctors weren’t trusted, but where authority was always right. He saw around him…unnecessary suffering but saw how it could be different. He came to recognise the pattern of …recurring deaths. He passed on knowledge of… how history and science come together in solving a problem. And the lie exists because there are those who…obscure the truth for their own personal gain.' 'Of Birth and Death' continued to grow and develop and challenge the Company from the tours’ beginning to its end. It unlocked a hunger for knowledge in its participants and illustrated daily that young people are seekers of truth and justice. The future of science is tied to the destiny of mankind; The future of mankind is tied to the destiny of science. Cut the bond between them and all hell is let loose. Each sustains the other; and each, without the other, Spells disaster to them both. Who controls the future of science Controls the future of humanity: Who controls the future of humanity, Controls the future of science. Semmelweis by Geoff Gillham

A half-day theatre -in-education programme for Reception and Year 1 children.

"In a certain kingdom once lived a poor miller who had a very beautiful daughter. She was moreover exceedingly shrewd and clever, and the miller was so vain and proud of her that he one day told the king of the land that his daughter could spin gold out of straw..."

And so begins a chain of events where a father has to give up his own daughter who will, in turn, be asked one day to give up her own, as yet unborn, child.

But who or what is Rumpel-stilts-kin? What does he want with the baby? What are the consequences of bartering with a child's life?

'Field of Vision' was a programme exploring the relationship between democracy and dictatorship.

Dawn. Through the morning mist appear uniformed figures sweeping the area. Heavy boots break up the ground underfoot. They pause. Stillness. The intercom punctures the silence putting a bird to flight...

In the capital, the people rise from their beds while the Prime Minister prepares to make a press statement about the unfortunate loss of life...

In the mist the search continues. Stillness. A faint movement. Then a sound. Two frightened eyes frantically seek a way out.

The uniforms pass on.

The Prime minister clears his throat.

We live in an ever-changing world: people in movement seeking freedom and dignity in life; leaders driven to authoritarian solutions.

How are human rights abused? What enables these violations? How much coercion? How much collusion?

by Bobby Colvill

1937. It is dusk. In an East London street a young girl plays alone in the long shadows. Nearby a stranger disembarks at the docks. The chance encounter that follows helps the girl to come to terms with the enormous sense of loss she feels at this time, the eve of Europe's darkest hour.

'dusk' is an exploration of loss and belonging on the journey from childhood to adulthood. How do we find the peace that comes with self-knowledge amidst the chaos of a warring world?

A half-day, site-specific, theatre-in-education programme for children aged 4-7. On tour in Spring 2000.

A wall of rock. The child’s fingers, pressed to stone, trace the lichen that lives and breathes on the seemingly lifeless face… A little further on, the fingertips touch handprints of the ancient paint, left by children who have passed this way before – thousands of years before – on the same journey.

A touchstone is the standard by which a judgement is made. 'Touchstone' will create an environment, a world of exploration, a terrain for inquisitive young minds to test the possibilities presented by the journey.

The tool of the mind in this creative act is the hand. Using theatre, participatory drama and music, 'Touchstone' explores what hands are for…

By: Edward Bond

Performed by: Bobby Colvill, Amanda Finney, Richard Holmes
Director: Chris Cooper
Design: Ceri Townsend
Outreach and Development Worker: Maria Gee
Adminstrator: Jane Woddis
Admin. Assistant: Dilys Drewe

Have I None was the third play in what was, before 'The Balancing Act', the Big Brum trilogy. Each play brings us face to face with the problem of how to be human. 'At The Inland Sea' comes at the problem through a confrontation with the past and 'Eleven Vests' does it through a confrontation with the present. 'Have I None' looks at the problem through a confrontation with the future. The play is set on 18 July 2077 in a living space.

One: The action takes place in a room with a door leading to the street and another exit to a kitchen. The only furniture is a black utilitarian table and chairs.

Sara sits at the table. She is in a high state of tension because of a repeated knocking on the door. When she goes to answer the door there is nothing on the other side. Jams arrives home from his police shift. He begins to tell a tale about what happened at work in the ruins where the patrol found an old woman hanging a picture in a derelict house. He does not hear the knocking. The more he tells the more he gets drawn into the story, it begins to tell him. Jams gets angry when he realises that Sara is not listening. She explains that someone is knocking on the door. He goes to look, she explains that there is never anyone there. She says its been going on for weeks. Jams is incensed that she hasn’t reported it and that this could cause trouble, then he tells her she's going potty, and storms out of the door to eat in the canteen.

Two: Jams is in civvies. He is spooning food into his mouth. There is a knock. He goes to the door and opens it. A stranger, Grit, stands in the doorway. We learn that Grit has come to see Sara. Jams invites him in. Grit explains that he is Sara's brother. He walked from the North, unable to get a travel pass because staff were throwing themselves off the roof. Jams says that it must be a suicide outbreak, he explains about the mass suicides in Reading. Grit came because he found a photograph. Jams retorts that it isn't allowed, all papers, including photographs, were destroyed when they abolished the past.

Sara returns. She has been to get food which authority provides in frozen packs that can be de-frosted in the microwave. She denies that Grit is her brother because they "did away with all that". Grit sits in Sara's chair and falls to sleep. Sara is horrified and a huge row erupts between her and Jams. Sara rips up the photograph. Sara and Jams continue to row ferociously, both cry with rage and bitterness. Grit wakes up. In the heat of the argument about who sits where Grit moves a chair thus uniting Jams and Sara in horror, "He's ruining the home". Jams grabs the table and hugs it to him while Sara and Grit hug a chair each – they are glaring from behind the furniture at each other from opposing corners of the room. The situation calms down. When the furniture is reset Grit is sent to the toilet. While he is gone Jams decides that in order to extract themselves from this impossible situation they have no choice but to kill Grit. Sara goes out to buy poison.

Three: Grit is alone. The knocking on the door resumes. Everytime he opens the door there is no one there. The door opens and Sara enters wearing a coat of sky blue covered in metal spoons. We learn that she has been gone for 4 days. Sara tells Grit a story about when they were children. Grit satisfied that he has found his sister lies down to sleep. Sara turns her coat inside out - it is black and covered in bones. Jams enters, he cannot see Sara who stands and leaves. He is worried that if Sara's body turns up he will be censured for not reporting her missing. He is angry at Grit for sleeping when he should have been watching and ties him up in one of the chairs.

Sara enters. She has been to the ruins. A row breaks out because Grit is tied to her chair, "why didn't you tie him in your chair?" Grit awakes and struggles to get out of the chair. The argument rages until Grit sneezes and brings the focus back onto himself. Sara has bought the poison. Jams goes to the kitchen to prepare the soup. Sara tells Grit that she has been to the ruins and tried to finish the job the old woman started by hanging the picture. She tells Grit that she has never seen him before, that it's all in his head. Jams brings the poisoned soup for Grit. Sara drinks the soup. Jams is horrified "How can I explain this to the C.O?" Sara asks to be taken outside because she doesn't want to die in the house. Jams slashes Grits ropes and lets him help her out. Jams shouts down the street after them telling them to get round the corner before anyone sees. He slams the door shut, horrified that people are beginning to look. Jams sits down to eat the other un-poisoned bowl of cold soup. He stops fearful she might have poisoned that bowl as well. Jams goes back to the door and shouts after Sara. Sits again. There is a knock at the door, Jams turns towards the door and shouts "bugger off" before going off in to the kitchen howling.

by Chris Cooper

A half-day theatre-in-education programme for children aged 9 - 12.

"You got to know good stone before you cut it. Where to get it too. You got to find the right bit of this earth to get the right stuff for a steeple from, boy. Go on, feel it, the weight."

Stonemason's Hand explores the role that technology plays on our society, in the shaping of both culture and landscape. Generation after generation make their mark, telling the tale of the struggle for life, if you can read the signs...

A theatre-in-education programme for Years 6 and 7.

Bo crouches low, reaching for the moonlight streaming through the barely open door. The door creaks. He freezes, suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to pull it shut once more. Will Bo cross the threshold and venture out? What will he find on the other side?

by Edward Bond

Eleven Vests 1997

Performed by: Bobby Colvill, Chris Cooper, Amanda Finney
(The voices of the prisoners were recorded)
Director: Geoff Gillham
Design/Stage Manager: Richard Watson
Administrator: Maria Gee
Fund Raiser: Jane Woddis

Eleven Vests 1999

Performed by: Bobby Colvill, Chris Cooper, Amanda Finney, Richard Holmes
Director: Chris Cooper
Design/Assistant Stage Manager: Ceri Townsend
Stage Manager: Imamul Ameem
Outreach and Development Worker: Maria Gee
Fund Raiser: Jane Woddis

A short description of the play:

Book: A student summoned before the Head stands staring at the ground. The Head asks "Why?" The Student does not speak. The Head produces a book, its pages are slashed. The Student remains silent, neither denying nor admitting damaging the book. The Head gives the student a final warning before dismissing him.

Jacket: Another student enters crying, she is holding a school blazer. The Head appears. He takes the jacket. It has been badly slashed like the book. The head forces the Other Student into the tattered blazer and tells her to wait there. The Head leaves and reappears shortly after with the Student. Once more the Student refuses to cooperate as the Head accuses him of slashing the blazer. The Head instructs the Student to help the Other Student take the jacket off. The Student tears another strip off it. The Head tells the Student that he is expelled and that he has called the police. The Other Student is sent back to class. The Head begins to speak to the Student who walks out of the room.

Gate: The Student who has been living rough returns to the school gates. He meets the Other Student. The Other Student tries to persuade him to walk with her by the canal. He is about to go with the Other Student when the Head appears. The Head tells the Student he will not be allowed to enter the premises. The police are on their way. The Student pulls a knife. The Head stands firm in the gateway. The rest of the children are watching from inside the school. The Student stabs the Head, the Head staggers away to die. The Student walks to the gate, place one foot over the threshold, the children watching from inside the school building scream in fear. The Student throws the knife into the school yard before fleeing.

Lesson: Some years later, the Student is in the army. The Instructor is giving him a lesson explaining that all of human history, scientific development, is in the rifle, as a prelude to learning how to fire it. The lesson shifts to bayonet practice. The Student is unable to carry this out until a sack is provided for him to practice on. The Instructor harangues his charge incessantly and demands that the Student scream as he charges. The scream is primal. It is the first form of articulation from the Student who ends up in a heap having caught the sack on the end of the bayonet. The Instructor tells the Student to clear up the mess before departing.

Reccy: The Student is in combat on reconnaissance with a fellow Soldier. They are watching a hunting lodge that is quartering enemy soldiers. The Student observes through binoculars while the Soldier reports what he sees back to HQ down the intercom. There is nothing to report. Then, the Student sees movement. The enemy is surrendering by hanging out their white vests from a window. They count the vests, 10. HQ, unsure whether it is a trick or not, instructs them to take the surrender. They are unhappy to be so put at risk but proceed as ordered.

Roof: Inside the roof of the tower where the soldiers are surrendering an Enemy Soldier sits alone. The Enemy talks to a wooden toy train that has been left there by the previous occupants who fled. The Enemy's mate was shot the day before. The captain has run and the rest of the unit thinks he has too. There is a shout from below. He ignores it and starts to play with the train. The Enemy decides to go further up into the roof to sleep.

Tower: The Student and the Other Soldier approach the tower. Ten vests are hanging from the window. They take the surrender and instruct the prisoners to come out of the tower and gather down in the dip in front of the tower where they can be easily watched.

They sit down to watch until the arrival of their own platoon. A single shot from the top of the tower kills the Other Soldier. The Student scrambles away. The Enemy appears with his gun. The prisoners in the dip call to him in their language, he realises that they have surrendered. He lowers his gun. The Student reappears aiming his gun at the Enemy. The Enemy drops the gun and puts his hands up. The Student interrogates him, but they cannot speak the same language. When he is satisfied that the Enemy is the last person in the tower the Student radios the platoon, explains that a sniper has killed his mate, Carter and says that it is all clear now as he has killed the sniper. He prepares to bayonet the terrified Enemy who calls out to his comrades for help. A Prisoner who can speak English runs up from the dip. The Prisoner pleads on the Enemy's behalf. The Student is distracted by the constant crackle of the IC, his superiors trying to contact him. He turns the IC off and asks the Prisoner to tell him what the Enemy is saying. The Enemy tells the Student through the Prisoner that he was asleep in the roof and was unaware that the others had surrendered, which was why when he woke and saw the Student and the Other Soldier below he shot at them. As proof the Enemy shows that he still has his vest on. At the Student tries to fix the bayonet the Enemy takes his vest off and holds it out to the Student pleading with him. The Enemy buries his face in it crying. The Student bayonets the Enemy, and cleans the blood off it with the Enemy's vest. The other Prisoners in the dip call out in horror. The Student radios in on the IC confirming the sniper is dead. He sends the Prisoner back down into he dip. The Enemy sits up again. The Enemy starts to talk to him, picks up the vest and begins to clean the bayonet with it. The Student tells the Enemy "don't do that". The Enemy continues to talk and clean. The Student takes the vest and throws it away. The Enemy continues to stare into space talking. The Student tells him to stop. The Student bayonets the Enemy dead. He instructs the Prisoner to take the body away. The Prisoner comes to take the body. The Student tries to repeat what the Enemy was saying to him. He asks the Prisoner what the words mean. The Prisoner replies that it "was nothing". The Student presses him. The Prisoner tells him "Is nothing sir. Is buffalo…is table. Water. Buffalo." The Prisoner goes. The Student looks at the other Prisoners and tries to call out in their language. The Student picks up the rifles and the Enemy’s vest he tugs down the vests that were hung from the window in surrender and leaves carrying them.

by Edward Bond

1995 & 1996

Performed by: Bobby Colvill, Amanda Finney, Terina Talbot (voices of Soldiers, People and the Man on the Roof were played by taped voices)
Director: Geoff Gillham
Design/Stage Management: Michael Irvine
Administrator: Maria Gee
Fund Raiser: Jane Woddis

Boy: The Soldiers have guns! How will a story stop them?
Woman: It only has to stop them for a moment. So that they look down at the stones - for a moment - or look at each other.

As a means of introducing the reader to the play it will be useful to briefly outline the narrative of At the Inland Sea (ATIS). This is how Bobby Colvill the actor/teacher playing the boy describes the action of the play:

One

It is the day of the Boy’s exams (History? That was our guess.) He reads, the mother worries around him, aware of the exams’ importance - financially and socially. She works in a supermarket and knowing how little of her own time she owns, she is concerned that he doesn’t end up in a dead end job. Whilst the mum worries, the student, physically and emotionally, enters a crisis, as a baby enters a crisis in the journey from the womb to birth, so the child enters a crisis when it grows into adulthood. What is the nature of this crisis? Whilst the mother fusses, a woman appears out of the Boy's bed (out of his imagination?) she is in rags and carries a baby, wrapped in a bundle, she describes her situation, there are soldiers at the end of the street, they are going to kill her baby. The student wants to help, he offers her his tea, it spills.

The Woman has an idea that a story will save her baby.

The Mother sees the spilled tea, she tries to take the cup from the Boy, he won’t let her, the cup breaks. The Boy asks his mother to tell him a story, she thinks he is ill and phones the doctor. The soldiers come and take the woman and her baby away. The mother mops the tea up of the floor.

Two

The Boy is in bed. The Mother is fussing around him torn between the desire to look after him and the need to get to work. The boy asks her to tell him a story. She tells a half remembered story from her childhood but cannot finish, it makes her angry. She goes. The Woman appears; she is waiting outside the gas chamber. She begs the Boy for a story to save the baby. He tries to tell the Mother’s story; the Woman finishes it for him – it is the wrong one – it is called Guilt. As the soldier with the cyanide crystals approaches and the doors to the gas chamber are opened the boy finds a story to tell the Woman which seems to quieten her baby but the doors are opening and the baby stops listening. The Woman and her baby walk into the gas chamber.

Three

Months later. The Boy’s exam results arrive. They are good. The Mother is elated. At the height of their elation the Woman reappears. She has lost her baby in the crush and wants the Boy to help her find it so that they can die together. The Mother, who cannot see the Woman, does not understand what is happening, she leaves the room. The Boy enters the gas chamber. He finds the baby as the Man on the Roof starts to pour the cyanide into the chamber. The Woman begs for a story to save the child. The people around her beg for a story. The Boy takes the baby out of the chamber to save it. The people in the gas chamber are frozen in time, continually suffering forever, like something out of Dante’s comedy.

Four

The Mother is waiting for the Boy in his bedroom; she is beginning her own existential crisis. An Old Woman comes in. She carries the knowledge of all human suffering throughout History with her. The Boy returns to his bedroom. He gives the baby to his Mother and tries to tell her and the Old Woman the story of the baby. The Old Woman laughs at the suffering he describes. She makes the boy angry. She carries all of humanity’s suffering under her smock, ["underneath a dress, filthy, bloody, torn, scorched, soot-marked, foul with corruption."] she wears it next to her skin. The Old Woman helps the Mother to tell her story – it is the story of her life and her love for her son. The Boy realises that he will have to take the baby back to die. The Old Woman is not dead, she is not yet born. (I think she is humanity that cannot be born until the injustice and cruelty stop)

Five

The Boy re-enters the gas chamber where the Woman and the people are stuck in time unable to die, he explains that he wanted the baby to live. He gives the Woman the baby and time starts. The woman insists he tells the story, the boy tries to refuse: “It was a long time ago” The Man on the Roof dances. Between them the Woman and the Boy tell the story that the Woman tried to tell her baby as they were dying. The Woman dies, as she dies the baby unravels cocooning the boy, the boy finishes the story, he is born. He listens to the breathing of the dying. He describes the dead in the chamber and the guards dragging out the corpses. The Boy drags the woman out.

Six

The Boy returns to his home and his Mother. She is exhausted, a husk waiting to be shed. He tells her his story it is a story about how he will live his life, the mother interrupts just before the story ends, she won’t listen to it. He makes her some tea.
(Colvill 2004)