Preview: Education, Education, Education, Bristol Old Vic

It’s May 1997. Tony Blair has won the election and Katrina and the Waves have won Eurovision. Channel 5 is a month old. No one knows who Harry Potter is. Britain is the coolest place in the world.

At the local secondary school, it’s a different story. Miss Belltop-Doyle can’t control her year 9s, Mr Pashley has been put in charge of a confiscated Tamagotchi and for some unknown reason Princess Anne is attending the Year 11 leavers assembly. Tobias, the German language assistant, watches on. Things can only get better.

Education, Education, Education (Bristol Old Vic, Nov 1-4) is The Wardrobe Ensemble’s love letter to the schools of the 90s, asking big questions about a country in special measures, exploring what we are taught and why, and where responsibility lies.

Here are the Ensemble’s Helena Middleton and James Newton to introduce the show.

All pics: Graeme Braidwood

Education, Education, Education is our fourth large ensemble show, after RIOT, 33 and 1972: The Future of Sex [our review]. The show deals with 1997, the rise of New Labour, history, nostalgia, community, Britain and Britishness (among many other things).
It’s a co-production between The Wardrobe Ensemble, Royal and Derngate Northampton, and Shoreditch Town Hall. There was a work-in-progress performance of the show as part of Bristol Ferment at Bristol Old Vic in February 2017 and the show opened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

The show was made over the course of a particularly tumultuous year for our country. Our first week of Research and Development took place in April 2016, at a time when Brexit felt like the faintest possibility. Subsequent periods of R and D in September 2016, January 2017 and a final rehearsal phase in July 2017 now feel like markers of the emotional journey we and millions of others have been through post-referendum: from raw anger, to abject disbelief, to grim acceptance.

We didn’t go into this project intending to make a play about nationhood, but when the outside world is undergoing such seismic change it’s impossible to block that out of the rehearsal room. In many ways Education, Education, Education was creatively our most difficult project to date. We spent hours and hours in the rehearsal room, and yet more hours in the pub, picking apart Britain, Britishness, colonialism, history, nostalgia, community, care, austerity, national mood, identity, pride and humility.

So why choose 1997 to talk about these things, and why set it in a school? We were fascinated by the optimism of the time, the wave of promise brought on by Tony Blair’s New Labour and reinforced by a strong sense of cultural identity: Cool Britannia, Britpop, The Spice Girls all embodied this newfound confidence. I spoke to a woman in Exeter who recalled crying tears of joy in the polling booth. Imagine that today!

And the school setting? With “Education, Education, Education” being one of New Labour’s key manifesto pledges, a struggling comprehensive school seemed like a natural microcosm to relocate a nation’s hopefulness for the future.

How does that mid/late 1990s education landscape look now, from our 2017 vantage point? We are all products of Blair’s education policy, for better or for worse, and we very much place ourselves in the show. The student characters have our names and the events, although fictional, are infused with our memories. It is a love letter to our teachers: the good, the bad and the ugly, the ones who inspired us, the ones who made us laugh, the ones we bullied and the ones who bullied us.

We all benefitted from the millions of pounds and myriad resources that were poured into the British education system, from the impact of Blair’s education policies and the legacies of his government. In the process of making the show we interviewed, met and drank with teachers who had worked in the 1990s. We were struck by the excitement with which they described going to work the day after the Blair election – how they felt that their profession was valued. After our first work-in-progress showing to a group of teachers, one audience member reflected on how children had now become statistics – that their value lay in the grades they could produce, not in the passions that they held.

Do we seek to make any (party) political points with the show, or merely to entertain? Well, a key feature of our work is how we look at human stories within political contexts. Our student character, Emily Greenslade, undergoes a battle with authority over a decision which she perceives as being unjust. She is a vessel for our own feelings of powerlessness in the face of political change which we do not support. We can sign petitions, we can march, we can make banners and stage sit-ins – but this does not mean we will be listened to.

As with all our shows, our desire is to entertain as well as to provoke and agitate. Education, Education, Education is a comedy, it is a period piece, it is a celebration and an indictment. It is a thank you for what we were given and a warning about what has been lost.

We started life as a company rehearsing in the old Wardrobe department at Bristol Old Vic (hence the name) as part of the pilot year for Made in Bristol, Bristol Old Vic Young Company’s graduate scheme for theatre companies. This was a one-year residency, where – in exchange for leading and assisting workshops with the Young Company – we received training from various theatre practitioners and were given the space and time to make a show, RIOT, which we premiered in the Bristol Old Vic studio.

We took RIOT to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011 and have been making work together ever since. Returning to Bristol Old Vic, this time to the main stage, is emotional and terrifying and VERY exciting.

Education, Education, Education is at Bristol Old Vic from Wed, Nov 1 to Sat, Nov 4. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/education-education-education.html

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