Concert of Remembrance

by

Jacquimac

Remembrance Day was only a couple of months away and in the UK there are Parades and services for the Fallen and with Veterans marching . With our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and terrorists killing civilians at home our little drama group decided to hold a concert but with a difference.

We had decided that instead of only charging enough to cover our overheads (rent) we would charge a minumum of Five Pounds a ticket with all profits being split between "Help the Heroes Fund" and "The Poppy Appeal".

We didn`t have our own place to hold concerts, usually we had to hire somewhere and rehearse anywhere we could, costumes we scrounged or made with our mothers help and any props or scenery we usually got our dads to help with.

We sat down and threw ideas around and finally decided concentrate on the music that came out of the two World Wars, of course there was only the 1920`s and early 30`s when britain seemed at peace with world, as far as we knew but doubtless being school kids we could be proved wrong.

We didn`t want a concert that was just singing and bands, No it should be enjoyable but memorial, we might be young but we knew the sacrifice that the men and women of our Armed Forces had made to enable us to live in freedom, At the same time we weren`t pleased with the reception they got from some of the Ethnic Minority Groups that were supposedly loyal British Citizens.

We didn`t agree that our troops should be dying in foreign lands for no good reasons except too boost the politicians ego`s. We also knew that men and women had no choice but to go and fight were they were sent. The Armed Forces in the UK unlike those of other European Countries don`t have a union that will fight on their behalf.

So after a couple of hours we decided to see if the School Orchestra would do the music, like Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey and such like, we would include early 1900 Music hall type acts and the singers doing Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn and the Andrews Sister songs.

Eventually we had it all mapped out all we had to do was get the help we needed and we were pleasently surprised with all the help we got. We expected to have to perform in a large and draughty hall but the manager at the town`s theatre which could seat a couple of hundred at a time came on board and so we had a proper venue.

We spoke to the Music department at school and we got the orchestra to perform, the choir mistress took charge of the music for what ever songs we would sing and best of all one of the directors from a TV soap said he would put it all together for us and possibly get paid if we could get it televised.

We could hardly contain ourselves with the excitement we felt, we knew it wouldn`t be easy and we only had around six weeks to put it all together. A few local actors, singers and film stars offered to perform but we politely turned them down, we told them that we wanted an school kids cast and thanked them for they`re kind offers. They did however make very generous donations to both the fund and the cost of getting costumes together.

We weren`t a private school and most of us came from working class families with no pretensions that we were better than anyone else, we knew we were at the bottom of pile and only our own hard work would get us anywhere, no there was no snobbish were we were concened.

The first proper meeting was held in a local hotels conference room and as well as our little group those that attended were the Choirmistress, Head of the School Music Dept, the Orchestra Leader, the Director and Theatre manager, there was a representaive from the British Legion an Officer from a locally based Army unit, somebody from the Local TV station and the Mayor.

Tonight we were going to outline what we wanted to do and get some feedback from the various experts on what we could or couldn`t do and hopefully end the the meeting with a basic outline of the concert. show or whatever we would end up with.
Although we knew there was going to be a lot of hard work involved we hoped we would also have a lot of fun.

A couple of times some of the grownups suggested we get some of the local professionals to take part and after a very heated argument dropped the idea, We told them that some of pro`s had already offered and that we had turned them down because we wanted it to be an all school kids cast. In the end a lot of adults agreed that it would detract from what we trying to do if we got professional singers and acors involved.

After I placed several large cheques from those that had offered to perform on the table the remaining dissenters gave in. I handed the cheques to choirmistress and she promised to bank them for us. We were doing quite well with donations so far the Cheques alone came to almost  £7000 and that gave us greater incentive to make the concert a success.