The dramatic purpose of this play is to show the audience how stubborn children are. Also to show how adults shouldn’t always feel sympathetic to children as they cause most of the trouble themselves. Using adult actors made an impact as the audience didn’t feel sorry for the characters. ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ was written by Tim Firth in 1999. It is about a class of year four pupils-aged around eight, who are doing a school nativity play. The style of this play is similar to blue remembered hills although is has a more comical storyline. The style of this play is to show the audience how children feel and behave towards each other. Tim Firth has also used adults to play children as they can show more emotion. I made decisions about blue remembered hills by using what I saw on ‘The Flint Street Nativity’. I made the decision on this as they act very kid-like in the flint street nativity so I used some of this is ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, although I had to be very careful not to make it too funny. ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ was written in 1984 whereas ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ was written in 1999, so the dates are over 10 years apart. Because of this, the themes and subjects used and talked about are very different. ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ is set in more modern times where a lot of the parents are divorced, so they have chosen to be apart. But in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, their parents are forced to be apart due to war. The similarity is that in both plays most children only have one parent but the difference is through choice and being forced. Also another theme which is different is child abuse. We don’t see a lot of this in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ but we do know it is going on and nothing is being done to stop it. We do not see any of this in ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ as more was being done to stop child abuse.
There are several main characters in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ and ‘The Flint Street Nativity’. Many of these characters have similarities. One of these pairs is Wallace Wilson and Christian Jerrums. Although we don’t see Wallace, we know that he has the highest status as the other characters always talk about him. Christian is similar as he is very mysterious and keeps himself to himself. Although we see Christian we can’t tell that he is a dark character as he doesn’t really talk a lot. Also another pair of characters who are similar is Donald and Adrian Atherton because they both get bullied. They both have the lowest status. In both plays the boys have difficulties and get bulled for it. In ‘Blue Remembered Hills, Donald gets abused and in ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ Adrian has speaking difficulties. The writers wanted to achieve the effect of people seeing what life was like for the person with the highest status or the person who is always getting bullied. This worked as it made an impact on the audience.
The themes of ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ and ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ are similar but they do change, for example, child abuse is not shown in ‘The Flint Street Nativity’. The themes are similar as they both show high and low class and status. This is because some people get singled out by the others. Also, the class is different as it shows different people’s family lives and how they are affected by it. Also another theme which is similar is childhood as in both plays, it shows the children all growing up and going through life. It shows them growing up and going through difficulties in life. This all happens within a short time.
These themes are similar to life as we all go through childhood and difficult times, but what is different is divorce, in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, divorce is looked down upon, so hardly anyone is divorced, but in ‘The Flint Street Nativity’, many of the children’s are divorced.
The genres of both plays are similar but in ‘Blue Remembered Hills’, there is a serious tragedy at the end, as Donald dies. ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ is also a comedy though as many aspects of the play are funny. In ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ the story line is very different but it has the same genre, comedy, this is because the play has been made to be funny, such as when they are looking for the escaped lizard. It is also slightly tragic as one boy is bullied for his speech difficulties. Dramatic devices are used throughout each play, such as suspense, monologues and multi-rolling. In ‘The Flint Street Nativity’ there is multi-rolling as the actors going from being the children to adults. In ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ suspense is used when they are hiding from the escaped prisoner of war.
During this project, I have learnt how to read lines and make up stage directions. It is also very easy for me to speed read now, which proves I know my lines. When looking at scripts, I now know how to read stage directions and put them onto the stage. Whilst studying ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ we watched ‘The Flint Street Nativity’. This helped as it showed us how adults acted as children; they made their movements very over the top and looked always excited. This helped as I then knew how to act like a child and move like one.
Beth Pink
