Drama students at Kingsbury Green Academy have achieved an insight into the Holocaust thanks to a workshop and performance from Europe’s leading Holocaust education theatre company, Voices of the Holocaust.
Voices of the Holocaust uses education through drama to ensure that the voices of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust are not lost. The company’s founder, Cate Hollis, spent the day workshopping with 30 drama students from Years 10 to 13, exploring movement and learning how to use scripts, before joining Year 9 pupils in watching the company’s performance of Kindness: A legacy of the Holocaust.
Kindness: A legacy of the Holocaust is a play based on the testimony of Susan Pollack MBE who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau aged just 13. It tells the story of her life in Hungary before World War Two, through to life under Nazi occupation resulting in her transportation to the concentration camp that killed almost a million men, women and children. However, it also contains an uplifting message that kindness, compassion and generosity are the force of life and the legacy that should be taken from the Holocaust.
The day built on previous learning the pupils have completed through their time in school on the Holocaust, including history lessons in Year 9 and a focus on Anne Frank in drama in Year 8.
Alice Mitchell, Head of Creative Arts at Kingsbury Green Academy, explained, “Drama is an excellent tool to convey powerful messages, and by having Voices of the Holocaust come in and work with the pupils it has a much more powerful effect that couldn’t have been achieved by being delivered by one of the teachers.
“Here at Kingsbury Green Academy, we recognise the importance of using theatre and drama to explore real-life events. By using verbatim theatre like Kindness: A legacy of the Holocaust, the students really feel the impact of the events. Today was incredibly important and moving, and will stay with our students forever.”
Kingsbury Green Academy is part of the Ascend Learning Trust, formerly the Royal Wootton Bassett Academy Trust.