“A miner's life is like a sailor on board a ship to cross the waves/ Every day his life's in danger, many ventures being brave/ Watch the rocks, they're falling daily, careless miners always fail/ Keep your hand upon your wages and your eye upon the scale...“ —Lyrics to a traditional song called “A Miner’s Life”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS • For Teachers: 2 • For Students: The Role of the Audience 3 • Why Do This Production? 4
ABOUT THE STORY & THEMES • • • •
The Pitmen Painters Plot 5 Meet the Playwright 6 The Ashington Group 7 The Ashington Group Memebers 8
CONTEXT • • • • • • • •
Guardian Article Anyone Can Paint by author William Feaver 9 How Art is Defined 10 Portrait of an Artist 11 Worksheet of Art 12 A Life in the Mine 13 - 14 Geography of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne 15 Dialect Spoken in Newcastle 16 Guardian Article The Pitmen at the Pictures by playwright Lee Hall 17 - 18
RESOURCES • Resources 19
• STUDENT/Student Matinee Evalutation • TEACHER/Student Matinee Evalutation
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FOR TEACHERS T
he student matinee performance of The Pitmen Painters will be held on February 8, 2012 beginning at 11:00 am at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The play is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes long, including an intermission. The play will be followed by a discussion with actors from the show.
Students are often the most rewarding and demanding audiences that an acting ensemble can face. Since we hope every show at TheatreWorks will be a positive experience for both audience and cast, we ask you to familiarize your students with the theatre etiquette described on the “For Students” page.
HOW TO USE THIS STUDY GUIDE This guide is arranged in worksheets. Each worksheet or reading may be used independently or in conjunction with others to serve your educational goals. Together, the worksheets prepare students for the workshops, as well as seeing the student matinee of Pitmen Painters produced by TheatreWorks, and for discussing the performance afterwards. Throughout the guide you will see several symbols: Photocopy Me!” Pages with this symbol are meant to be photocopied and handed directly Means “P to students.
English Language Arts.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California Means “E State English Language Arts standards.
Theatre Arts.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California State Means “T Theatre Arts standards.
Social Studies.” Pages with this symbol feature lessons that are catered to California State Means “S Social Studies standards.
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FOR STUDENTS THE ROLE OF THE AUDIENCE
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ll the work that goes into a production would mean nothing if there wasn’t an audience for whom to perform. As the audience, you are a part of the production, helping the actors onstage tell the story.
When the performance is about to begin, the lights will dim. This is a signal for the actors and the audience to put aside concerns and conversation and settle into the world of the play. The performers expect the audience’s full attention and focus. Performance is a time to think inwardly, not a time to share your thoughts aloud. Talking to neighbors (even in whispers) carries easily to others in the audience and to the actors on stage. It is disruptive and distracting. There is no food in the theatre: soda, candy, and other snacks are noisy and, therefore, distracting. Please keep these items on the bus or throw them away before you enter the audience area. There are no backpacks in the theatre. Walking through the aisles during the performance is extremely disruptive. Actors occasionally use aisles and stairways as exits and entrances. The actors will notice any movement in the performance space. Please use the restroom and take care of all other concerns outside before the show. All electronic devices should be turned off before the performance begins. When watch alarms, cell phones, and pagers go off it is very distracting for the actors and the audience. Please do not text during the performance, as it is distracting to the audience members around you.
What to bring with you: Introspection Curiosity Questions Respect An open mind
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What to leave behind: Judgements Cell phones, etc. Backpacks Food Attitude
WHY THIS PRODUCTION? By Leslie Martinson, Director ne of the qualities I found most appealing about [The Pitmen Painters] is the way the playwright invites us into a place that most American audiences don’t know much about. In this case, the robust, tight-knit community of a mining town in Northern England. The playwright is Lee Hall, who also wrote Billy Elliot, which is one of my favorite movies. This play is set in the same area, but many years earlier.
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People have asked me whether The Pitmen Painters is a comedy or a drama, and my only answer is this: since it’s a true story, it’s both. A professor named Robert Lyon did come to Ashington in 1934 planning to give lectures in art appreciation to a group of miners. His presentations had so little resonance for these men that the lectures fell apart almost at once and he, instead, hit on the idea of having them create paintings themselves as a means to understanding the art that they were looking at. The joy of this story is that the paintings and sculptures they made are marvelous—they are vibrant and emotional and still exhibited to this day. In art history terms they would be considered “folk art” or “outsider art,” but I find that their strength comes from being insider art. These men painted from their own lives, whether underground in the mines, at home in the rowhouses of Ashington, in their social clubs, or in their garden allotments. Trust— a sesne of belonging—is a key element in the play The Pitmen Painters. Once a man has saved your life a mile underground in the pitch dark, you’re not likely to get too upset when he thinks you picked the wrong color green in a painting. As we are rehearsing this play, it’s a joy to watch this truly remarkable group of actors bring the pitmen to life before us. And to watch the clash of cultures as they meet a wealthy art collector and a spunky life model; to watch the professor learn from his pupils and to watch how creating art on their own terms, for their own purposes, opens the world even wider for these men.
“...to watch how creating art on their own terms, for their own purposes, opens the world even wider for these men.” —Leslie Martinson, The Pitman Painters director
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THE PITMEN PAINTERS: PLOT SUMMARY Please be advised that this play features mature language and discusses adult themes. he Pitmen Painters starts in the early 1930s, when a group of working class men from Newcastle-upon-Tyne get together to take an art appreciation course. The group consists of Oliver Kilbourn, Harry Wilson, a Young Lad, George Brown, and Jimmy Floyd, many of whom are coal miners. All of the men are determined to become better enlightened as a unit. They've selected this art appreciation class as their collective means of further enriching their lives. Together, they tap the knowledge of teacher Robert Lyon, who quickly dispenses with his birds-eye view of Renaissance art history in favor of challenging these men to put their own paint brushes to canvas.
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Much to Lyon's surprise and delight, his painters place enormous thought and care into their individual works, demonstrating a real knack for it. As a team, known collectively as the Ashington Group, they critique each other's assignments and argue over whether art is in the eye of the beholder or the artist himself. With each picture they paint and each time they meet to critique each other’s work, the five men are eagerly learning more by viewing renowned paintings and eventually begin to create their own works of art which catches the eye of the “legitimate” art world. Inspired by the collective potential of his pupils, Lyon enlists Helen Sutherland, a wealthy patron of the arts, to view the paintings. So impressed is Helen with Oliver's promising talent that she offers to pay him a weekly stipend to further develop his skills as a true artist. Oliver is faced with the dilemma of whether to pursue this opportunity of a lifetime or decline for the the good of the Ashington Group.
“Yes. And what do we paint, Oliver? Moments. We paint those little, tiny moments of being alive. Of life passing by. Tiny things in the corner of an eye. That's what life really is. Very rarely do big things happen, life is all these little things which are lost in a moment if somebody doesn't get them down, the fall of light— the magic of being alive—and nobody else'll do that—if we didn’t get it down it's all gone...That’s why we should be proud and that’s why we will continue to do what we do: Making our lives Art because, well, because we are alive, here and now.“ —Harry, The Pitmen Painters
connections: Do you doodle? Paint? Draw? Take photos and photoshop them? Why do you shoot films or dance or sing or act? Pair share about what art you create and why you do that particular kind of art work. Create a classroom list of types of artistic expression and why your classmates participate in those acts of creation. Discuss this question: is everyone an artist? How? Why? What makes an artist an artist?
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MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT “I’m from Newcastle and I remember always wanting to be a writer, but I’d never met a middle-class person. I’d never met anyone who went to college until I was about eighteen, because that’s not where I came from. So to actually become a writer was preposterous. But I always thought I would end up in the theatre and here I am and it’s a bit of a surprise, to tell you the truth.” Lee Hall —
Lee Hall Playwright
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ee Hall was born and raised in Newcastle, England. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of Billy Elliot. He won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Book of a Musical for the musical adaptation as well as the Evening Standard and Olivier Awards for Best Musical. His plays include Cooking With Elvis (nominated for an Oliver Award), Spoonface Steinberg, and adaptations of The Good Hope, Leonce and Lena, Mother Courage, A Servant to Two Masters, Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti, and The Barber of Seville. He has worked extensively with BBC for both television and radio. Mr. Hall co-wrote a television adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Wind in the Willows. He also wrote the screenplay for the Steven Spielberg film War Horse (2011) and is working on a stage version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
“There are two words that don’t go together. Two words that don’t make any sense together: art and mining...The intriguing thing to me [about the Ashington Group] is that they didn’t want to become painters. They wanted to remain miners. So the play is about this very real conflict of if it is possible to be a working-class person, an ordinary person, and still be an artist. Therefore, what is art and who does art belong to?” Lee Hall —
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THE ASHINGTON GROUP The Ashington Group first came together as a Workers Educational Association class, that, having studied evolution, decided to try something different. n October 1934 Robert Lyon, a lecturer at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne, then part of Durham University, was invited to discuss the possibility of forming an art appreciation class in the district.
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Lyon began by showing slides of Michelangelo's work but had no way of telling what would be the most suitable course to pursue. After a few sticky sessions he hit on the notion of setting examples, making the class members experiment for themselves in different techniques, starting with lino-cutting and progressing to knives and then brushes. Lyon set subjects weekly and members would work out what to paint at home and bring the results in to be criticized by the group. It was soon clear that the work was fit to be shown and discussed in public. So the second phase began, the class became the Group and in 1936 it held its first exhibition in the Hatton Gallery in Armstrong College, Newcastle. The Group developed its own impetus and their paintings became increasingly Ashington-centred, depicting their surroundings and daily lives.
Oliver Kilbourn & Jack Harrison, The Ashington Group Hut, 1982
During the 1930s, outsiders became fascinated by what they tended to regard as a rare and admirable exercise in working men’s art. To the organizers of Mass Observation (a forerunner of market research set up by poets and sociologists) it represented a true development of documentary culture. These men painted their own lives, testified to experiences that no one else, from trained art backgrounds, could truly understand. When the war came, the men painted the building of shelters, the arrangements for gas masks, for evacuation, for extra shifts, and Dig for Victory. After the war, the Group reconstituted itself with a rule book and settled into a new phase. They moved their hut from Longhorsley to Ashington and erected it on waste ground in Hirst Yard behind the Central Hall. They met weekly, tried sculpture, dabbled in abstraction, but remained basically loyal to the early teachings, that they should express themselves by painting what they knew. In the 1970s there was a revival of interest in the Group from outside. Exhibitions in Durham and in the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London brought the paintings to light again. They were shown in Germany, the Netherlands, and in 1980 were taken to China and shown as the first exhibition from the West since the Cultural Revolution. By 1984 the Group no longer functioned. The hut was demolished when the ground rent became unaffordable. from The Ashington Group, http://www.ashingtongroup.co.uk/
A funny thing, once you’ve painted a picture you feel it’s part of your life, you know... —Oliver Kilbourn, artist and member of the Ashington Group
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THE ASHINGTON GROUP MEMBERS ”We really did not want members who had a materialistic attitude to art, so as old members died off, our numbers dwindled. There could never be another Ashington Group because social conditions are so different now. The atmosphere is different from when we started off. I don't know why hardship brings out the best in people when all are suffering together.” -Oliver Kilbourn, artist and member of the Ashington Group
George Blessed
Leslie Brownrigg
Oliver Kilbourn
Fred Laidler
Len Robinson
Harry Wilson
Jimmy Floyd
George McLean
Harry Youngs
connections: Take a close look at all of the paintings above done by the Ashington Group. What do you notice about them? What did they paint? What did they find important to turn into art? What does their art say about their lives? While looking at the paintings above, imagine yourself in the Ashington Group’s hut, which was the space where they regularly met to paint and discuss their work. What would you paint if you were a member of the group? What important issues of today do you think are worth portaying in art? What would you want your work to say?
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“ANYONE CAN PAINT” By William Feaver, author of the book which inspired the creation of the play The Pitmen Painters. The unabridged version of this article first appeared in The Guardian, January 23, 2009.
n November 10, 1938, a scripted exchange on the BBC was transmitted live at teatime from Alexandra Palace. “Good afternoon Mr. Wilson,” said the annoucer, Leslie Mitchell. “These pictures of your group are extraordinarily interesting. Had you painted any pictures before you attended this group, Mr. Wilson?” “No I hadn't.”
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Harry Wilson had come down from Northumberland with Robert Lyon, master of painting at King's College, Newcastle, and tutor to the Ashington art appreciation class whose paintings had gone on show a few days earlier at the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham. Having established that Lyon himself was not an “unprofessional” painter, Mitchell learned that he had started the Ashington men off by lecturing to them. “And do you mean to say that after listening to your lectures these men began to paint pictures for themselves?” “No, they painted pictures as essays in self-expression,” Lyon responded. “That may sound a bit highbrow, but this is what happened. In order that they might understand why artists painted, I supplied them with materials and told them to get on with it ...” Blob, by Jimmy Floyd from the Ashington Group
While a few hundred viewers in the London area may have strained to see Wilson's painting, Committee Meeting and miner Oliver Kilbourn's Foreshift as examples of working men's art— thousands of listeners tuned in on a Monday evening two months later to hear: “This is the Northern programme from Newcastle. Tonight we have the Ashington Group in the studio. In their working lives the members are miners, perhaps, or insurance agents; they follow ordinary occupations; but they meet as a group because they're all struggling to express themselves in drawing, painting or sculpture. We will leave them to explain themselves.” A character you’ll see in the play called Lyon annouced: “In the broadcast four members--a coalface miner, a colliery joiner, a colliery blacksmith and a coal order clerk--will talk and then the entire group will discuss a picture painted by one of their members.” What was perceived as the social reality of life underground—lives revolving around shiftwork, allotments (gardens), kitchens and clubs, appealed to a rising generation of documentary-makers. Social anthropologists calling themselves “Mass Observers,” descended on Ashington with a view to enlisting the group as the painting arm of their “diary data project” (a community art project). The group calling themselves ‘Mass Observation’ arranged a debate in in October 1938, to discuss the idea that, “Anyone Can Paint.” The Daily Express reported that “a number of professional artists, intellgencia etc. came from London, mostly to speak against the idea that ”anyone can paint.” The motion was carried. A tour over England of the group's"Unprofessional Paintings” followed. To outsiders, from Newcastle and beyond, at that time the Ashington pictures were strange, exotic even, as Lyon realised when he put on a show of them in the fine art department at King's College. For a few months in 1939, other groups were founded on the idea that "Anyone Can Paint"—in other areas of England. None lasted. World War II could be blamed for that. In Ashington, the group carried on, despite extra shifts and home guard and air raid duties; aware that the war's impact needed recording, they painted shelters and coastal defences and wreckage. It seemed that only a pitman (and certainly not Henry Moore, a famous mainstream sculpter) could show the open-air world what this netherworld was really like to be in, both day and night.
connections:
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Have you ever wanted to be an artist (visual, performance, or other)? Have you ever wanted to do that on a professional level? Who or what has stopped you? Would your parents support your dream, even if they knew it meant you would not make much money? Would you be content to be an amateur artist? What would stop you from becoming an artist?
HOW ART IS DEFINED There is no one definition and yet, not everything is art. Or is it?
number of people have asked about the value of addressing aesthetics, the philosophy of art, or the definition of art. The reasoning is that if it is so difficult to define, it must therefore be ultimately subjective, and each person should just determine for herself what it is.
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Perhaps we all do determine for ourselves the meaning of anything. Because, as in the “tree falling in the forest” example, the meaning does not exist if it does not exist for me personally. I am allowed to define “table” or “chair” any way I wish for myself, but if I hope to communicate with others about tables and chairs, the meaning or definition must be shared. And that shared meaning derives from a combination of (a) acquired meanings from those whom we give credibility and (b) connotations developed from our experiences with tables and chairs. If there were really no way to define art, there would be no way to determine what is art, and art could be anything. Fortunately, art can be defined, although not succinctly in verbal form, as we might define “table” or “chair.” We learn the definition indirectly through understanding why works have been labeled art by critics and artists in the past, and directly by understanding the perspectives of those critics and artists. From the standpoint of complete subjectivity, if art can be anything, it is meaningless as a term and essentially art is everything and nothing. There is nothing that is not art, so everything is art. The term "art" has no shared meaning and has no value in communication, and yet we use it all the time. By Arthur Dirks, http://webhost.bridgew.edu/adirks/ald/courses/crit/crit_artdef.htm
connections: Break off into small groups or pairs and discuss the following questions: What do you think art is? Is art something that is supposed to please you? Is it supposed to please your friends, your family, the people you respect, the people around you, or no one at all? What do you define as “pleasing art?” What makes you drawn to a certain painting? Does a good painting have to be hung in a museum or can it be found on the street or in someone’s home? Discuss in your groups or pairs the difference between “good” art and “not good” art. How do you judge art? Can you judge art? What makes it possible to determine between “good” art and “not good” art?
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A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Discuss the following concepts and questions as a class or in small groups. embrandt dies in near bankruptcy at age 63, Rubens in wealth and esteem at the same age. Van Gogh, utterly without hope that his art will ever be understood, is shot in the stomach at age 37. Picasso dies an extremely wealthy and is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. Is the goal of art to make money or can art exist for its own sake?
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The Concept: Artists are a different kind of human, spending an entire lifetime on a quest for meaning, truth, and beauty, then translating their feelings and observations of the world into art. The Questions: What makes an artist so special? Do you think that art can be learned or is it something natural and unique living inside of the artist that no one else has? Do you think that artists should be trained or create their art in anyway that they feel is natural? The Concept: Many times, artists can't focus on anything else other than their art. The Ashington Group was able to work most of their lives as pitmen in the mines during the day and then transform into artists at night. The Questions: Do you think that to be truly considered an artist that your life must be consumed by the work that you do? Is it possible to “moonlight” as an artists, where you work one job during the day to make a living and provide for yourself and then do your art on the side, like the Ashington Group? The Concept: In most cases, artists trudge through life in a middle-of-the-road existence, deciding to make their art the way they want to rather than doing it for money. Van Gogh was poor, yet produced in spite of the hellish strain of not knowing where the next franc or dollar was coming from. Yet some artists cave in to the fashions of the day, turning out products to meet art market demand. A well-known New York art dealer once said, “If Rembrandt walked into my gallery today, I couldn't (translation: 'wouldn't') give him a show.” The “reasoning” behind this absurd statement was that the dealer already had too many artists (the universal gallery excuse for not taking on serious artists). The Questions: If an artist has the opportunity to make money off of his or her art, should they do it? Many people might consider this “selling out,” where the artist has decided not to portray truth and honesty, but rather to do it for the money. Does this mean that they are still creating art? Are they still considered an artist? What artists, musicians, actors, photographers, or designers do you consider to be true artists? Why? What artists, musicians, actors, photographers, or designers do you consider to be “sell outs?” Why? Are there artists who make true art and money? The Concept: There is little doubt that the genuine artist is ahead of his or her time and that most of humanity is at least a generation behind the greatest artists. The irony and horror, of course, is that, with amazing regularity, these artists are condemned or ignored out of fear or ignorance and only later is their work appreciated. The Questions: Do you think all artists are recognized during their lifetime? Why or why not? Just because an artist portrays something in their work, does that necessarily mean it is right or true? Why or why not? —with selections from The Artist’s Life, by Don Gray
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WORKSHEET OF ART MOMA, http://www.moma.org/modernteachers/lesson.php?lesson
Many artists tend to catalogue ideas, experiences, and dreams in their journals and various other writings. It’s not often that an artist sticks to one medium, but instead, uses a number of different ones to express his or her thoughts and feelings. Do a quick write: compose a narrative of a trip from beginning to end, including as much visual information and description (such as sounds, smells, and feelings) as possible. Afterward, translate your experiences into three sequential drawings and give the series a title. Break up into pairs and share your work with another one of your classmates. What did you do that was similar? What was different? What do you want to know more about from their narrative?
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A LIFE IN THE MINE Coal was once the lifeblood of industry and a key part of life in the North East of England. Coal was king, and it fuelled industries like steel and heavy engineering. t its peak in 1913, the Great North Coalfield employed almost ¼ million men, producing over 56 million tons of coal every year from about 400 pits. The North East produced a quarter of Britain's coal in 1913, and was heavily dependent on 'carboniferous capitalism.'
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A Dangerous Profession Mining was a dangerous profession with terrible working conditions especially in the early 19th century. In the early days the miners used hand picks, and conditions were cramped with little health and safety provision. There were hazards and dangers everywhere from explosions, fires, and roof falls, to suffocating gases and flooding. Miners laboured in cramped conditions and some like the one in the photograph opposite developed bandy legs. There were many disasters such as the West Stanley Pit Disaster in 1909 in which 160 men were killed. The whole mine shook from two devastating blasts caused by illegal lamps. The funerals of the victims were terrible with many of the men being buried in trenches. 59 of the victims were under 20 years of age. Their families received minimal compensation. During the 1920s there were several miners' strikes. In 1926 the miners were starved back to work. Pit owners controlled many of the colliery houses and during times of strike they employed 'candymen' to put the families of striking miners out onto the streets. Conditions improved with nationalization in 1947, but many miners continued to suffer from health problems such as lung conditions. Pit Villages Many towns such as Seaham Harbour, Easington Village, Bedlington, and Ashington owed their existence to coal, and mining was the focus for the whole community. Engine houses and their wheels dominated the skylines of the pit villages. The communities were close-knit with their own social clubs, community facilities and brass bands. A common sight were the pit cottages. Pits were often isolated, and the homes were built near them. A typical collier's cottage consisted of two to four rooms and sometimes had a pitman's garden nearby. Coal was moved from the pithead by railway. Many collieries had their own systems with lines connecting to the main rail network. (cont’d.)
“A key factor in our long life, I think, was the fact that we were never a commercial group but preserved our idealism. We thought we were doing something that no one else could do. We were depicting a way of life both below and above ground in a mining village that only we knew by experiencing it. Life goes on and we paint life.” —Oliver
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Kilbourn, artist and member of the Ashington Group
Not Just Paintings Great disasters have always moved men and women to put pen to paper and express the thoughts and feelings and those of others in verse. The Victorian mining disasters are rich sources of this verse. Much of it was anonymous and it expressed the feelings of the family for their loved one and much of it appeared on the remembrance cards that were fashionable at the time. Other poems appeared as the 'Penny Ballads' that were quickly written after a disaster and sold for one penny in aid of the dependants of the victims of the disaster. All the poems record the sense of loss that the calamity brought on the loss of a community losing many of its menfolk, the plight of those left behind who now had no breadwinner. Some record the heroic efforts that were made by their fellow workmen to rescue them or, in many cases, their bodies. The verses are no great works of literature but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of mining people, written from the heart and they stand as a true record of the folk heritage of the coal mining areas of Great Britain. from The Coalmining History resource center, http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/literature/poetry/senghenyyd.html
God our help, to thee we come, In this dire hour of need, For broken hearts in sore distress, And homes bereaved we plead. Distress and grim death we see, And lips are stricken dumb, Because the wives and children want For those who ne’er come. Let mercy come with pity eye To ease the sufferers pain, And may they see affliction sore Oft brings eternal gain. All honour to the fearless men, To whom so much we owe, You bring us comfort, light and warmth, Through winter's frost and snow. Our lives of industry and wealth The ships which sail the seas, Remind us daily of the debt We owe to men like these. Let wealth and labour, love and cheer, Unite to give relief, And may we know the joy which comes, In sharing others grief. —Mining Poem, 1913
connections: The poem above was written after The Senghenyyd Pit Disaster, in Cardiff on October 15th,1913, which was said to be the most devastating explosion in the British coalfields. Break off into groups or pairs and read the poem together. Discuss what jobs today are considered hazardous. Who works these jobs? What industries require people to put their lives at risk? Think about one of these occupations and write a ten line write a poem that describes the dangers, threats, and tragedies that come with this line of work. Perform it for the class.
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THE GEOGRAPHY OF NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, UK ewcastle-Upon-Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne. The regional nickname for people from Newcastle and the surrounding area is Geordie.
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The city grew as an important center for the wool trade and it later became a major coal mining area. The port developed in the 16th century and, along with the shipyards lower down the river, was amongst the world's largest shipbuilding and ship-repairing centers. These industries have since experienced severe decline and closure. Many times there is a tendency to think that any time a story is set in England or a big historical event has taken place in the country that it occurs in London, but that’s not always the case. Lee Hall wanted to tell the story of the Ashington Group not only because he grew up in Newcastle-UponTyne, but he also wanted to pay homage to the local artists who worked in the mines, with the light coming out of their heads all day underneath the earth, and how they continued to have a light shine brightly from their heads even after they had remerged to the surface. Just in the way Modesto, California is situated outside of San Francisco and comes with a very different landscape and culture, so too does Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, with its working class legacy and unique way of representing itself, stand out as a place that is both English and Geordie; blue collared and artistic; and a part of the United Kingdom and a place like no other.
connections: Imagine that you are reviewing an art gallery with artists from all over the state of California. Would you favor artists from San Francisco and Los Angeles over artists from Modesto, Bakersfield, El Centro, or Gillroy? Does where an artist come from have any weight on the quality of art they create?
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THE NEWCASTLE DIALECT The accent that comes out of the Newcastle region of the United Kingdom is unique and very different from a British or Scottish accent that is typically heard throughout the region. he dialect of Newcastle is known as Geordie, and contains a large amount of vocabulary and distinctive word pronunciations not used in other parts of the United Kingdom. The Geordie dialect has much of its origins in the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon populations who migrated to and conquered much of England after the end of Roman Imperial rule.
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This language was the forerunner of Modern English; but while the dialects of other English regions have been heavily altered by the influences of other foreign languages—particularly Latin and Norman French—the Geordie dialect retains many elements of the old language. In a newspaper survey, the Geordie accent was found to be the “most attractive in England.” An example of this is the pronunciation of certain words: “dead,” “cow,” “house” and ”strong” are pronounced “dede,” “coo,” “hoos” and “strang”—which is how they were pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon language. Other Geordie words with Anglo-Saxon origins, with origins in Scandinavia as well, include:
“larn” for “teach” “burn” for “stream” “gan” for “go” “bairn” for “child” “hyem” for “home” Geordie vocabulary that appears to be used in Scottish dialect includes:
connections: Using at least five of the Geordie words to the left, write an original poem, rhyme, or dialogue. Read your work to another person and have them write down what they think your poem, rhyme, or dialogue is about.
“bonny” meaning “pretty” “howay” meaning “come on” “stot” meaning “bounce” “hadaway” meaning “go away” or “you're kidding” “aye” meaning “yes” Many words, however, appear to be used exclusively in Newcastle and the surrounding area, such as:
“canny” a versatile word meaning “good,” “nice,” or “very” “bait” meaning ”food” “hacky” meaning “dirty” “netty” meaning “toilet” “hoy” meaning “throw” “hockle” meaning “spit”
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PITMEN AT THE PICTURES By The Pitmen Painters Playwright Lee Hall, abridged from its first publication in The Guardian , September, 2009
When playwright Lee Hall was scouting locations for Billy Elliot, he was shocked at how quickly the visible signs of mining had disappeared. Fortunately, the industry's culture is preserved in films, which tell us as much about the nation's soul as about coal. he most likely candidate for the real-life Old King Cole seems to be Coel Hen, the king of the Brythonic-speaking peoples of northern Britain in the days of the Roman withdrawal. Coal mining in Britain started in the Roman era and has profoundly shaped the history of our nation ever since.
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King Coal, in the animated form he took in the 1948 National Coal Board film of that title, presides over the British Film Institutes's (BFI) major retrospective of its extraordinary archive of mining films. As much as these films are about coal, they are also about the nation's soul. At present, Old King Coal is looking down benignly on me: my plays The Pitmen Painters and Billy Elliot are running concurrently in London, and soon will be side by side on Broadway. That there is such an appetite to re-examine the legacy of an industry all but wiped out in a generation is a riposte to the orthodoxy that no one is interested in class, heavy industry, and the progressive politics that informed so much of that industry's culture. One of the most intriguing results of the defeat of the 1984 struggle to save the industry was the cultural cleansing that followed. The notion that the battle was an ideological rather than an economic one seems to have been conceded on all sides. The vision of the new "modern" Britain, where we make money out of money rather than "uneconomic" old-fashioned labour, has been found particularly wanting. The irony that it has cost us around 36 billion pounds to dismantle a publicly owned industry while a Labour government spends billions shoring up bankrupt private finance is particularly bitter. But what must be obvious to any interested observer is how determinedly the imagery that once dominated our imagination has so quickly disappeared. Crucially, what has been unpicked by out-sourcing the dirty work and grassing over our common history is a civic narrative about class and economics that all the films in the series-whether from left or right--subscribe to. From the very earliest films, such as A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner, made in 1910, the hard graft of the miner is linked to the warmth of a bourgeois hearth. To the modern eye it seems a radical gesture in what is a straightforward documentary about work. The films sign up to the notion that we are all intimately invested in how our energy is produced--our prosperity as a nation is tied up in renewing this system both in terms of efficiency and social justice. Hiding away the dirty work is crucial in maintaining the charade that we are more free under freewheeling capitalism. Unpicking the chain of cause and effect--removing images of it from the popular imagination--allows the calamitous notion that the free market might provide room to breathe for our collective interests. Instead the "common sense" of these films is that our common interests will be served by understanding the intimate connections we have with each other--that our resources, human and mineral, are part of a common wealth. (cont’d.)
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Who do we see portrayed in movies, television shows, and plays today? What industry is glamorized? What industry does not get the spotlight? Why do you think this happens?
Many of the images in the season challenge our received opinions, and show a reality at odds with the clichéd imagery of a stolid, male, philistine, white working-class world. The earliest film, showing miners leaving Pendlebury Colliery in 1901, gives us a glimpse of a black miner. A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner focuses on the women who work at the surface. This back-breaking work recalls Millet's The Gleaners, and reminds us how seldom women's work in the industry is represented. I was delighted to find a film from 1949 of the Workers Educational Association group of Ashington miners who are the subject of The Pitmen Painters. And even more amazed by another film, Balletomines, which celebrates a real-life group of miners who, in the 1940s, donned tutus and performed Coppélia, to the delight of their Yorkshire comrades. These films are even more remarkable for being made by the Coal Board itself. The NCB film unit was set up in 1947 and made its own films right up until the 1980s. At their peak the Mining Review films were shown in 700 cinemas across Britain on a monthly basis. What emerges is a vast social project to transform Britain. Culture, and therefore these films, were at the heart of a battleground for Britain's future that involved all classes. The presiding image of these films is a joined-up Britain: how the labour of one person serves the liberation of another. Sadly, it is a vision of a Britain long gone. Yet rather than seeming old fashioned or nostalgic, this vision seems remarkably grown up. The complications of our civic and political life are not skipped over; the films examine the complexities of providing for the prosperity of a democracy without short-changing us. Seventy five percent of our coal reserves are still down there, and a third of all our power still comes from coal-it's just mostly shipped in from abroad. (There's a huge heap of it on the banks of the Tyne, brought in from Ukraine.) Who knows if the industry is really gone for good? But let's hope the good sense of these films does not die, or we will all be much the poorer.
“As soon as the pits started closing all evidence of their existence was erased. I remember driving around the Durham coalfield trying to find locations for the movie of Billy Elliot, desperate to get a glimpse of an archetypal winding gear, and shocked to find they'd all been knocked down.” —Lee Hall, Playwright, The Pitmen Painters
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RESOURCES PAGE “Anyone Can Paint,” The Guardian. Web. January 24, 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/24/pitmen-painters-national-theatre> “Pitmen In The Pictures,” The Guardian. Web. September 12, 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/12/pitmen-mining-industry-film?INTCMP=SRCH> “The Pitmen Painters”, The Mahattan Theatre Club. Web. <http://www.mtc-nyc.org/current-season/pitmenpainters/theashingtongroup.asp? “The Ashington Group,” The Ashington Group, Official Website. Web. <http://www.ashingtongroup.co.uk/exhibition.html> Photo: “The Ashington Group, 1982.” Mik Critchlow. Web. <http://www.mikcritchlow.co.uk/photo_2722921.html#photos_id=2722921> “Life In The Mine” British Broadcasting Corporation. Web. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/nationonfilm/topics/coal-mining/background.shtml> The Coalmining Historical Resource Center. Web. <http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/literature/poetry/senghenyyd.html “Worksheet of Art” Museum of Modern Art. Web. <http://www.moma.org/modernteachers/lesson.php?lessonID=11> “How Art Is Defined,” Arthur Dirks. Web. <http://webhost.bridgew.edu/adirks/ald/courses/crit/crit_artdef.htm> “The Artist’s Life,” Don Gray. Web. 1994. <http://www.jessieevans-dongray.com/essays/essay008.html>
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Student Matinees/ STUDENT Feedback Name____________________________________Grade_____________School_________________________________________ Performance Tasks based CA State theatre arts standards Select and complete one of the following activities:
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Rewrite the ending of the play. How would you like to see it end? Why?
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Pick a moment in the play that affected you. Describe the stage elements that created that moment for you (the script, acting, lighting, music, costumes, set design, sound design, and/or direction).
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Write a review of the play or an actor.
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Describe something you would change in the production. Describe what benefit that change create in the production and why.
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Identify and describe how this production might affect the values and behavior of the audience members who have seen it.
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Write about any careers you learned about in attending this production. (example: stage hands, set designers, actors, etc.)
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pg. 1, STUDENT Matinee Evaluation/Student
STUDENT evaluation (cont)
Finish the following statements: The most important thing I learned from this play was: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Besides getting out of school, the best thing about attending this student matinee is: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Learning through the theatre is different from my regular class because: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If I could change something about attending a student matinee, I would: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I'm going to use what I learned, saw, or experienced by: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ STUDENT Matinee Evaluation/Student, pg. 2
Student Matinee/TEACHER Evaluation Name_____________________________________________________________________School___________________________
Please rate your Student Matinee experience below:
Strongly Disagree Planning I received sufficient and timely information from TheatreWorks before the matinee
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Matinee Workshopsâ&#x20AC;Ś Supported other curriculum areas/subjects
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Pg 1, TEACHER assessment/student matinee
TEACHER Evaluation (contâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d.) For your classrooms please list the strengths of watching a student matinee: _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ In terms of your teaching, did this particular Student Matinee give you any arts integration ideas for your curriculum: _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ We are very interested in your feedback , what worked for you about this experience? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ What did not work for you? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ Additional Comments: _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________
TheatreWorks student matinees tend to fill up quickly, so keep an eye out for next year's selections and book your tickets before it's too late! Information about next season will be available by March 1st. Keep us updated with your current contact information, and let us know if you have friends who would like to be added to our mailing lists. TEACHER assessment/student matinee, Pg 2