Education, Education, Education
Page 1
The Wardrobe Ensemble
EDUCATION,
EDUCATION,
EDUCATION
NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Contents
Title Page
Original Production
Dedication
Director’s Note
Reflections on the Devising Process
Production Shots
Characters
Note for Performance
Education, Education, Education
About the Author
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
Education, Education, Education was co-produced by The Wardrobe Ensemble, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, and Shoreditch Town Hall, with support from the Kevin Spacey Foundation and Arts Council England.
There was a work-in-progress performance of the show as part of Bristol Ferment at Bristol Old Vic in February 2017.
The show premiered at the Pleasance Dome at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2017. with the following cast:
PAUL McINTYRE/LANCELOT Tom Brennan
HUGH MILLS/KING ARTHUR Tom England
EMILY GREENSLADE/ DONNA Emily Greenslade
LOUISE TURNER/GUINEVERE Kerry Lovell
SUE BELLTOP-DOYLE Jesse Meadows
TOBIAS/GARETH James Newton
TIMOTHY PASHLEY Ben Vardy
Devised and written by Tom Brennan
Tom England
Emily Greenslade
Jesse Jones
Kerry Lovell
Jesse Meadows
Helena Middleton
James Newton
Ben Vardy
Edythe Woolley
Directors Jesse Jones
Helena Middleton
Designer Lucy Sierra
Lighting Designer Katharine Williams
Sound Designer Ben Grant
Costume Supervisor Felicity Jones
Dramaturg Bea Roberts
Producer Hannah Smith
To our parents, to Tid and Miranda, and to all teachers
Director’s Note
Jesse Jones and Helena Middleton
It is 2017, twenty years since Tony Blair moved into his new home on Downing Street after a landslide victory underscored by the theme song ‘Things Can Only Get Better’. It’s been twenty years since we last felt the country was united in optimism; since the Union Jack was cool and not inflammatory. Before nationalism turned nasty and the phrase ‘War on Terror’ existed. A time where a German language assistant on placement in a school in England could reflect with sincerity ‘You’re shouting Cool Britannia from the rooftops and everyone else is happy to hear it.’ Education, Education, Education takes us back to 1997, but through the rose-tinted lenses of those who are looking at it twenty years on.
The show is a reflection, from the generation that benefited from the millions of pounds and myriad resources which were poured into the British education system, on the impact of Blair’s education policies and the legacies of his government. In the process of making the show we interviewed, met, drank with teachers who worked in the nineties. We were struck by the excitement with which they described going to work the day after the Blair election; how they felt their profession was valued. After our first work-in-progress showing of Education, Education, Education to a group of teachers, one reflected on how children had now become statistics, that their value lay in the grades they could produce, not the passions that they held. These opposing views are encapsulated in our characters, Miss Belltop-Doyle and Miss Turner, both wanting the best for their students, but who have different ideas of what ‘the best’ means.
As a nine-strong devising company, we very much place ourselves in the show. The student characters have our names and the events, although fictional, are infused with our memories. It is a love letter to our teachers; the good, the bad and the ugly, the ones who inspired us, the ones who made us laugh, the ones we bullied and the ones who bullied us.
The show aims to weave a nostalgic tapestry of a time where The Spice Girls were the height of cool, where we ate innutritious junk food and no one batted an eyelid, where there was a new craze every week and Titanic was the most expensive film ever made. And, of course, there’s the music, the soundtrack of our childhood which pervades the play. One of our first research and development tasks for the show was to create a nineties playlist, we turned to it for both warm-ups and inspiration.
A key feature of our work is how we look at human stories within political contexts. Our student character, Emily Greenslade, undergoes a battle with authority over a decision which she perceives as being unjust. She is a vessel for our own feelings of powerlessness in the face of political change which we do not support. We can sign petitions, we can march, we can make banners and stage sit-ins, but this does not mean we will be listened to.
As with all our shows, our desire is to entertain as well as to provoke and agitate. Education, Education, Education is a comedy, it is period piece, it is a celebration and an indictment. It is a thank-you for what we were given – and a warning about what has been lost.
Photography © Clemmie Haynes
Reflections on the Devising Process
James Newton
Extracts from The Wardrobe Ensemble: Working as a Collective Parts 1 and 2. First published on Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog, 2017, www.theatredanceperformancetraining.org
Education, Education, Education is The Wardrobe Ensemble’s fourth large ensemble show, after RIOT, 33 and 1972: The Future of Sex. The show deals with 1997, the rise of New Labour, history, nostalgia, community, Britain and Britishness (among many other things).
One of the great joys and challenges of working in such a large ensemble is the amount of time needed to create shows. In a practical sense, it’s very difficult to pin down a time when so many people can be in the same place at the same time, and once we’re there it takes a long time to tease out the issues – everyone’s voice is equal.
Our original shared language is our workshop-style education from the Bristol Old Vic Young Company, and our Research & Development technique still reflects this: a series of time-limited tasks and exercises designed to initiate conversation, rebuild the group dynamic and redefine what our common voice is.
Devising Tasks and Limitations
There is one thing that is key to the way we make work, which is the sheer amount we create. We begin the week with pouring out the entire contents of our heads onto paper. We cover our walls with an ever-changing collage of sheets: ideas for characters, scenes, scenarios, themes, questions. These visual points of reference are vital and act as a sort of drip-feed of inspiration for our devising work over the course of the process.
Our devising process is all about limitations. We split the day into small, portioned-off amounts of time – anywhere from ten to forty-five minutes. Choosing what to make is quick-fire and individual-led. ‘I want to make a celebratory cheesy nineties dance, I need three more people.’ Go. ‘I need two people to make a scene about a teacher who’s struggling.’ Go. ‘I have an idea for a monologue I’d like to go and write on my own.’ Go.
It’s a fluid process. For every show we make, we probably leave two show’s worth of material behind. Let’s say there’s an average of three groups per devising round, and we have three of these rounds per day. Add to this individual writing tasks, where every person will produce a separate piece of material, and you’re looking at fifty to sixty separate fragments a week. And we record every single one.
Generating so much allows us to get our default modes of making out of the way early and to push to find new ways of creating. In a wa
y we’re just playing a game of averages. Create loads and something, eventually, should be good.
Conversation
We like to describe our shows as poking at a theme from lots of different viewpoints, throwing up lots of different questions as opposed to answers. The ‘Ensemble’ in our name applies just as much to our process as to our shows, maybe even more so, the key principle of this being that everyone’s voice is equal. With so many people, this means that hearing everyone’s take, and letting the conversation meander and take you to new places is essential. It’s these conversations that put us all on the same page, that allow for nuance, that allow us to interrogate what we’re making extremely rigorously and ask what the point is in making it.
Photography © Clemmie Haynes
Structuring
A frequent criticism of devised work is its lack of coherence, the feeling that too many creative voices makes for something that lacks narrative drive. This is something that we’re very aware of, and we’re extremely fortunate that we have members of the company who possess an excellent understanding of narrative.
The start of our structuring session involves ‘killing babies’. We keep a list of every scene we’ve made so far, and go through it one by one. We colour-code into main narrative strands, subplots and physical sections. We debate which babies we don’t like and we get rid of them. Sometimes it’s an easy decision, sometimes kids are fought for. Re-appraising material you’ve made so recently is not always easy, and it requires a certain level of discipline to watch as a detached observer, to remove your personal investment from it.
After much deliberation, swapping, editing and changing, we eventually settle on a version of the structure we can agree we’d like to try.
Photography © Clemmie Haynes
Show Time
Show time is looming. In many ways it often feels like this is the least structured element of our process, the moment where all discipline goes out of the window and we surrender to chaos in order to try to get something together.
There’s no magic formula. We’ll take time to improvise the entire show with the structure spread out on the floor – this is the skeleton. We then have a group of bodies, a laptop with music, and often a side list of moments that we haven’t yet found a place for. This is the time that we start to find the special ensemble moments that we couldn’t have planned for.
But really, those improvs are just a dress rehearsal. When crunch time comes around, it’s a simple case of working through from start to finish, building it all together as we go, seeing what doesn’t work and tearing it apart again. It is chaotic and time-consuming, and it’s the time in the process when we spend the most time together as a whole ensemble.
Arguably, though, this is the stage of the process that best embodies our ensemble ethos. The rules that we so strictly enforce earlier in the process are, in a sense, there to enable us to get to this place. To trust that when we get to a time when we have to follow our instincts and put this thing together as a group, the principles we’ve been following up until this point still remain intact: respect, rules, listening, playfulness, silliness.
The final stage of putting together a show is draining and completely uneconomical timewise, but the sense of delirium you reach when spending this intense period of time together is often when the best moments are found. There’s a certain creativity to be found in exhaustion, when we’ve got no choice but to let go of the thinking side of things and trust that the shared language we’ve developed will find those final magic moments.
Photography © Graeme Braidwood
Production Shots
by Graeme Braidwood
Characters
TOBIAS
LOUISE TURNER
PAUL MCINTYRE
DONNA
HUGH MILLS
TIMOTHY PASHLEY
SUE BELLTOP-DOYLE
EMILY GREENSLADE
GUINEVERE
LANCELOT
KING ARTHUR
GARETH
The ensemble all also play students. The students are named after the actors’ real names and can be changed accordingly. For example, the character name Emily Greenslade should be changed to the name of the actor playing that role.
Note for Performance
The play was originally staged with two moveable doors, two moveable school tables and two moveable chairs. These are by no means a prerequisite for future staging – however, the character, Tobias does occasionally reference the set, so this text can be adjusted accordingly.
The play was originally staged with projections of the cast members at secondary-school age used when they were playing their student characters. We have not indicated in this playtext when we used these projections – however, it is an optional additional layer that we felt enhanced the storytelling.
(–) means an interruption.
(…) at the end of a speech means it trails off or it indicates a pressure, expectation or desire to speak.
(/) means that the next character’s text should start.
1.
1997. A run-down school. TOBIAS enters.
TOBIAS. Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
We in Germany, and Europe, the whole world actually, have been watching somewhat enviously as your country’s been undergoing a resurrection, you might say. Years of incredible music across every genre – Oasis, The Spice Girls, Prodigy, Take That. Hey – (Insert operator’s name.) could we play some Take That, would that be okay?
‘Back for Good’ by Take That starts playing.
So nice, thank you so much. I was so sad when they broke up.
Last year’s sporting successes in the Euros… almost. Your newfound pride in your culture and your heritage. Your amazing love for your princess. It’s so wonderful to see a country wearing its identity so proudly on its sleeve. You’re shouting ‘Cool Britannia’ from the rooftops and everyone else is happy to hear it. Casting off your shackles and dancing head-first into the future.
(To audience member.) Excuse me – have you read Socrates? I have. I like Socrates. The notion of thinking about how you learn, how you should behave, how you build something, how you move forwards, or backwards, or whichever way you want to move is really an ancient pursuit. Socrates would walk the streets asking questions. What is that for? What is the point in that? Why are you doing that? Why are you here? Why are you here?
(Insert operator’s name.) Can we turn off Take That now?
Socrates’ questions remind me of that Spice Girls’ lyric, ‘I said who do you think you are? Do you think you are?’
I just love British music. So how lucky for me, that I get to fly right into the middle of the party, here, at Wordsworth Comprehensive School.
(To operator.) Lights, please.
2.
Lights up on LOUISE telling a student off.
LOUISE. How dare you disobey me like that? I want you to march to your tutor group right this second and if I hear another peep out of you at ANY point today then it will be detentions for a week.
PAUL and other TEACHERS enter.
PAUL. Tea, Louise?
LOUISE. Thanks, Paul.
They chink mugs.
I’m watching you.
PAUL. Tom! Shoelaces. There’s a good boy. Have a Mars bar.
DONNA. Emily, headphones off, thank you!
HUGH. Nice essay, Tom.
TIM. Ben, no running in the corridors, please!
Blows his whistle.
Thank you.
SUE. Jesse, pick up your pace, you’ll be late for registration.
TOBIAS. Excuse me, little boy, where is the staffroom? Thank you.
3.
The staffroom. The TEACHERS strike a pose then walk forward.
PAUL. Morning, Donna.
DONNA. You look awful. Did you fall asleep on a bench again?
PAUL. Oh. No. I stayed up watching the election, next thing I know it’s six o’clock and I haven’t showered or slept.
DONNA. You smell like a Scotch egg.
PAUL. Thanks.
SUE enters.
SUE. Good morning, my little cherubs!
DONNA. Sue!
ALL. Sue!
SUE. And what a glorious morning it is.
PAUL. Spare us the rainbows, Sue.
SUE. It’s lovely to see you too, Paul.
PAUL. Urgh. First a Eurovision win and now Tony’s our new Prime Minister. I can barely recognise this country, you know I actually saw people smiling on the train this morning.
DONNA. Gross.
PAUL. Tell me about it.
Everyone slurps their tea.
LOUISE. Slap me with a handbag and call me Tinky Winky, what I wouldn’t give for a snow day. All in favour say ‘aye’.
ALL. Aye.
PAUL. It’s May, Louise.
LOUISE. Fuck yourself.
PAUL. Right, sure.
LOUISE. Whoever invented muck-up day is a sadistic prick. This year there’s no more Miss Nice Turner, I’m gonna be fucking RoboCop.
LOUISE fires an imaginary gun into the air.
And which one of you ate my Kit Kats?
ALL. Errrr.
DONNA. Happy with the result then, Sue?
SUE. Which one? Oh, Donna, this has been the most marvellous week. It really feels like our country is turning a corner. Mike cooked me dinner last night he was so happy, he hasn’t done that in years. We even…
ALL. Oooooh.
PAUL. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sue. Blair’s not the Messiah, he’s a very liberal Tory.
HUGH. I’ve said it before and I shall say it again, ‘Love Shine a Light’ is one of the finest songs of our generation.
LOUISE. Eurovision’s over, Hugh.
HUGH. Quality doesn’t have an expiry date, Louise. Katrina and the Waves will be forever preserved in the formaldehyde of greatness. Tea, anyone?