Diane Samuels' Kindertransport

The author's guide to the play

Diane Samuels

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780013855
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

The author's guide to Kindertransport, an invaluable and uniquely authoritative resource for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.

Since it was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels' Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world, has been revived numerous times, and is widely studied in schools and colleges.

The play tells the story of how nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, is sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life with a foster family in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two. Over forty years later, she has changed her name to Evelyn and denied her roots. When her own daughter discovers some old letters and photos in the attic, she is forced to confront the truth about who she really is and to reveal a dark secret that she has done everything to keep hidden.

In this author's guide to the play, Diane Samuels investigates the historical background, drawing on the personal testimony of those whose lives were transformed by the Kindertransport. She explores the creative process that shaped the play through successive drafts. And she presents detailed accounts from the actors, directors, a composer and designer who have contributed to the play's most notable productions.

Early Drafts

‘The dead are alive; the living are their ghosts.’ Note on the cover of the second draft of Kindertransport, 1992

‘My first draft usually only has a few elements worth keeping. I have to find out what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn’t work, or what simply is not alive.’ Susan Sontag

‘I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.’ Dr Seuss

During the development of the first draft of Kindertransport, I attended a workshop run by Mark Ravenhill. In those days, Mark was yet to become established as a playwright and I knew him as a workshop leader and theatre director through the Soho Theatre Company, whose remit was to develop and produce original plays by new writers. I had written the first act of Evelyn and Eva’s story and was still exploring how the piece might be shaped. Much of my teens in Liverpool had been spent involved in youth theatre where we devised our own plays as pieces of ‘ensemble’ theatre. Inspired by this approach, I had directed a number of group-developed theatre pieces at university and then went on to become a drama teacher in inner-London secondary schools. So, the opportunity to explore the scriptwriting of this new play using practical methods was very welcome and familiar. I was beginning to discover then that writing a play takes many drafts, much rewriting, sometimes a shattering of what has been developed and a radical reworking, to discover the form needed to enable the piece to become its fully realised self.

Mark had read what had been written so far and asked me to take the ‘hot seat’ as Evelyn. There is a world of difference between writing in a character’s voice and physically inhabiting his or her skin. As I sat on the chair in front of the group of emerging playwrights, I knew immediately that Evelyn found herself in what felt like a storage room. As the questions came, this room, this world, this woman took shape. I sensed what Evelyn was sensing, the dimness, the orderliness of the stashed boxes, a lot of boxes. Then I realised that there was a box on the floor not far from where I was sitting. I was asked what was inside this box. As Evelyn, I clammed up. I wasn’t interested in this box. It didn’t matter. The other writers and Mark pressed me to give my attention to it. The more they persisted, the more stubborn I became. Then Evelyn was invited to pick up this imaginary but all-too-real box. I simply could not touch it. My body as her body recoiled. After encouragement, I did pick it up and looked inside but was utterly unable to remove a single item. I was asked to describe what it contained. I managed to say that there were photos and ‘things like that’. I was asked to take out a photo and share it. I utterly refused. When pressed again, I burst into tears. When I left the hot seat and emerged from the role, we discussed what I had experienced and what the rest of the group had witnessed from their perspective. This ‘role-play’ exercise was invaluable and gave me real, actual insight into the state of Evelyn’s denial, strength of character and emotional fragility. It enabled me to continue work on the script and complete a first draft.

In this very first draft of the play, the scene continued to be set in a ‘storage room’. It was Abigail Morris, director of the first production of the play in 1993 for Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre, who suggested the more evocative attic setting. Still, a relic of this first version remains in the published script today which is still introduced as being set in a ‘dusty storage room’. Also in the first draft, Evelyn’s daughter is named Hope. This was changed to Faith in subsequent drafts because a woman called Hope, one of whose parents had been on the Kindertransport, helped me with research and it seemed wise to avoid implicating her in any way in the story. It is always important to sense when to distance actual life experience from the fiction so that the two are distinct.

KINDERTRANSPORT –
FIRST DRAFT, CIRCA 1990/91

Act One, Scene One

A ‘spare’ storage room. Junk, cases, tea chests and boxes lying around.

From somewhere deep below the pile of stuff, deep within one of the boxes, emanate the faint strains of a simple tune being played on a mouth organ.

The door opens.

HOPE stands in the doorway. She looks at the boxes, gets the measure of them. She opens some of the top boxes and looks into them. She finds hats, plastic cutlery, Christmas decorations. She moves the top boxes to get beneath. She opens some more boxes. She finds an old train set. She takes out the trains, control box, model platforms, people and signals. She lays them lovingly on the floor, making a station.

HOPE (holding her nose). The train soon to be arriving at platform two…

She turns back to the boxes and starts to open them quickly. She looks and rummages around in each one. She takes out a carefully wrapped and preserved girl’s party dress in the style of the early seventies.

‘When I was five I was barely alive.’

She wraps up the dress again.

The mouth-organ music gets louder as the boxes on top are removed.

Suddenly HOPE’s ear catches the melody of the mouth organ. She is drawn towards it as if by magic.

She moves boxes and bags, giving them a cursory looking at.

Finally she reaches the box from which the music is coming. By it is a battered old suitcase with a leather belt around it. She picks up the suitcase.

My God. Oh, my God. She did keep… she did…

She tries to open the case. It is locked. She reaches to open the large box containing the music.

EVELYN stands in the doorway.

EVELYN. What are you doing?

The music stops.

HOPE (withdrawing quickly from the box). I thought you were…

EVELYN. This is my room.

HOPE. My things are in here…

EVELYN. What things?

HOPE. From when I was a kid.

EVELYN. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.

HOPE. I don’t know exactly…

EVELYN. Don’t know?

HOPE. I just wanted to look. To see what there was. I can’t remember everything.

EVELYN. I know what’s in here. Ask me.

HOPE. Where are my dolls?

EVELYN (surveying the disarrayed boxes, etc.). I can’t tell. You’ve moved everything.

HOPE. Will you help me search for them?

EVELYN. What? Now?

HOPE. I’d like to find them.

EVELYN. I’ve only just got in…

HOPE. Please.

EVELYN stands very still and quiet.

HOPE. What’s the matter?

EVELYN. Come out of here.

HOPE. Mother.

EVELYN. Just come on out.

HOPE. What about my dolls?

EVELYN. Another time.

HOPE. If you don’t want to search, I’ll just do it on my own…

EVELYN. I’ll find them for you when I have a moment.

HOPE. Are you tell...