BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT TEACHER RESOURCE PACK FOR TEACHERS WORKING WITH PUPILS IN YEAR 3 – 6 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT RUNNING FROM 13 FEB - 15 MAR 2015

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A MAN?

Little Tilley’s dreams are realised as she follows in her father’s footsteps and grows up to become Vesta Tilley, a shining star of the whose much-loved act as a male impersonator makes her world-famous.

War breaks out and she supports the cause by helping to recruit soldiers to fight for king and country, but has she used her stardom for good? And is winning the most important thing?

The Unicorn commemorates the centenary of World War One and the 150th anniversary of Vesta Tilley’s birth in this feisty, song-filled and touching look at the life of Vesta Tilley (1864 – 1952), who was nicknamed Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant and led the way for female stars in music hall entertainment.

Page 2 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT CONTENTS CONTEXT INTRODUCTION 4 A SUMMARY OF THE PLAY 5 THE PLAY IN CONTEXT 7 INTERVIEWS WITH THE CREATIVE TEAM 9 CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

AN OVERVIEW OF CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES (Fully developed activities will be added in July) 11

There will be a free teacher CPD day for Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant on Fri 7 Nov 10am – 4pm, which is a chance for teachers to find out more about the show and gain practical experience of the classroom activities, before leading them with a class.

To find out more about the CPD or book your place, [email protected]

Page 3 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the resource pack for Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant for children in Years 4 to 7. Joy Wilkinson’s play brilliantly brings to life the world of music hall in the 1910s and the real life character of Vesta Tilley, a male impersonator and music hall superstar. Vesta was a child performer and wanted to be the first and the best at whatever she did. In the play, when she develops her act as a male impersonator, she challenges assumptions about what girls can and should be capable of.

When war breaks out in 1914, Vesta uses her fame for the war effort; she develops an act where she impersonates a soldier and sings patriotic songs, which she then performs at recruitment rallies and encourages the young men to sign up to fight there and then.

The play will be full of the songs, fun and images of the music hall, but intercut with moments that bring the reality of the war to life and ask us to consider what these young men really are signing up for. Hundreds of thousands of young men joined the army in 1914, proud to fight for king and country, this play begins to question what happens when the optimism and patriotism at the start of war gives way to the reality of four years of fighting and hundreds of thousands of young men’s lives lost.

These resources will support teachers in contextualising the play for their class before coming to the theatre, so that young audiences can tune in to the performance. The full pack, which will be available online at the end of July, will include a range of classroom activities which can be used before or after your visit as ways of exploring themes, stories and characters relevant to the play. The resources will not take an objective led approach; however, teachers will be able to establish links to the relevant curriculum objectives for their particular year group and adapt them for their particular educational setting.

The full pack will be developed in June with the help of teachers and pupils in our partner primary school, Eleanor Palmer Primary. In the meantime, this shorter pack will give you an idea of what the play will contain and the potential for practical classroom work around your visit.

Vesta in and out of

Page 4 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT SUMMARY OF THE PLAY

The play begins with four year old Matilda, creating shows with her dolls and her dog, Fathead. Her father, Harry, is a music hall act and Matilda wants to follow in his footsteps and go on the stage. She eventually persuades him to let her have a go and her first performance is a huge success. After this Matilda and Harry go on tour together and soon she is earning £5 per week – a huge amount of money at the end of the Victorian era.

Five years later Matilda feels she needs to change her act as there are lots of younger music hall acts coming up behind her. Matilda wants to be the best, she can’t be the youngest act in the music hall, so she comes up with another idea; she’s going to be a male impersonator.

Matilda decides to give herself a stage name; looking around her for inspiration she sees a box of Swan Vesta matches. She decides her name will be Vesta Tilley.

Vesta’s success grows; she goes to work in London where she meets the famous , the best panto dame in the business. They get ready for their acts alongside each other; Vesta putting on a wig and beard to become a man, Dan donning a skirt and eyelashes to become a woman.

One day a mother brings her young son, Algy, to see Vesta’s act. He’s sure he’s going to hate it:

So let me get this straight, mother – this next act is a girl pretending to be a boy? I don’t get it, what’s meant to be good about that? I hate girls, they’re boring. I’d rather see a man getting shot out of a cannon.

But when he sees the act he loves it.

Vesta becomes a huge success; she tours to America, she earns £1000 a week and she sells Vesta Tilley merchandise to her fans.

The play then jumps to 1914 and Vesta is now an established music hall star. With the outbreak of the First World War, Vesta has to decide what to do; should she stop singing, dancing and making jokes? Or do what her father, Harry suggests:

This war could be the best thing that ever happened for you. Play a soldier. All those young men. Take the mick, but give it a twist. Be the first, be the best.

Vesta goes on performing and one day, after singing a song about ‘Burlington Bertie’ – a rich young man from Kensington who gives up his luxuries to join the army, a young man in the audience called Algy decides that he must join up too.

When there are symptoms of war like alarm And Burlington Bertie sees his brothers I arms, Altho’ absentminded he does not forget That Englishmen always must pay off a debt He drops all his pleasures, the polo, the hunt And just like the rest he is off to the front.

Page 5 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT

Vesta realises that she can have a real impact through her act; as she can persuade young men to join up and fight. So Vesta dresses as a soldier and sings new songs which persuade the young men that being a soldier is the right thing to do:

I’ll be like a recruiting sergeant. They sign up with me then they go off to fight. The King will love me. The other acts will hate me. I’ll be the first and the best.

At the end of her act, Vesta invites the young men in the audience to come up on stage and sign up there and then.

It’s all right, it’s all right now, There’s no need to worry anymore. Who said the army wasn’t strong? They soon found out they were wrong.

Algy, now a soldier in the trenches, writes to Vesta asking her to come to France and give a concert for the troops to boost morale. Vesta has no time; she is busy making a film of what life is like for the soldiers with very realistic sets. And of course, a film can reach thousands more people than a live show.

With more letters coming back from the front, Vesta starts to get glimpses of the reality of the war. When a letter from Algy’s mother tells Vesta that he is dead, she is forced to think about the implications of what she does when she recruits young men to go and fight. Vesta finds herself afraid of the dark and afraid of her dreams, but on stage she feels herself, the self who is determined to win.

The play ends with Vesta as an old lady, looking back on her life and the choices she has made.

Page 6 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT THE PLAY IN CONTEXT

Vesta Tilley was born Matilda Powles in 1864 in Worcestershire. Her father was a stage comic and manager of a music hall in .

With no cinema, television or radio, music halls in the 1860s and 70s were hugely popular places of entertainment, with shows that would include a mix of acts, popular songs, comedy and speciality performances – a little like the range of performances you might see on Britain’s Got Talent today.

Matilda first went on the stage aged three, and after a few years of success as a child singer, she developed her new act as a male impersonator. She changed her stage name to Vesta Tilley and her success grew. By the age of 11 she was supporting her whole family with her earnings – with 12 siblings this was quite impressive. One of her most popular character creations was Burlington Bertie, in which she poked fun at an upper class ‘toff’ and his life of luxury and leisure.

Vesta’s father, who had also been her manager, died in 1888 and two years later Vesta married , a songwriter who owned a chain of music halls across England. Vesta’s fame grew and she went on to tour to the British Colonies and America.

Vesta in drag

Page 7 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT

When the World War began in 1914, Vesta used her fame for the war effort, appearing at recruitment rallies where she dressed as a soldier in army uniform and performed songs designed to appeal to young men’s patriotism, encouraging them to sign up. Songs included; ‘Jolly good luck to the Girl who loves a Soldier’ and ‘We don’t want to lose you but we think you ought to go.’

At the outbreak of war in 1914 there were only 700,000 soldiers available to fight. In August 1914 the government appealed for volunteers aiming to recruit 100,000. By the end of September, 750,000 had volunteered and by January 1915, there were over a million.

Young men had to be 18 years old to sign up and 19 years old to be sent overseas to fight. However, it estimated that over 250,000 under age boys signed up. Many were encouraged by parents and teachers, however they may well have assumed that the war would be over before they were trained and sent to fight. By mid 1915, as the reality of the War began to show itself, volunteer numbers were falling fast. In January 1916 conscription was introduced and all men aged 18 to 41 were required to fight by law.

As the years went by popular support for the war fell. By the end of the War, just over 8 million British men had been to fight, of these almost a million died and two million returned home injured.

Vesta’s husband, Walter, was knighted in 1919 and she became Lady de Frece. Vesta performed for the last time at the in June 1920.

Image from National Portrait Gallery, London

Page 8 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT INTERVIEWS WITH THE CREATIVE TEAM JOY WILKINSON: PLAYWRIGHT

Why did you want to write a play about Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant, Vesta Tilley, for the Unicorn Theatre?

As the mum of two young boys, I’ve become aware how early they get ideas of what is ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’, but also how open they are to asking questions and adapting their ideas. Vesta’s story seemed a great way to explore that, tackling big questions in a form that is entertaining for all ages. Vesta played with ideas of what it meant to be male and female and broke down boundaries in people’s thinking about what women could do. Yet the War also highlighted the divide between men and women and, ultimately, Vesta reverted to a more traditional role. Was that inevitable? Are things different now? Vesta’s journey gives us a way to ask questions about who we are – boys, girls, and the whole gender spectrum – today.

The play contrasts the world of the music hall – a world of illusion and performance – with the reality of the First World War. What were the challenges of writing this piece for children aged 8 and above?

One of my son’s friends was talking excitedly about an incident with a bomb. It started off sounding like something from a cartoon or computer game, but then it became clear it was a real bomb from news footage. To him, the two things were indistinguishable as it was all on TV and fantastical. This is the same for Vesta who is immersed in the music hall like a child is immersed in play, protected, with the troubles of the real world far away. The challenge was to find those moments when reality breaks through and explore how Vesta deals with it – by denial? Distancing? Making it part of a story? Or by facing up to it and trying to stop it happening? There are no easy answers, but hopefully Vesta’s choices help us to think about our own.

You have already written three drafts of your play and will be writing a third before rehearsals begin, could you tell us a little about the process of writing a play for you and what happens between drafts?

With a play inspired by the life of a real person like Vesta, I start with a lot of research. This gives me the raw material for the story and a sense of the character, but then, when I’m writing, I have to find ‘my own’ Vesta and let her lead the way through the first draft. It’s a lot like a child playing, making up characters that come to life and have a story to reveal. Then I have to get my grown-up head back on between drafts to see what’s not working and find ways to fix it. Before the next draft we’ll workshop the play with the director and actors, which is great for discovering different ways of doing things, maybe through movement or music instead of purely by writing. Plays always change as you collaborate, hopefully for the better!

Page 9 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CONTEXT LEE LYFORD: DIRECTOR

Why did you want to direct Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant?

It’s an incredibly rich play, exploring a range of themes including: gender, war and our personal and collective relationship to war; celebrity role models - the power they hold and the responsibility that comes with this; ambition vs conscience; personal gain and ambition vs common good. I am always attracted to plays which have contradictions such as these at their heart; it asks big moral questions.

All of this perhaps makes it sound terribly serious, but I think if I am honest, the reason I most wanted to direct the play is it is a very theatrical piece. Four actors play over a dozen roles (one of which is a dog!) telling the story of Vesta Tilley’s life, much of which is set in the music hall and includes a number of songs and music hall acts. I love the world of the play and have always been fascinated by music hall – I really enjoy the relationship the audience and performers have in this genre. I am also excited by exploring such stark difficult subject matter as World War One and juxtaposing it with the seemingly upbeat music hall numbers.

Have you had any thoughts about the staging of the piece at this early stage?

I don’t have any specifics yet, but I certainly want the audience to feel they have come to the music hall and are involved and often immersed in the action. I am also excited about exploring the backstage/ onstage relationship and how we can flip between the two; I feel sure we can find an exciting physical way of representing this. In many ways it is a backstage rags-to-riches drama in the Hollywood tradition. I have a ‘total theatre’ approach to making work and enjoy collaborating with other artists; I believe all the elements of design, sound, music and staging should have equal weight, led by the text, to create an exciting event.

What for you are the challenges of directing this piece for an audience of children aged 8 and above?

I think it is a challenging piece for children but I believe children are much like adults in that they respond to a really exciting and inventive piece of theatre. Thanks to talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, young people are actually fairly familiar with the concept and world of Variety, it is only the context which is different here. It is important that the play resonates and isn’t just a living history experience. Essentially it is a period piece, but I am keen to find a contemporary layer, be it in the sound or set or costume design, as the themes of the play are as relevant now as they were at the time the play is set.

Page 10 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

COMING SOON

Activities will be developed with teachers and children in our partner school, Eleanor Palmer Primary, in June. They will give a range of approaches to help you prepare pupils for seeing Britain’s Best Recruiting Sergeant and extend the experience afterwards.

Our teacher resources always put drama at the centre of our activities. Working through drama allows children to explore things that matter to them within a fictional context, draw on their prior knowledge and apply it to new situations, develop language as they give expression to new understandings and develop emotional intelligence and critical thinking as they see things from different perspectives. It will also allow the children to take responsibility, make decisions, solve problems and explore possibilities from within the drama.

ACTIVITIES MAY INCLUDE:

• Drama work which explores what was happening in Britain at the beginning of the War and the tensions in communities as young men tried to decide whether they should sign up to fight.

• In the play an actor will play the role of Lady de Frece (Vesta as an old lady looking back on her life). Drama activities might be developed which touch on what it is to look back over a life, at triumphs and difficulties, choices and decisions made.

• Work that looks at what it is to be a male or female impersonator, with an exploration of gender roles and challenges to expected behaviours.

• The world of the music hall will provide plenty of opportunities to research and create a range of acts from the time, including looking at popular songs, comedians, magicians and novelty acts.

Page 11 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT – CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

Recruitment posters from WWI

Page 12 BRITAIN’S BEST RECRUITING SERGEANT A Unicorn Production

CREATIVE TEAM By Joy Wilkinson Directed by Lee Lyford

Resource pack written by Susanna Steele