Burdett Coutts Primary School - Play in a Day Workshop

Katie Smith

21st June

Class 1

The first class who were covering the first half of the play, rehearsed the songs “Bombed Last Night” and “Mademoiselle From Armentiere” with actors from the MOD.
Then they rehearsed the scene of Major Booth and Roy Kilner meeting for the first time, followed by the Suffragettes burning down the Tunbridge Wells cricket Pavilion and campaigning for votes for women. This was criticised greatly by widely known author Arthur Conan Doyle who labelled the Suffragettes “Hooligans”.

22nd June

Class 2

We visited the second class the next day when they were rehearsing the second part of the play “A Candle for Booth”. They ran through the scenes where Kilner gets a Blighty wound (an injury which was serious enough to send a soldier home but not enough to severely incapacitate them) and Booth comes to his aid. Next, we saw the scene depicting Lieutenant Booth leading his soldiers over the top of the trenches to what would eventually lead to the death of himself and many of his men.