The groundwork for change

Over the next few weeks and months, I want you to reallt try as much as possible to immerse yourselves in the mentality of the boarding school.

I had the rare 'luxury' of attending one when I was very young- in fact when in Suffolk we could even visit it. Joe's production gave a very American view of the boarding school and I suppose I want to look at 'British Boarding school'.

My boarding school experience was in the early 90's, and that was pretty harsh, but the 50's were a different kettle of fish. Staff handed more control down to the senior pupils, The Prefects- who were at relative liberty to accord punishments at their leisure- from kneeling on pencils, running errands, experiencing 'initiations', beatings etc. It was real rite of passage stuff and had forged generation after generation of English middle and upper classes with stiff upper lips.

Perhaps what boarding school did above all else is create two different worlds: The 'official' world, in which boys behaved as was expected of young becoming gentleman, and then the 'alternative' world in which boys behaved as boys as expressed so clearly in Lord of The Flies, a base, guttural, crude and sexually charged world where authority was earned and punishments dished out to its own rules. It was at once separate and yet entirely linked to the 'official' experience, both worlds existed side by side.

We will begin by pushing the 'official world' to its extreme, immersing the audience in the atmosphere of the daily life of a boarding school- as soon as Student One wakes up from his dormitory at night is when the alternative world takes over, and the dangerous energy of living on the edge of lawlessness creeps in. You must remember at all times, the sheer thrill of breaking rules, being caught had painful and embarrassing consequences that would invariably get back to ones parents. And always around the next corner could lay a 'master' or 'prefect' in wait- ready to pounce and send you arse cheeks red raw back to bed.

Try and build up a daily picture of life in a boarding house, the routines, the lessons taught, the way in which they were taught, the careers you would be expected to follow.

on the other hand, look also at the external factors that were beginning, like the railway in Cranford, to creep in at the edges of traditionalist Britain like a plague that would soon sweep out the remnants of Victorian England into the Bazalgette Sewer and forge the beginnings of the cataclysmic social, political and cultural changes that would change the face of Britain for ever.

Remember that Churchill had only been ousted and in fact died in '55, if you look at that decade you will find a heady wave of impetus building that laid the foundation for the more obvious signs of change that occurred in the 60's.

Rationing ended absolutely for the first time in 14 years on 4th July- 1954, Churchill gone by '55, the debutantes season ended officially in 1958 when the Queen stopped receiving DEBS, thus the 'marriage market' for the inbreeding of England's upper elite was effectively closed for the first time in centuries- a shadow of it remains today, but without royal patronage a 400 year old tradition that had defined the shape of the ruling class suffered a mortal blow.

In your research I want you consider that ART eg: the music of the 50's etc was a reflection and not the catalyst for change. Don't play devils advocate on this, just for now take the above statement and look towards specific changes like the ones detailed above; those gradual changes in the 50's that catalysed the country into its most overt change in the history of the nation in the next formative decade.

Just remember that the 50's represents for us the epitome of a nation trying to hold onto its past, clinging onto the vestiges of the empire which was falling away at the fingers, clinging onto to the clearly defined roles of men and women and clinging on to an education system that had moulded the young minds of England for generations.

The Mini skirt and rock and roll were by the mid 1950's pummelling on the doors of post war Britain begging to be let in, and as much as the authorities and the nation put up their best defences, the force of change was unassailable and defeat to old England inevitable.