Our day out

Willy Russell was born in Liverpool in 1947. At school Willy was a failure, which made it harder for him to become a writer. When he left school with one English O' level he became a hairdresser. After that had found a temporary job stacking boxes in a warehouse. He returned to school and got A' Level while training to be a teacher. He wrote and produced his first stage play. After 18 months the success of his musical 'John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert' enabled him to write full time resulting in many stage, television and screen plays including 'Stags and Hens', 'One for the road', 'Educating Rita', 'One summer' and 'Shirley Valentine'. The types of pupils that attend the innercity secondary school are children with a poor lifestyle and with unemployment in the family. I think the school is an old building with very little modern resources and broken windows, which is situated near a busy road. The pupils in the progress class are remedial and need a lot of help and are not highly thought of by themselves and by most of the teachers. In Mrs. Kay's view "rejects since the day they were born". In 'Our day out' a class of remedial students go on a trip to a place called Conwy Castle with four teachers, Colin, Susan, Mrs. Kay and Mr. Briggs. They firstly stop off at a pair of shops. A male shopkeeper closes his shop when he sees the children coming towards him. He is

  • Word count: 1703
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our Day Out

How does Willy Russell create dramatic tension in the cliff scene of "Our Day Out"? The play is about a school trip to the Conwy Castle in Wales. The teacher Mrs Kay teaches a remedial class for illiterate children, called the Progress Class. The whole class including Reilly and Digga who use to be in the Progress Class are taken on a coach trip. They planned originally to go on a trip to the castle. But they also end up visiting the zoo, beach and fairgrounds. The play was set in Liverpool when a lot of people were living on poverty and working in factories in the late 1970s. The cliff scene involved Carol and Briggs. Carol is a shy and ignored person. 'Miss, when do we have to go home?' (Being ignored by Mrs Kay). She is also a deep thinker. Carol loved being in Wales, she was worried that soon they will all have to go back to school, 'Miss, when do we have t' go home?' she wanted to stay at the beach in Wales and not go back to school. Briggs didn't allow that and was trying to get Carol away from the cliff because it was dangerous for her. It wasn't normal for a child on a school trip to be wandering around on the top of a cliff. Carol didn't want to go back to school and kept saying to Mr Briggs what she'll do if he tries to come near her or try to grab her. Carol thought that even if she came down from the cliff and followed Mr Briggs instructions of going back

  • Word count: 1425
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our Day Out

"In 'Our Day Out' Willy Russell Provides Us With Important Messages Whilst Keeping Us Entertained." Discuss this statement with reference to the characters, events and techniques used in the play. 'Our Day Out' was first made as a television play in 1977. The play was set in Liverpool when a lot of people were living on poverty and working in factories. Shortly after the television play was broadcast, Willy Russell released the new script. In 1978, the stage version was produced and altered to suit the primacies. In the following essay, I am going to write about how the author, Willy Russell, puts across the point of poverty and unemployment onto a play whilst making it entertaining. Firstly, I am going to comment on how Willy uses the children of the play to pursue how the kids of Liverpool were brought up in society. The first point I am going to make is on how the children aren't given the chance to get a good education and on how they are prejudged on because they are in a progress class. Ronnie the driver prejudges them because they aren't in a posh school like he usually works for. A quote to support this point is when he says, 'we usually only do the better schools.' This is an example of how the children are judged on just because they go to a less well-funded school. Next I am going to talk about how they don't get a chance to have a good education. This is

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our Day Out!!!!

OUR DAY OUT :- THE EFFECTS OF CHARACTER IN ACTION THE USE OF DRAMATIC DEVICES and THE LAYERS OF MEANING IN LANGUAGE, IDEAS AND THEMES Writers are influenced by the historical times in which they live. Everyday of their lives, what they say and the way they act is influenced by the time in which they live. The 70s influenced Willy Russell in his writing. There are many examples of this in Our Day Out such as the style of the fair and the shop, the way the characters speak and the things that are going on, for example the description of the economic slump at the time. One of the reasons for Britain's industry being in decline was, that it was unable to be competitive on price against other countries who had new technology. The technology increased productivity and reduced costs through the use of less labour. As a result, some of the main industries in Britain had great financial difficulty and had to close down or reduce the work force causing a loss in jobs and high unemployment. This caused poverty and meant that people could not afford decent property and had to move into council homes. Class differences occurred, dividing people who had money and decent homes from people with little money and poor homes or no home at all. Willy Russell's writing was inspired by experiences when he was a teacher at a comprehensive school. Whilst he was a teacher at the school,

  • Word count: 2957
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our day out

Our Day Out The play 'Our Day Out' is set in Liverpool and on a school trip to Conwy Castle. It is set in the 1970s; children would have been separated into two different schools - grammar school and the comprehensive school. The play is about the progress class, which is a class for children with reading/writing problems. In 1970 the progress class students would not have had a good career prospects as there was already high unemployment and more factories were shutting down. Willy Russell didn't like school much. He repelled against factory work strongly, he hoped to be an author in the future. Like the other students in his play, he struggled against a society which expected him to fail. Russell presents us with two different teachers, Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs, both of then had different ways of teaching. Mrs Kay chooses to use the pastoral way of teaching and likes to have a calm, motherly relationship with the students. She knows that her students will most properly go on to do factory work, so she wants them to have a happy childhood 'Most of them were rejects on the day they were born ..... Cant we just try and give them a good day out?' Mr Briggs on the other hand, believes in a strict, academic teaching style. His relationship with the students is up tight and cautious. He doesn't trust any of the children and looks unimpressed with some of the other members of staff

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Our Day Out

Our Day Out Anthony Stapleton Introduction Willy Russell was inspired to write Our Day Out by his own experiences when he was a teacher at a comprehensive school. The play is set in a very run down part of Liverpool in the early 70s. This play is about a progress class which go on a trip for the first time, the deputy head who joins the trip unexpectedly changes this and believes they should be quiet and not have so much fun but to learn. As the day goes on the children get up to all sorts of mischief including stealing, eventually the deputy head finds out about this and his attitude towards the kids deteriorate further. Mr Briggs just wants to get them back to school as soon as possible. When put into a situation however with one of the children threatening to jump from a cliff he loosens up and takes the class to the fair where they have a great time. However at the end of the day Mr Briggs takes the negatives of him being fun and happy and exposes them to the light. At the start of the play you learn a bit about the children and the type of lives that they live. They are living in the inner city of Liverpool, which comes across as a poor area and where council homes are situated. The first character introduced to us is Carol, a younger girl who explains what the progress class is and that they are going on a trip. She seems to lack intelligence and it doesn't seem

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our Day Out

Our Day Out "Our Day Out" is a 20th century drama play but also contains comedy in particular places. It is written by Willie Russell and is based around a school trip from Inner city Liverpool to Conway Castle, Wales. The trip is organised for the progress class by their teacher Mrs Kay. Mrs Kay wanted to prove to the school that she could take out her class for the day and no trouble would be caused by it. The Headmaster would probably have not let the trip ho ahead in fear of the school getting a bad reputation, so Mrs Kay organised the trip on the sly, and asked permission for the trip to go ahead while the Headmaster was away. The story revolves around the way that Mrs Kay and the deputy head, Mr Briggs interact with the children and their approaches to situations. Mrs Kay is an open-minded, tolerant and kind-hearted teacher, who is affectionate for the children as people. She understands that a lot of the children come from a deprived background and makes allowances for this, she genuinely cares for the children; She tells Maurice "to come away from that road", When they are waiting for the bus, because she is truly concerned for his safety, not because she enjoys ordering her class around. Mrs Kay does not believe in traditional teaching methods of discipline and high standards, she is lost to understand the unfairness of a society which puts these children to

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  • Level: GCSE
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Our Day Out.

Guvvi Basra Essay Our Day Out By willy Russel Willy Russel is the writer of "Our Day Out" and was born on the twenty third of August , nineteen thirty seven . Russel attended woolfall secondary school , which he later described as a "badly run school " . Russel left Woolfall at the tender age of fifteen , with no formal qualifications . Life in Liverpool in the 70's was surreal because of the lack of unemployment , and the high level of crime . Poverty Struck the heart of Liverpool . One of the Girls that "Mrs Kay" taught , carol , only had one item of clothing for the week , this is why I called 70's Liverpool surreal . Another reason for the kids bad behaviour was because most of the kids parents had divorced , and this lead to bad behaviour out side the home . Willy Russel found his path to become a teacher , when he went to do an A-Level course at ST Katherine's collage . Since those days in the drugged up 70's collage , Russel has produced Music and poetry and even a novel , but when this failed , he discovered playwriting . I find the main deference's between the characters of Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs are there feelings towards the children that they teach . Mrs Kay has a comfortable relationship with the children . This is evident in the way she talks to Mr Briggs about the children

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our Day Out by Willy Russell.

Our Day Out Essay Sara Misra Willy Russell was born in 1947 at Whiston near Liverpool. His school career in the 'D-stream' was undistinguished and as a result, he left school with one O-level in English language at the age of fifteen. As there was a strong tradition of story telling in his family, he had a vague notion of wanting to become a writer. He drifted into hairdressing but eventually left that job and began working in several industrial jobs before deciding to return to full-time education. During this time, Willy Russell soon decided to become a dramatist whilst at St. Catherine's college. It was around this time when Willy Russell began writing plays. 'Our Day Out' is set in the inner city of Liverpool. This area had a high amount of environmental problems that included derelict houses, vandalism and a vast amount of pollution and decay. Due to these circumstances, people started to drift away from the inner city and soon enough there was an increase of unemployment and poverty. There were very little facilities available and as a result, only a few people continued to work in Liverpool. One example was education. There were only a limited number of good teachers and children who were willing to learn due to social and environmental limitations. A few children had difficulties learning and consequently were known as the 'progress class.' However, recent

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Our day out by Willy Russell

Our day out The play is set in 1970's Liverpool; this was when many factories had closed down and the docks were being mechanised, ultimately, this led to poverty. During that time, there were few minorities and therefore racism. There were also many council estates and the pollution levels were high. There was a huge increase in vandalism and prostitution. Any of these factors about Liverpool could have motivated Willy Russell to write the play: this is due to the fact that he was brought up in 1970's Liverpool; therefore could be reflecting his experiences via the play. He may be exhibiting how life can be for inner-city kids. Russell created the characters Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Kay with explicit contrast between the two. Mrs. Kay is a "Woolly-headed liberal..." Whereas Mr. Briggs is more conservative and is a "fool" and the children are working class and "factory fodder." The character Mr. Briggs is depicted as a conservative, bossy and disrespectful person, he accuses Mrs. Kay of being "on their side..." Willy Russell, the playwright, uses second person pronouns "you" to emphasise who the character is addressing, it is also repeated for even more emphasis; the order in which the pronouns are used could indicate anger which shows the audience the sort of person Mr. Briggs is; it also shows disrespect-this is due to the fact that he could be using sarcasm "aren't you?" As

  • Word count: 1152
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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