DD14 GCSE drama trip to see play.

[eragon]

In local public halls.
However, teacher didnt investigate play content, and so whole class sat and watched four naked men, masturbating, and the a woman also naked, in a rape scene.

during the play drama teacher apparently made some comment on the generous nature of one males lower equipment, and laughed in a hystrical manic way.......

I am not a prude, nothing wrong with a naked body,(in fact local public hall is a bloody cold place) but the group masturbating and rape scene for a group of 14yr olds?

No. am so not impressed with this......so AIBU?

I'm stunned, yanbu.

What is the name of the play?

I'd want to know how it happened both from the POV of the school and of the theatre company who presumably sold/gave tickets to a school.

What's the play called? I don't believe it though.

YANBU! I'd be furious.

play is called 'spring rising'

and this is not a troll post. btw

What play were they watching?

Did you have a letter asking if she could go to this play? If you did and you signed it then I'm not sure how you can complain about anything other than the teachers comment really. I wouldn't be happy if it was as described but I would also have checked it out for myself as the schools view of what my child can handle and my view of what my child can handle can vary greatly at times.

Wiki has this:

Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) is the German dramatist Frank Wedekind's first major play and a seminal work in the modern history of theatre.[1] It was written sometime between autumn 1890 and spring 1891, but did not receive its first performance until 20 November 1906, when it premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt. It carries the sub-title A Children's Tragedy.[2] The play criticises the sexually-oppressive culture of 19th century (Fin de siècle) Germany and offers a vivid dramatisation of the erotic fantasies that it breeds.[3] Due to the controversial subject matter (puberty, sexuality, rape, child abuse, homosexuality, suicide, abortion), the play has often been banned or censored.[4][5][6]

I really can't believe the teacher didn't know anything about the play. That she did no research at all. She would have found something out about it to tell the kids beforehand so they'd know what they were going to see. I can't believe the local public hall would have put it on. That means local am dram actors rehearsed this for months on end. So - what they managed to rehearse this without it leaking out? There'd be people at the halls presumably that would know what was going on, the manager etc even if it was just the janitor locking up at night they wouldn't have been able to completely keep it quiet.

Sorry, I don't believe it at all. Too many things don't add up.

Finding it hard to believe that the play's organisers would let a group of schoolchildren be booked in to see it. There must also have been warnings on explicit content. Also, I have never heard of it.

My older children have all done the drama GCSE and gone with school to see various plays , none of them were ever unsuitable in this way.

The letter doesnt mention the play contents from what I remember, am going to double check if I have missed that tiny detail!

I couldn't find anything under spring rising, only spring awakening which sounded like it was that. I agree there'd be warnings of explicit content. Too many safety nets and I can't believe it wouldn't have filtered through somehow that it was unsuitable.

I forgot to say what a complete cock-up

I studied this (in German) for A level in 1999. I'd be (a) surprised that 14 yo's were studying it, (b) that the teacher wasn't aware of how inappropriate the content was and (c) that the title of the play had been translated like this...

LOL. We went to see an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet with our school at about the same age, there was an astonishing amount of nudity.

How is your DD?

"seminal work" - brilliant!

Not sure if this all adds up, though.

I don believe this one bit tbh. The people running the show and the theatre would not allow a group of children to watch this play.

Also, all of our GCSE Drama trips were at the end of term. We went to see plays we had been studying. Why would the teacher take them to something that they knew nothing about and was irrelavent to the GCSE work they are doing?

My mother, DH and I went to see Spring Awakening when it was on in the West End a couple of years ago. The production wasn't too bad but the play was so terrible we walked out at the interval. It just felt like it was trying every sexual shock tactic in the book in a semi-titilating way - characters were introduced seemingly just to tell you about having been abused, raped etc. with no plot or character development. No commentary on what these characters had suffered.

If this is what they saw, it would be completely inappropriate for GCSE years, YANBU.

I missed that - seminal work . Agree with the other posters why would you go and see a play you haven't been studying. You study it usually then go and see it. I can't believe it's on a GCSE course. The teacher presumably would have had to get someone else's permission in the school and justified why it was relevant so she would have looked in to it.

I don't doubt eragon as a poster, she or he has been a regular for a long time and has posted a lot of good stuff.

The message home from her dd may have got muddled but I am sure eragon has posted in good faith.

I am ringing the public hall to ask for further info on this play.

Blimey. I studied Fruhlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) on my degree course and it was awkward enough to be discussing it as 20/21 year olds. Totally inappropriate for a GCSE course. Also an extremely odd choice for an Am Dram group to be putting on in a public hall. I wouldn't have wanted to go and see it on stage (and I've seen plenty professional productions involving nudity). If all this is true I would be asking some serious questions of the school!

I'd be ringing the school not the theatre ,its hardly their problem .

Once you have clear information on the play then I would be straight onto the school and asking for an investigation.

Also, why would a drama teacher take children to a play they knew nothing about. Seems very odd.

yes, it was spring awakening found it on the public halls whats on section.

hmmm....school to ring next.

Well it's easy to be misled. We went to see it because we read a rave review in Time Out of the production, how "brave" and groundbreaking and amazing the play was, how it was about youth reacting to political disfunction etc etc and also it was billed as a "musical". It sounded like it was Les Mis updated for the Weimar Republic with a bit more sex.

Instead we got a circle jerk, child abuse and incest - and that was just before the interval, it could possibly have got worse afterwards...I'm no prude and we've seen plenty of pretty racy stuff before but this was just pointless and didn't advance the plot or anything. We didn't stick around to find out how much worse it would get.

So who knows what the teacher thought it was going to be. SugarMice I can imagine those tutorials were awkward!!

So, What - they managed to rehearse this without it leaking out?
LOL too!