Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

But candles are… candles. They are not confined to countries or religions; their living flame reaches upwards to places where disputation has long since ceased. Neither Krishna, nor Jehovah, nor Jesus Christ would claim to be the sole recipient of the hope and faith that goes into the act of candle-lighting, in the attics of unbelievers, in schools, on birthday cakes and trees…

Marek, lighting his candle, had uttered no specific prayer, yet it might be considered that the unuttered prayer was heard. For two days later, Isaac Meierwitz found the courage to leave the farm in which he had lain hidden for months and set off under cover of darkness for the place near the border where he was to meet his contacts. He had been too much afraid to leave the familiar shelter until then, and he was still afraid… but he had gone.

In the third week of term, FitzAllan arrived from England to direct the end of term play.

Owing to Hallendorf’s emphasis on drama, the summer term was extended by nearly three weeks so that the play could not only be seen by parents and other visitors, but could serve as the opening of the Summer School which ran through August and the first part of September.

The play chosen was thus of a special importance, and differed from other performances throughout the year in that staff and pupils acted in it together, and the design, the music and the lighting were a joint effort between adults and children.

Bennet’s decision to bring in an outsider to direct this year was a bold one. FitzAllan had demanded a substantial fee and fees-whether substantial or otherwise-came not out of the depleted coffers of the school but out of Bennet’s own pocket. But Derek FitzAllan was not only a specialist in the Stanislavsky technique and a man who had studied under Meyerhold in Russia and Piscator in the Weimar Republic-he had produced a coup which Bennet could not afford to turn down.

He had apparently persuaded Bertolt Brecht, now in exile from Germany, to let the school put on a translation of his unperformed play, Saint Johanna of the Stockyards.

Not only to put it on but to make the necessary alterations which would make it easy to perform in a school. Bennet, amazed that the playwright had shown himself so generous, accepted FitzAllan’s offer, and reproached himself for a slight weariness, a faint longing for something with more colour and life affirmation than this Marxist drama seemed likely to provide.

So now, driving with Tamara to meet the director from the train, he did his best to feel encouraged. FitzAllan had long silver hair, a relatively young, tanned face and was dressed entirely in black. He was also, as he told Bennet immediately, a strict and undeviating vegan and asked that the information should be conveyed at once to the cook.

“My goodness, what is that?”’ asked Lieselotte when Ellen brought the news to the kitchen.

“It’s someone who doesn’t eat anything that comes from animals,” said Ellen. “No meat, no eggs, no milk, no cheese…”

“But what does he eat then?”’ asked poor Lieselotte.

“Nuts,” said Ellen, curling her lip.

The director had already handed her his soiled underpants and socks to wash.

Ellen had made clear her determination not to go to meetings about plays. But the gathering that FitzAllan had convened in the Great Hall as soon as he arrived, came at the end of a difficult day. Sophie had still not heard from her parents, Freya had had a rejective postcard from her Mats in Lapland, and Bruno had written “Shred the Little Cabbage” in red paint on an outhouse door. There was also the question of Hermine Ritter. It had not been Ellen’s intention to get fond of Dr Ritter. Her flourishing moustache, her voice-with which one could have drilled a regiment of uhlans-and her complete inability to organise the life of her baby were not in themselves endearing.

But in her own way, Hermine cared deeply about her work. Unlike Tamara, whose apparent concern for the children was really directed at her own aggrandisement, Hermine spared herself no effort, and when she asked Ellen to come to the meeting, Ellen found herself weakening. She knew that it was Hermine who had directed the previous productions and realised that it would not be easy for her to submit to the authority of an outsider.

“I thought I might watch Andromeda for you,” she said.

But Hermine said she would take Andromeda and they could share her.

So Ellen was present when FitzAllan, introduced by Bennet, leapt boyishly on to the platform and began to summarise the plot.

“As you may know, the play is set in the Chicago stockyards in the Twenties and follows the fate of a group of slaughterhouse workers threatened by a lock-out engineered by their capitalist bosses. The starving workers are visited by the band of the Salvation Army, led by the heroine, Johanna, who brings them soup and tries to convert them to Christianity, but though the workers eat the soup they reject the message of Christ.” He paused, raking his silver hair, and sighed. Some of the children looked small; others looked stupid. He had forgotten that the school accepted juniors. “Johanna now begs the capitalists to relent, but though they pretend to listen, they do nothing; at which point she loses her faith, throws in her lot with the striking workers- and dies of starvation in the snow.”

Thus described, Abattoir could not be called a cheerful play, but its sentiments did everyone credit, and as FitzAllan pointed out, no one need be without a part since in addition to the capitalists, the Salvation Army and the proletariat, there were parts for stock breeders, labour leaders, speculators and newsboys, not to mention the possibility of a chorus of slaughtered cattle, pigs and sheep, though this was not in the original script.

Having summarised the play, the director invited suggestions as to how it should be treated.

“Clearly in a Marxist work of this sort the emphasis must be on the persecution of the workers,” said Jean-Pierre. “Their fate is paramount. We could show this by lighting them very strikingly-with military searchlights, for example-keeping the capitalists in the shadows.”

Rollo did not entirely agree. He felt that the core of the play lay in the three-tiered hierarchical structure of society and proposed a set built in layers of scaffolding: the workers at the bottom, the Salvation Army in the middle and the capitalists on top.

“But not metal…” said poor Chomsky under his breath. “Not metal scaffolding”-and was ignored.

For Hermine, this was not the point at all: what she saw in Abattoir was a chance for the children to come inffcontact with their own physicality.

“I will make exercises for the hanging motion of the carcasses and the thrust of the knife. They can experience rictus… and spasms,” she said, handing her baby to Ellen so as to demonstrate the kind of thing she had in mind.

FitzAllan now put up his hand. “That is all very interesting and true,” he said, and Bennet, watching him, recognised all the signs of a director who had not the slightest intention of doing anything that anyone suggested. “But I have to remind you above all that Brecht invented the Alienation Theory. The Verfremdungseffekt,” he said, breaking into German for those of the children who were looking puzzled, “is seminal to Brecht’s thinking.”

A brave child, a small girl with red hair, now put up her hand and said: “What is the Alienation Theory?”’ and was rewarded by grateful looks from the other children.

“Alienation Theory demands that the audience is in no way emotionally involved with the action on the stage. Brecht believed that the lights should be left on during the performance so that people could walk about and smoke cigars… and so on.”