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Rubbish representation in schools syllabuses and beyond
Recommended Reads
DIVERSE CLASSICS
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In response to this week’s article, the Books team think back on the ‘classic’ texts they’ve read with more diverse themes and from more diverse authors. Some food for thought: what makes a classic anyway? The literary canon doesn’t have to be set in stone...
Passing By Nella Larsen
A classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Passing is also an iconic work of Black modernism. Recently adapted into a movie, Passing tells the story of the tension between two female friends in 1920s Harlem who choose to ‘pass’ as white- one occasionally, and one permanently. This rare glimpse into a common but often unspoken aspect of African American life in early twentieth century New York raises enduring questions of gender, race, friendship, community and identity.
- Eliza Browning, Books Editor
Selling Manhattan By Carol Ann Duffy
While Selling Manhattan itself isn’t a classic as such, there’s no denying Duffy’s body of work more broadly is a classic of contemporary poetry. Her poem ‘Valentine’ is studied by so many children at GCSE, and while teachers often steer away from or touch very lightly on Duffy’s lesbian identity, it remains there in her work, especially for those who seek out more of it. Selling Manhattan is my favourite of her collections, ranging in theme from first love to illness to nostalgia.
-Katie Kirkpatrick, Deputy Editor
The Portait of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde has long been a gay icon for his treatment of homosexual desire in his writing – as a result, The Picture of Doran Gray, Wilde’s only novel, was greeted with outrage by British reviewers on its publication, some of whom suggested that he should be prosecuted on moral grounds. Wilde’s novel which follows artist Basil Hallward as he endeavours to paint a portrait of Dorian Gray, explores themes including hedonism and sensuality, all the more striking in light of the 19th century context. The novel is enigmatic, layered and dramatic – a must-read.
-Elena Buccisano, Books Editor
Rubbish representation in schools, syllabuses, and beyond
Hope Philpott dives into the lack of representation for women and people of colour in school literature curriculums.
In A-level English Literature, we didn’t study any texts by women. There were plenty of texts about women – from Thomas Hardy’s excruciating late Victoschool age children identified as Black, Asian and minority ethnic, and around half of the UK population identified as women. Literature is a beautifully powerful combithan getting 15 year olds to read a somewhat problematic look at race in the segregated Deep South by a white woman, every older friend and sibling I know who studied the rian fetishization of rural female poverty in Tess of the d’Urbervilles to Henrik Ibsen’s problematic portrayal of middle-class women’s agency in A Doll’s House, by a self-proclaimed “Literature is non-feminist. But, of course, actually getting women’s own perspectives on womanhood, a beautifully especially deep into *the past* (before the powerful 20th century), would be a step too far. Canonical men have clearly said it better. It was the combination of same depressing story with regards to race. self-expression, We studied one novel by a writer of colour, Khaled Hosseini’s brilliant and heartbreaking identification, and The Kite Runner. Yet the text we studied which coming of age.” was lauded for its ‘breakthrough’ and ‘bold’ discussions of race was Shakespeare’s Othello. Shakespeare, who was not a person of colour. Ibsen and Hardy, who were relatively privileged men.
If this is the representation we’re getting at A-level, among students who’ve chosen to keep studying literature, what hope is there for the often even more constrained curriculum at GCSE? Not much, it turns out. A recent survey commissioned by Penguin Books found that a shocking 0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour, and only 7% study a book by a woman. In 2021, only 0.1% of students answered a GCSE question on the only novel by a woman of colour on the AQA exam syllabus, Meera Syal’s Anita and Me. This is despite the fact that in 2021, 34.4% of nation of self-expression, identification, and coming of age. Despite often being badly taught, dismissed, or, as this government is keen on, underfunded, the consequence of English Literature being taught to pretty much everyone until the age of 16 is that we all spend a lot of time with the writers on the curriculum. Although Shakespeare’s plays are wonderful, teaching them as a discussion of race is often a cop out to get teenagers thinking about the incredibly important and personal issues of race and gender, when they are raised at all, through the stale works of the same white male southern faces. Why should and why will students be enthused by Dickens and Byron, when their perspectives are often so different from their own? Must we list ‘greats’ from various genres - Renaissance, Romantic, Gothic, modern – that students simply must study before we even begin to examine where the exclusionary category of ‘great’ even came from? Among the many depressing tenets of this tale is where it’s being dictated from. Michael Gove, UK Education Secretary from 2010 to 2014, reportedly disliked American literature– so there went To Kill a Mockingbird from the syllabus. Although we can do better novel back before the new GCSEs noted its profound effect on them, and it’s definitely worth reading and discussing, rather than axing. More disturbingly, Govean reforms (which were even influenced by Dominic Cummings, for a time) also removed all ‘seminal world literature’ from GCSEs, just so Gove’s personal vendetta against American writers wasn’t the only national literature that students were missing out on. Anyone who has also studied History at school since the Coalition can equally enjoy upped compulsory British History, an approach which will set you up well for Oxford, which is swarming with British History and not much else. I’ve “The texts we study at school and beyond heard some awful stories from my friends who study English here about the scarcity of set and encouraged texts by women and people should be chosen and shaped by the of colour, although experiences seem to differ from tutor to tutor. But it’s not good enough to leave it to often diverse populations reading them. ” privileged tutors, canon-compilers and Education Secretaries to dictate which texts we study. Time and time again, they have failed to achieve even the remotest degree of representation, a damning outcome in a subject which is so linked to identity and the self. The texts we study at school and beyond should be chosen and shaped by the diverse populations reading them.
FACT CHECK
• Out of the 114 Nobel Prizes for Literature that have been awarded since 1901, only 14 of them went to women. (Source: Bustle) • In 2017 only 4% of all the children’s books published in the UK featured a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) character, according to figures from a study initiated by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) into ethnic representation in children’s literature. • The number of authors and illustrators of colour published in the UK in the last three years has grown to over 8%, an increase of 3%, rising from less than 6% in 2017. • The most recent 2015 study by Lee & Low, the largest multicultural children’s book publisher in the US, determined that 79% of the overall publishing industry (including executives, sales, marketing and publicity, and reviewers) was white. • The 2017 CCBC study of literature for children and teens, found that, out of 3700 books surveyed, just 3.68%, or 136 books, contained significant LGBTQ+ content. Of those, only 41% (56 books) were written by an author who identifies as LGBTQ+.
Neily Raymond reviews The Dumb Waiter, the first show at the Pilch since its reopening.
It’s hard to be a hitman. The hours are unpredictable, the people are seedy, and sometimes you can’t even get a decent cup of tea.
In Harold Pinter’s 1960 play The Dumb Waiter, which opened at the Michael Pilch Studio in Week 6, we see just how poorly our criminal brethren are treated on the job. Disgusting basement? Check. No gas for the kettle? Check. Cryptic instructions from a mysteriously absent boss? Double check. The lack of workplace protection laws is appalling.
The new production, directed by Alex Foster and Alex Hopkins-McQuillan, runs for a tense 50 minutes. Two hitmen, Ben (Noah Radcliffe-Adams) and Gus (Henry Calcutt) lounge on beds in a basement in Birmingham, waiting for their victim to arrive. Each has a revolver under his pillow. They are restless. Ben tries to ignore Gus’s steady stream of jabber, which ranges through everything from football to dishware. But the two men aren’t alone for long. They begin to receive strange messages through the basement dumbwaiter – scapes of paper demanding, oddly enough, Greek food. And steak and chips, and tea, and scampi, which, of course, Ben and Gus haven’t got. As the two men try to make sense of their situation, and claustrophobia sets in, it seems less and less likely that Ben and Gus will ever slay their victim. They might just murder each other first.
This is a black-box production, with audience members seated on three sides. The set is sparse, with only a couple of beds, a chair, and the omnipresent dumbwaiter, looming at the back of the basement like a vulture. Meanwhile, as the show proceeds, Ben and Gus litter the set with all sorts of detritus. It’s fun to watch (in the way that chaos is always fun to watch): food wrappers and cigarette boxes, newspaper pages, and Eccles-cake crumbs are scattered like confetti. It’s an effective stage image. The set gets messy as Ben and Gus get antsy.
This is my first time witnessing the directorial duo of Foster and HopkinsMcQuillan, having missed out on Quartet last term. Their style in The Dumb Waiter is by turns understated and overwhelming. If you’ve ever seen one cat grooming another, then inexplicably baring his teeth and trying to rip his buddy’s ear off, you have a good idea of how quickly the emotional stakes change in this play. Sometimes Ben and Gus glare at each other wordlessly for minutes. Moments later, they’re shouting, and nearby audience members seem in danger of catching a fist to the face. The rapid back-and-forth between these extremes is exhausting; yet it’s also magnetic, tracing Pinter’s script in all its weirdness.
And this is a difficult script to work with. Pinter is a master of dialect, drawing attention to the linguistic quirks of each character – Ben and Gus have a heated debate about whether one “lights the kettle” or “puts on the kettle” – but it’s never easy for an actor to adopt a language he’s unfamiliar with. It’s all the more impressive, then, that these actors never skip a beat. RadcliffeAdams as Ben is vaguely cockney, hunching over his newspaper and exclaiming “cor!” at intervals. He’s a master of body language; even as he quietly lurches around the stage, the tension in his shoulders speaks to Ben’s muted anxieties. Meanwhile, Calcutt as Gus is all fluttery hands and nervous laughs, a very unlikely hitman. Calcutt doesn’t make him a caricature; instead, we witness the very real moral qualms of a brutal killer who doesn’t see himself as, well, a brutal killer.
The Dumb Waiter is a wild ride. From a script that is basically Waiting for Godot meets The Odd Couple, this team has sculpted a tight production that will leave you thinking, even as you flee the small theatre with something like relief. You get to leave the cramped basement room, but Ben and Gus? They don’t have the option. It makes you wonder if – were you held in a musty basement, fed impossible instructions, and forced to wait, and wait, and wait – you’d start acting dumb too. And dumb, as we learn, can be dangerous. Image Credits: Jemima Chen
Eva Bailey reviews Brain Freeze, a new play by Debora Krut at the BT Studio.
Like I was filled with excited anticipation when I braved Storm Eunice to visit the BT Studio last week. I was aware that Debora Krut’s original play Brain Freeze was a semi-autobiographical piece about sex and cancer but, from this description, I didn’t quite know what to expect. However, from the play’s beginning, this immensely talented cast of Oxford students captured my imagination, and I was swept up by the story they had to tell.
Brain Freeze follows a young woman – simply referred to as ‘Patient’ to preserve her anonymity – who is diagnosed with cancer, exploring her subsequent struggle to sexually reconnect with a body that has failed her. The narrative is framed by an oncologist lecturing a group of medical students (the audience), using Patient’s case to teach them about the importance of empathy and the difficulties in delivering heart breaking news day after day.
The opening of the show was ingenious, with Oncologist’s introductory lecture seamlessly weaving in the content warnings and setting the scene for Patient’s story. Michael Freeman was perfect for this role. He was an incredibly believable lecturer – to the point where I was often tempted to raise my hand when he asked for student participation – but he also explored a tender vulnerability to this medical professional, particularly in his conversation scenes with Patient. To switch so rapidly between narrating the story and acting within it can’t have been easy, but Freeman handled this complex character expertly.
Grace de Souza equally shone as Patient. Her range was impressive; I often found myself alternating between tears and laughter within the space of a few lines of dialogue whenever she was on stage. My favourite moment was Patient’s vulnerability before her routine scan, just after she has experienced a mental block when trying to have sex with her boyfriend again for the first time. Her fear was tangible, and de Souza’s portrayal of this intense anxiety was heart-breaking and beautiful in equal measures.
Peter Todd as Boyfriend and Emma Pollock as Best Friend also deserve the highest praise for their performances. Todd’s portrayal of Boyfriend captured the guilt and panic of watching someone you love suffer, and his tender moments with Patient were achingly stunning. The macaroon metaphor used throughout the play served as a symbol of hope and new beginnings, and Boyfriend presenting this to Patient at the end of the play – after Todd’s anguished, silent pacing just moments before – gave me a lump in my throat. As well as this tenderness, Boyfriend had a convincing (and amusing) relationship with Best Friend.
Pollock’s performance, as I keep praising in this cast, had incredible range, and her scene with the sex toys was one of the funniest moments of the play. A mention must also be given here to the lighting inside her bag, a very clever way of drawing attention to the intimidating ‘something’ that lay within. Pollock’s frank portrayal was perfect to capture Best Friend’s fierce loyalty, but it worked equally well in her tender moments with Patient, such as agreeing to stay up all night to comfort her friend.
One of the play’s highlights was the scene featuring the three ‘Nosy Bitches’, busybodies who couldn’t help but ask probing and invasive questions when they spotted Patient in a pub. Macy Stasiak, Luke Nixon and Alec Watson were laugh-out-loud funny without becoming caricatures: like the rest of this fantastic play, this scene was perfectly pitched, and didn’t feel exaggerated or slapstick. Stasiak’s interaction with Best Friend was a stand-out moment, and Pollock’s range shone once more in this scene, deftly moving between drunk anger and concerned kindness within minutes.
The BT was the perfect venue for this production, and a mention must also be given to the technical aspects. The simple set was ideal, with actors often manipulating set pieces to create different spaces.
The lighting was immaculate, particularly when Patient and Boyfriend were trying to have sex again, switching between warm, intimate tones to cool, stark ones to represent Patient pushing Boyfriend away. Additionally, the repeated MRI sound used throughout seemed to simulate Patient’s building panic, cutting across conversations to represent that Patient was unable to escape her anxiety.
My only minor criticism was that the pauses while Patient and Boyfriend were texting one another felt a touch too long, but that was immediately forgotten due to the perfect comedic timing of this stellar cast.
When I opened my notes app once Brain Freeze had finished, I simply typed ‘Debora Krut is a very clever lady’. That couldn’t be more true: alongside a stunning cast and an evidently dedicated production team, Krut has created a show that wouldn’t be out of place in a professional setting like the Edinburgh Fringe. I have no doubt that this won’t be the last we see from Last Minute Productions, and I cannot wait to see what this company does next.
