Anne Frank: The Backstory

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yracuse Stage is committed to providing students with rich theatre experiences that explore and examine what it is to be human. Research shows that children who participate in or are exposed to the arts show higher academic achievement, stronger self-esteem, and improved ability to plan and work toward a future goal.

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Lori Pasqualino as “Annabel” in the 2010 Bank of America Children’s Tour: Annabel Drudge... and the Second Day of School.

Photo by Michael Davis

09/10 BACKSTORY CLASSROOM STUDY GUIDE Editing, Layout & Design by Michelle Scully

CONTENTS

Timothy Bond

Producing Artistic Director Syracuse Stage & SU Drama

Jeffrey Woodward Managing Director

820 E Genesee Street Syracuse, NY 13210 www.SyracuseStage.org

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Teaching Theatre Hip-Shake Anne Frank: My Secret Life Rosalie Randazzo: Child Garment Worker Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Wizard Resources Syracuse Stage Season 2010-11

Director of Educational Outreach

Lauren Unbekant (315) 443-1150

Backstory Program Sponsored by

Manager of Educational Outreach

Michelle Scully (315) 442-7755 Group Sales & Student Matinees

Tracey White (315) 443-9844 additional support by

Box Office

(315) 443-3275 Syracuse Stage is Central New York’s premiere professional theatre. Founded in 1974, Stage has produced more than 230 plays in 37 seasons including numerous world and American premieres. Each season, upwards of 90,000 patrons enjoy an exciting mix of comedies, dramas and musicals featuring leading designers, directors and performers from New York and across the country, supported by a full-time and seasonal staff of artisans, technicians and administrators.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH AT SYRACUSE STAGE The Bank of America CHILDREN’S TOUR brings high-energy, interactive, and culturally diverse performances to elementary school audiences.

The BACKSTORY Program brings history to life, as professional actors portray historical figures in classrooms and other venues. artsEMERGING takes students on an in-depth exploration of our mainstage season using a multi-cultural, multi-arts lens.

The YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL challenges students to submit original ten-minute plays for a chance to see their work performed at Syracuse Stage.

Find us on:

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A heatre

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

of

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Any piece of theatre comprises multiple art forms. As you explore the play with your students, examine the use of:

WRITING

VISUAL ART/DESIGN MUSIC/SOUND

Teaching Theatre

The

DANCE/MOVEMENT Most (but not all) plays begin with a script — a story to be told and a blueprint of how to tell it. In his famous treatise, The Poetics, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle outlined

SIX ELEMENTS OF DRAMA that playwrights are mindful of to this day:

Plot What is the story line? What Language happened before the play started? What does each character want? What do they do to achieve their goals? What do they stand to gain/lose?

What do the characters say? How do they say it? When do they say it?

Do they speak to one character differently than another? Why?

Music

How do music and heme What ideas are sound help to tell this story? wrestled with in the play? What quespectacle What vitions does the play pose? Does it present sual elements support the play? This an opinion on those questions, or leave it could include: puppets, scenery, costo the audience to decide? tumes, dance, movement, and more.

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S

C

haracter Who are the people in the story? What is their relationship to one another? Why do they do what they do? How do their ages/status/etc affect them?

Other Elements: Conflict/Resolution, Action, Improvisation, Non-verbal communication, Staging, Humor, Realism and other styles, Metaphor, Language, Tone, Pattern and repetition, Emotion, Point of view.

At its core, drama is about characters working toward goals and overcoming obstacles.

Ask students to use their bodies and voices to create characters who are: very old, very young, very strong, very weak, very tired, very energetic, very cold, very warm. Have their characters interact with one another.

Give them an objective to fulfil despite their environmental obstacles. Later, recap by asking how these obstacles affected their character and the pursuit of his/her objectives.

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Teaching Theatre

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Most plays utilize designers to create the visual world of the play through scenery, costumes, lighting, and more.

These artists use

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

to communicate information about the world within the play and its characters.

Have students discuss these elements BEFORE attending the performance and ask them to pay special attention to how these elements are used in the production’s design. Whether your students are observing a piece of visual art like a painting or a piece of performance art like a play, allow them first to notice the basic elements, then encourage them to look deeper into why these elements are used the way they are.

LINE can have length, width, texture, direction and curve. There are 5 basic varieties: verticle, horizontal, diagonal, curved, and zig-zag.

SHAPEis two-dimensional and encloses space. It can be geometric (eg. squares and circles), man-made, or free-form.

FORMis three-dimensional. It encloses space

and fills space. It, too, can be geometric (eg. cubes and cylinders), man-made, or free-form.

SPACEis defined and determined by shapes and forms. Positive space is enclosed by shapes and forms, while negative space exists around them.

COLORhas three basic properties: HUE

is the name of the color (eg. red, blue, green), INTENSITY is the strength of the color (bright or dull), VALUE is the range of lightness to darkness.

TEXTURErefers to the “feel”

of an object’s surface. It can be smooth, rough, soft, etc.

Textures may be ACTUAL (able to be felt) or IMPLIED (suggested visually through the artist’s technique).

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SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Shake

HIP

FEATURING Charlo Kirk & Farasha Baylock CONCEIVED BY Lauren Unbekant WRITTEN BY Len Fonte & Reenah Golden DIRECTED BY Lauren Unbekant COSTUME DESIGN BY Meggan Kulczynski 6

HIPShake

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Much Ado About Hip-hop Shakespeare and hip-hop might seem like a strange pairing, but Hip-Shake will show you how “the Bard” and modern hip-hop artists use the English language in very similar ways.

Shakespeare’s works and today’s hip hop songs use a variety of literary devices to explore universal themes. Both art forms use the language of their times and are meant to be enjoyed in performance.

http://shakespeare2006.net/

Read the following quotation to your class

(from The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the 21st Century (introduction) by Harry Elam Jr. (Editor), Robert Alexander (Editor). New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004):

“With its celebration of language, meter, poetic strictures, verbal play and display, [hip hop] hearkens back to earlier traditions of oral expression in African-American culture... and even to classical theatrical conventions and the productive wordplay of William Shakespeare.”

Ask your students: How do you define poetry? Drawing on what you know about hip hop and about Shakespeare, do you agree that both are forms of poetry? Why or why not? from the Folger SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY For more questions and activities http://www.folger.edu/eduLesPlanDtl.cfm?lpid=750

He didn’t think to add “-izzle” to any of them, but Shakespeare invented an estimated 1,700 words. Listed to the left are a few of our favorites!

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HIPShake

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

M

Consonants and vowels are a great starting point for deciphering these clues. As a basic rule: the angrier any students complain that Shakespeare is hard to understand, that the language is out- someone is, the more consonants they use; the happier, dated and unclear. Believe it or not, the Eng- the more vowels. This is a bit oversimplified, but think of examples in your own life. Say this sentence out lish language has changed very little since Elizbethan times. Linguists (people who study languages) consider loud (like you really mean it) and notice how promiShakespeare’s writing only one “generation” apart from nent the consonants feel as you say them. our own. Grammar and sentence structure are virtually “I can’t believe you’d do that! You’re so selfish!” the same today as they were 400 years ago. If Shakespeare confuses you, it is likely that the problem is only Now try this one: the individual words. Here’s how to get past that: “I love how you look at me. I feel so wonderful!”

Some words from Shakespeare’s time have completely disappeared from the English language. For example, you’d be rightfully confused if someone asked you to bacarre the roisting wassail. Most published versions of Shakespeare’s plays include footnotes to explain these outdated words. Use them — they are there to help you.

The vowels here are fuller, and they make the whole sentence sound lighter and just plain nicer.

When the same consonant sound is used repeatedly, this is called alliteration. Here’s an example from Sonnet 30: “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought.”

If you are still hung up on a phrase or a sentence, move If a vowel sound is repeated, it’s called assonance: on. Don’t frustrate yourself reading the same line over “Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks?” (Romeo & and over again. Instead get an idea of how the character Juliet) is feeling, or what s/he wants in the scene, and see if it Rappers and hip-hop artists use alliteration and assobegins to make more sense as you continue. nance all the time. They also use rhythm, and ShakeBut how can you understand how a character is feeling speare is no different. There is a beat that drives each if you don’t understand the words s/he says? Do what line of Shakespearean text (more detail on the next page). actors do. Modern actors are trained to pick out clues in Shakespeare’s writing. In Shakespeare’s time, plays were barely rehearsed. Actors quickly memorized their This is just a small example of how the sound of lines and then performed only days later. There was no Shakespeare’s lines contains their meaning. Don’t forget that he didn’t intend his plays to be studied in time to sit around asking, “What is my motivation?” classrooms. He wrote them to be spoken and heard. If So Shakespeare, being an actor himself, knew that he needed to write in a style that would give his actors all you are stumped by the words he uses, say the line out loud. Use the sound and feel of the line, plus the conthe information they needed right inside the words. text of the play, to get the meaning. Just like listening to a song, you don’t always need to understand every word to get the big picture.

For more of Shakespeare’s grammatical clues, visit: www.bardweb.net/grammar/02rhetoric.html

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style

HIPShake

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

A Hip-Hop artist is a poet.

Shakespeare was a poet.

Both tell stories through

words rhyme rhythm ,

and

.

The only difference is the

Shakespeare’s style of choice was rhyming couplets. He didn’t use them all the time, but whenever he wanted to make a point or leave the audience with a lasting impression, he used a couplet.

A couplet is simply a pair of lines that rhyme and u u u / / are the same length. How do we measure the length? In “But soft, what light through syllables. How many syllables are in each of the lines in the example on the left? (Ignore the “u / u /” stuff for / u / u / now. )

yonder window breaks”

Alright. Time’s up.

Did you count ten syllables? That’s Shakespeare’s favorite kind of couplet, and probably the most common kind in the entire English language. It’s called iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter is a complicated name for a really simple style. In fact, the reason so many writers use iambic pentameter is that it’s very close to the way we speak in normal conversation.

Here’s what it means.

“PENTA-” means “five” “METER” is just another word for “rhythm” or “beat” “IAMB” is two sylables.

The quote above has five sets of iambs, making ten syllables total. Are you still with me? Each iamb has one stressed syllable and one unstressed. The stressed syllables just have a little extra emphasis. Basically, it sounds like: “dum-DUM dum-DUM dum-DUM dum-DUM dum-DUM.” In the example above, we marked the stressed syllables with “/” above them and the unstressed syllables with “u.” Try reading it aloud and see if you can get the rhythm.

To mix things up, poets and rap artists use lots of different meters in their songs. Shakespeare mixed things up, too, when he wanted to make certian points, but rap artists use “irregular” meter more frequently.

activity

Pick a rap or hip-hop song that you like and print the lyrics from the internet (let’s try to keep it clean, okay?) Read it aloud to get a feel for the rhythm. Now look closer. Is there a rhyme scheme? Are there the same amount of syllables in each line or not? Now try marking the stressed and unstressed beats. If you’re feeling creative, try writing your own poem. Pick a style and have fun!

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HIPShake

Globe Theatre

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Inside the

“You will see such heaving and shoving, such itching and shouldering to sit by the women, such care for their garments that they not be trod on... such toying, such smiling, such winking, such manning them home... that it is a right comedy to mark their behavior.” Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse (1579)

This quote is a first-hand account of what a trip to the theatre was like in Elizabethan England: pushing to sit next to the prettiest ladies, accidentally stepping on each other’s clothes, rough-housing and laughing. Sounds more like a rock concert than a trip to the theatre.

In those days, the theatre experience was not unlike an outdoor concert. Take a look at this picture of the Globe Theatre. First, notice how the audience surrounds the stage on three sides. This is known as a thrust stage. Next, check out the three-tiered covered gallery seats. These were like modern luxury boxes for those who could afford it. The best seats were reserved for royalty like Queen Elizabeth herself. She preferred seats where she could be seen and envied by the poorer audience members and addressed by the actors.

Upper-class men and women were not the only ones who enjoyed live theatre. Tanners, butchers, shoe-makers, even servants could see any of Shakespeare’s plays for the cost of only one penny. Here among the “groundlings,” we would have found the heaving and shoving that Stephen Gosson spoke of in the quote above. The groundlings weren’t concerned with manners or etiquette like the royalty. They came to hoot and holler, cheer and boo, eat and drink.

Shakespeare knew that his plays needed to appeal to queens and servants alike. So he wrote about royal families and Greek history to please the galleries, but added brutal swordfights, sexual innuendo, silly drunks, and mischevious servants for the groundlings.

Where would you rather be: with the groundlings or with the royalty? Look at the picture. Where would you get the best view of the stage? From where would you best hear the actors? What happens to the groundlings when it rains? Where would be the most fun place to watch? If you were a writer, what would you put in your plays to appeal to both classes of audience?

http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/theatre.htm#Globe

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SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Anne Frank: My Secret Life

FEATURING Erin Kathleen Schmidt WRITTEN BY Patricia Buckley DIRECTED BY Lauren Unbekant COSTUME DESIGN BY Meggan Kulczynski

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Anne Frank:My Secret Life

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Germany

Timeline

Frank Family

1929 June 12. Anne Frank is born in Frankfurt, Germany.

Adolph Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany and enacts Anti-Semitic laws. The first concentration camp is built in the town of Dachau.

1933 The family moves to the Netherlands to escape growing violence against Jews in Germany.

Nov. 9-10. ‘Kristallnacht.’ Jewish businesses and synagogues in Austria and Germany are looted and destroyed.

1938

Nazis implement the T-4 Program, which authorized the killing of mentally & physically handicapped persons as well as the institutionalized.

1939

Germany invades the Netherlands.

Dec. 11. Germany declares war on the U.S.

The ‘Final Solution’ is adopted by Nazi party leaders. Auschwitz, Belzec, and Sobibor become fully operational death camps.

June 6. ‘D-Day.’ Allies invade the German stronghold on the beaches of Normandy, France.

1940 Otto Frank’s business moves to new offices on the Prinsengracht Canal.

1941 The family, along with all other Dutch Jews, are forced to wear yellow stars at all times.

1942 June 12. Anne receives a diary for her birthday.

July 5. Anne’s sister Margot is summoned to a labor camp.

The family goes into hiding the next day.

July 13. The Van Pels family joins the Franks.

Nov. 16. Fritz Pfeffer joins the group.

1944 Aug. 4. The annex is discovered. Occupants are arrested and sent to Westerbork Transit Camp.

Sept. 3. The family is relocated to Auschwitz, where the men and women are separated. Hermann van Pels is gassed three days later.

Oct. 28. Anne & Margot are sent to Bergen-Belsen.

Dec. 20. Fritz Pfeffer dies at Neuengame.

German troops surrender to Soldiers during the Allied Invasion of Europe, D-Day, June 6, 1944.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/ with/2561211400/

Jan. 27. Allies liberate Auschwitz. Otto Frank is among the survivors.

1945 Jan. 6. Edith Frank dies at Auschwitz.

March. Anne & Margot die of typhus.

April 30. Adolph Hitler commits suicide.

May 7. Germany surrenders the war.

June. Otoo Frank returns to Amsterdam, unaware of his daughters’ fates.

Oct. 24. Otto learns in a letter of his daughters’ deaths. He is given Anne’s diary.

Child survivors of the Holocaust filmed during the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army. January, 1945 http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html

The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Of the 22 defendants, 11 were sentenced to death, 8 were imprisoned, and only 3 were acquitted.

(November 10, 1938) The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Berlin: Shattered Shop Windows http://www.ushmm.org/

1946 1947 Anne’s diary is published in Amsterdam. It would be published in the USA in 1952.

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SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

The Holocaust

Anne Frank:My Secret Life

“I can remember that as early as 1932, groups of Storm Troopers came marching by singing: ‘When Jewish blood splatters from the knife.’” Otto Frank

During World War II, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews. The Holocaust is the name used to refer to this state-sponsored persecution and murder.

Beginning with racially discriminatory laws in Germany, the Nazi campaign expanded to the mass murder of all European Jews.

During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: gypsies, people with disabilities, and some Slavic people (Polish, Russian, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. According to Nazi leadership, Germans were “racially superior.” The Jews, and others deemed “inferior” were considered “unworthy of life.” They established concentration camps to imprison Jews and other “inferior” people. Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass murder operations. More than a million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by these units, usually in mass shootings. Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany deported millions more Jews from occupied territories to extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed killing facilities using poison gas. At the largest killing center, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports of Jews arrived almost United States Holocaust Museum” daily from across Europe. “The www.ushmm.org In the final months of the war, as Allied forces moved across Europe, they began to find and liberate concentration camp prisoners.

By war’s end, close to 2 out of every 3 Jews in Europe had been murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in the massive crime we now call the Holocaust.

Photos: Above, cannisters of a poison gas called Zyklon B. At left, a sign at the BergenBelsen camp warns of a typhus outbreak.

Anne and Margot died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen only weeks before the camp’s liberation. [www.annefrankguide.net] 13

Story SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Anne’s

adapted from AnneFrank.org

Anne’s father, Otto, works at his family’s bank. Her mother, Edith, takes care of everything at home. It is a carefree period for Margot and Anne. However, their parents are worried. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party have made Jews the scapegoat for all of Germany’s social and economic problems.

Anne Frank:My Secret Life Like thousands of other Jews, Margot receives orders to report to a German work camp on July 5, 1942. Her parents have expected such a call-up: the secret hiding place is almost ready. Not only for their own family, but also for the Van Pels family: Otto’s co-worker Hermann, his wife Auguste, and their son Peter. The next day, the Frank family immediately takes to hiding. They are helped by four of Otto’s employees: Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl. They arrange the food supplies, clothing, books, and all sorts of other necessities.

Anne’s parents no longer feel safe, and Otto’s bank is also in financial trouble because of the worldwide economic crisis. Otto and Edith decide to leave Germany. Otto goes to the Netherlands to start a company in Amsterdam, where his family would join him a year later. They feel free and safe until the German army invades the Netherlands on May 10, 1940.

Peter van Pels

Margot, Otto, Anne, and Edith Frank (1940)

Miep Gies In November, 1942 an eighth person joins: Fritz Pfeffer, an acquaintance of both families. The people in hiding pass their time by reading and studying. There is a lot of tension, probably due to the oppressive nature of the hiding place and their constant fear of being discovered. They often quarrel among themselves.

Discrimination against the Jews began there as well: Jews could not own their own businesses, Jewish children had to go to separate schools, all Jews had to wear a yellow star, and countless other restrictions.

On her thirteenth birthday in 1942, Anne receives a diary as a present. It is her favorite gift. She begins writing in it immediately:

“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”

Fritz Pfeffer 14

continued...

Anne Frank:My Secret Life

Story

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Anne’s

continued

When the people in hiding have spent almost two years in the Secret Annex, there is fantastic news: a massive landing of the Allies on the beaches of Normandy. Europe could soon be liberated. Anne hopes to return to school in the fall.

But on August 4, 1944, an SS Officer and three Dutch policemen arrive and demand to be taken to the Secret Annex. The people in hiding have been betrayed. They are arrested, as are some of their helpers, but Miep and Bep are left behind, where they find and rescue Anne’s diary.

The occupants of the Annex spend a month at a transit facility before being taken by train to Auschwitz.

At the end of October 1944 Anne and Margot are moved to Bergen- Belsen. Their mother remains behind, but soon falls ill and dies of exhaustion. Anne and Margot succumb to typhus in March 1945, only a few weeks before the camp is liberated by the British army.

The Annex measured only 500 square feet.

By November, these tight quarters were shared by eight people. The Frank family lived in two rooms on the first floor, the Van Pels family in the other two rooms on the second floor. Through Peter Van Pel’s tiny bedroom was an entrance to the attic.

On the walls of the room in which she hid, Anne pasted pictures, one of the few things the Nazis did not strip when the Franks were arrested. The room is now refurnished to look as it might have when Anne was in hiding. Times photo: Photo from “A History for Today: Anne Frank”

Otto Frank is liberated from Auschwitz in January 1945. He does everything he can to find out the fate of his daughters: placing an ad in the newspaper and talking to survivors, until he meets witnesses of their deaths. When Miep Gies hears the news, she gives Otto Anne’s diary and notebooks. Otto reads about the plan Anne had to publish a book about the time she spent in the Annex and decides to fulfill his daughter’s wish.

Following the war, Otto devotes himself to human rights, and answers thousands of letters from across the world. He says, “Young people especially always want to know how these terrible things could ever have happened. I answer them as well as I can. And then at the end, I often finish by saying, ‘I hope Anne’s book will have an effect on the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace,’”

Inside the

annex

The hiding place was a storage space for the business, and consisted of no more The exterior of Otto’s Amsterdam than a few windows, stacks offices (highlighted in blue), of boxes, and a loft space. with the canal in the foreThere was also, fortunate- ground.

Photos courtesy of www.annefrankguide.net ly, a toilet and a sink. The Franks’ first order of business was to make curtains for the windows for security reasons. When this was finished, they made every effort to turn the bare storage space into a home, but just beyond the fake bookcase that hid the secret entrance were functioning offices.

During business hours they The entrance to the annex was cleverly hidden by a bookcase, were forced to maintain an shown here ajar. insufferable silence.

Photos courtesy of annefrankbiography.com 15

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Rosalie Randazzo

Child Garment Worker

FEATURING Toby Robin Marks WRITTEN BY Sara Ariello & Anna Cometa DIRECTED BY Lauren Unbekant COSTUME DESIGN BY Julia Bower

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Rosalie Randazzo: Child Garment Worker

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

P

Growing Up Factories IN THE

retend for a moment that you are the child of a family moving to America in 1906. You don’t know much English, you’ve left all your friends behind, and you live in a tiny, dirty, cramped tenement apartment in New York City. Your family came here to find a better life, and you still believe there is hope for happiness, but your family is quickly running out of money. They ask you to help, and you go to work.

You go to the nearest textile factory, where clothing is made, and you are hired on the spot. They make you a “scavenger” and quickly show you what to do. The machines that the older workers use are enormous and noisy, with lots of moving parts. As the machine is used, bits of cotton fall to the floor beneath it or get stuck between the moving parts.

“This is wasted money,” your boss explains. “All you need to do is pick up the cotton when it falls, so we can re-use it.” He smiles and tells you it will be easy, and it does sound easy . . . at first. Then you look up at the machine, with its sharp metal parts whirring around so quickly, and you realize how dangerous this job is. Your boss tells you to get to work, so you do. You lay on the floor, making yourself as thin as possible while you carefully crawl underneath the machine. The noise is tremendous. The whirring pieces of metal swoop just inches above your head. One mistake and your hair could get caught and ripped from your head. One mistake and you could lose an arm. Dust is everywhere and it rushes into your nose when you breathe. Already you want to quit, but you think about your family and the few pennies you will earn for them today.

“At least I am being paid,” you think as you look at the orphan boys and girls working beside you. Orphans usually were not paid. Instead the factory gave them food, clothing and a place to sleep. That seems fair, you think, but as you look at the tired, hungry orphans in their tattered clothes, you pity them. One orphan is in the corner — a supervisor is beating him with a cane. Another is forced to work with a heavy weight tied around her neck. You quickly learn not to make the supervisors angry.

Back to work. Dozens of other machines need to be cleaned, so you hurry along the line. A girl who has worked there for months says sometimes she counts her steps to pass the time.

Most days she walks twenty miles back and forth between the machines. Twenty miles?

You feel a knot in your stomach thinking about the next fourteen hours. You will work well into the night, with only one short break. You think about your family again. You are doing the right thing, aren’t you? You want to help and you wouldn’t mind working — if only you had more breaks and a safer job. Best not to think about that, though. You have a long day ahead of you.

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Fair Labor Standards Act

Rosalie Randazzo: Child Garment Worker

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Many attempts were made to stop unfair child labor with laws and regulations, but all of them faced the problem of constitutionality. The Constitution protects the rights of all its citizens, including business owners. The question was: is it fair to tell a business owner how to run his/ her business? Would that violate the owner’s right to negotiate contracts with his/her employees?

Of course no employer has the right to abuse their employees, and in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed. In 1941 the Supreme Court upheld the law, deciding that it did not violate the employer’s rights. Since then, the law has been amended with the changing times. Here is a look at the FLSA then and now:

FEDERAL

MINIMUM WAGE HISTORY

Effective Date 10/24/1938 10/24/1939 10/24/1945 01/25/1950 03/01/1956 09/03/1961 09/03/1963 02/01/1967 02/01/1968 05/01/1974 01/01/1975 01/01/1976 01/01/1978 01/01/1979 01/01/1980 01/01/1981 04/01/1990 04/01/1991 10/01/1996 09/01/1997 07/24/2007 07/24/2008 07/24/2009

Hourly Wage $0.25 $0.30 $0.40 $0.75 $1.00 $1.15 $1.25 $1.40 $1.60 $2.00 $2.10 $2.30 $2.65 $2.90 $3.10 $3.35 $3.80 $4.25 $4.75 $5.15 $5.85 $6.55 $7.25

Original Maximum Hours per Week (1938) 44 Current Maximum Hours per Week (2009) 40 “Overtime” Employees working more than the maximum number of hours per week must be paid 1.5 times their normal wage for hours worked past the maximum. Many jobs are exempt from this regulation, but it does apply for most hourly jobs.

Children 16-17 years old may work unlimited hours in any occupation that is not hazardous. Hazardous jobs include those requiring use of heavy machinery, meat slicers, grinders, or choppers.

Children 14-15 years old are limited on school days to 3 hrs/ day, 18 hrs/week, and no later than 7:00PM. On weekends and summers, they may work 8 hrs/day, 40 hrs/week, but no later than 9:00PM. Jobs that have different rules than these include farm work, performing, businesses owned by the child’s parents, newspaper delivery, and others.

http://www.laborlawcenter.com/t-federal-minimum-wage.aspx

If you have a job, or are thinking about getting one, know your rights! Visit www.dol.gov, www.labor.state.ny.us, or check in with your school’s guidance office!

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Face on

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Child Labor Putting a

Lewis Hine POA by Robert Marks http://photomentors.com/

The photos on this page and throughout the Rosalie Randazzo study guide are all by Lewis Hine unless otherwise noted.

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Rosalie Randazzo: Child Garment Worker

Lewis Hine

was the official photographer for the National Child Labor Committee and a freelance photographer for a social reform magazine. Hine was a pioneer of “documentary photography” — using cameras to capture moments of everyday life that symbolize a period of history. But Hine wasn’t just interested in recording history. He used photographs to change history.

Hine was a school teacher in New York City when he began photographing the arrival of immigrants to Ellis Island. He was also interested in issues of poverty, investigating the condition of cheap tenement housing and industrial work environments. By showing the public visual evidence of things they might normally be unaware of, Hine hoped to inspire people to reform and improve our society. Meanwhile, the National Child Labor Committee was lobbying for the government to protect children’s rights in the workforce, but they faced resistance from big business owners who had a lot of political influence.

The NCLC knew that if the public supported labor reform, the government would be forced to consider it a serious issue. Many adults, however, thought that children benefitted from jobs that taught them responsibility, and low-income families often depended on the extra money their children brought home each week. The NCLC needed to prove to the public that child labor was hurting kids, not helping them. They needed proof. They needed Lewis Hine. Hine accepted the job and travelled the country documenting working conditions. Factory owners began to recognize him and would often refuse to let him inside. Others would hide their young workers when Hine arrived.

Hine would fool them by posing as a fire inspector or another important figure. After Hine and the NCLC achieved their goal of labor reform, Hine began photographing Red Cross workers during World War I, and was later hired to capture images of the Empire State Building construction and New Deal work programs during the Great Depression. He dedicated his life to improving society but never earned much money for it. He died in poverty in 1940.

Century of Immigration

Rosalie Randazzo: Child Garment Worker

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

A

Immigration is a vital piece of American history. From the period of European colonization to today, every major period in our history is influenced by immigration.

However, our history is also marked by periods of fear and prejudice toward immigrant communities. From the forced migration of Africans to North America under the institution of slavery to the internment of immigrants in the 1940s, immigrants and their treatment are issues that affect every aspect of society.

Europeans have immigrated to the Americas since the 16th century. The reasons for their arrival are as numerous as the individuals themselves, but certain historical events caused surges in immigration: the Irish potato famine of 1845, the American Gold Rush of 1849, and failed revolutions in Germany and France in 1848. Yet it was not until the 1880s that America saw its first great wave of European immigration.

An average of 560,000 immigrants arrived each year between 1880 and 1924, amounting to over 25 million immigrants in a 44 year period. This period also featured the opening of Ellis Island in the New York harbor, which processed more than 22 million immigrants before it closed in 1954.

The high rate of immigration in this short period of time led to growing frustration over the congestion immigration was causing. In 1924 Congress moved to limit immigration in an attempt to control the growth of the population.

The Immigration Act of 1924 established fixed quotas based on nationality and suspended all immigration from the Far East. The establishment of permanent quotas in 1929, coupled with the stock market crash and the Great Depression, caused a dramatic decrease in immigration during the 1930s. Although immigration slowed considerably during World War II, immigration resumed its normal pace when the war ended in 1945.

Adapted from http://www.immigrationarchive.com/

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With further immigration legislation in 1952 the average number of immigrants per year decreased again. All in all, the period between 1925 and 1964 witnessed a 70 percent drop in immigration.

In 1965 the immigration controls enacted in the previous 40 years came to an end and immigration resumed at a pace nearly equal to the great wave of the early 20th century.

With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, the system of overarching quotas was abolished and replaced with national quotas. Between 1965 and 1989, the US grew by nearly 500,000 immigrants per year.

However, immigration did not remain at that level for long. The 1990s brought a new face to immigration. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992 led to an increase in the availability of cheap labor from Mexico, leading to a major spike in immigration levels.

Immigration rates nearly doubled, with an average of 1,000,000 immigrants entering the country annually. This influx of new labor led to calls for immigration reform, especially as industries began to move production out of the country in an effort to lower their costs.

However, it was the attacks of September 11, 2001 that once again put immigration reform in the spotlight. In Washington, D.C., the debate over immigration reform continues to this day and proves to be a major issue in Congressional and Presidential elections.

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Nikola Tesla:

FEATURING Louis Balestra WRITTEN BY Danielle Sertz CONCEPT BY Matt Smith DIRECTED BY Lauren Unbekant COSTUME DESIGN BY Gretchen Darrow-Crotty 21

Nikola Tesla: The

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Forgotten Wizard

W h o i s N i k o l a Te s l a ?

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived. His

technological achievements transformed America from a nation of isolated communities to a country connected by power grids where information was available upon demand. In the 20th century, it was Tesla’s technology that united the United States and eventually the world.

Tesla’s life was like a movie. It is the story of a brilliant and charismatic immigrant who rose to the height of celebrity with his amazing talent, and then was tragically undone by his own visionary ideas. The cast of characters includes: Thomas Edison, J. Pierpont Morgan, Guglielmo Marconi, George Westinghouse, Mark Twain and many more.

A Serb by origin, his early discovery of the alternating current motor led him to America to seek a venue for his discovery. Here he developed the polyphase AC system of power transmission, which drives every home and industry in the country. He invented the Tesla coil to create high-frequency electricity, and with it neon and florescent lighting, radio transmission, remote control, and hundreds of other devices which are now an essential part of our everyday lives.

Tesla was also a visionary thinker, and in his papers and interviews he anticipated the development of radio and television broadcasting, robotics, computers, faxes, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Tesla’s great dream was to find the means to broadcast electrical power without wires in between. But like many geniuses, he was not a practical man. He gave his life to realize his visions, while others made millions with his inventions. In the end, he wound up a penniless and forgotten man.

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/

In his later years, Tesla was regarded as an eccentric scientist. Ridiculed by his contemporaries, his ideas frequently appeared in works of science fiction. He was the inspiration for the mad scientist in Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons.

At the height of World War II, Tesla claimed that he invented a powerful “death beam” that could destroy attacking aircraft. He proposed a system of beam weapons to protect the borders of the United States and other European nations. When he died, most of Tesla’s technical papers mysteriously disappeared, and many have not been found since.

Tesla was so far ahead of his time that many of his ideas are only appearing today. His legacy can been seen in everything from microwave ovens to MX missiles. But more than this, Tesla’s life inspires us to believe that anything we can imagine can be accomplished especially with electricity.

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Nikola Tesla: The

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Forgotten Wizard

Though his inventions are commonplace in our everyday life, the name Nikola Tesla seldom rings a bell. In his lifetime Telsa is reported to have earned over 300 patents...

tesla’s Lab

Take a look and see how often you encounter these four of Tesla’s inventions below!

Tesla Coil

The Tesla coil transforms an input voltage into brief pulses of extremely high voltages. Tesla’s largest coil, built at his Colorado Springs lab in 1899, was 52 feet in diameter and generated pulses as high as 12Mv. This invention was patented as part of a high-frequency lighting system.

In the early decades of radio, most practicable radios utilized Tesla coils in their transmission antennas. Tesla used larger or smaller versions of his invention to investigate fluorescence, x-rays, radio, wireless power, and electromagnetics, among others.

The coil has become a commonplace in electronics, used to supply high voltage to the front of television picture tubes, in a form known as the flyback transformer.

Remote Control

Radio

Tesla described his radio-controlled boat as the first “teleautomaton,” the first of many robots that would serve humankind. In 1898, an astonished group of potential investors watched Tesla demonstrate his remote-control boat at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Tesla’s radio control system was patented that same year. Radio control remained a novelty until the launching of the Space Age and the orbiting of myriad commercial and military satellites, all under remote control.

In 1895, Tesla began experimentally monitoring the radio emissions of his high-frequency generators, first picking up signals around New York City and later 30 miles up the Hudson River. Though he used 17 of Tesla’s patents, Marconi was given credit for inventing radio in 1904. The US Supreme Court later recognized (though not until 1943) Tesla’s patent as having priority over Marconi’s.

Remote control technology is still used everywhere from large industries like the military to control a multitude of weaponry to small household devices like television and video game controllers.

Though seldom given the credit for it, Nikola Tesla is the grandfather of wireless technology as we know it today.

Tesla’s patent [U.S. patent number 649,621] is still the fundamental means for transmitting and receiving radio waves today.

AC motor

AC motors can operate without any moving electrical contacts and without first converting alternating current — delivered by the power company — to direct current.

Tesla patented 20 distinctive kinds of AC motors and generators within two years of his first, along with many patents for improved motor components and power supply.

A somewhat more modest lineage of AC motors has powered most of the familiar appliances of twentieth-century life, from refrigerators to coffee grinders.

A multiple-exposure photo taken in 1899, gives the illusion of Nikola Tesla reading casualty in as a Tesla coil discharged millions of volts.

Dickenson V. Alley/Burndy Library

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/

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Nikola Tesla: The

In 1901,

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Forgotten Wizard

Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all.

It was the inventor’s biggest project, and his most audacious.

The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall.

One midsummer night, it emitted a dull rumble and proceeded to hurl bolts of electricity into the sky. The blinding flashes, The New York Sun reported, “seemed to shoot off into the darkness on some mysterious errand.”

But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory.

Today, a fight is looming over the ghostly remains of that site, called Wardenclyffe — what Tesla authorities call the only surviving workplace of the eccentric genius who dreamed countless big dreams while pioneering wireless communication and alternating current. The disagreement began recently after the property went up for sale in Shoreham, N.Y.

Tesla’s Tower of Power

Excerpt taken from “A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure” By WILLIAM J. BROAD for the New York Times on May 5, 2009. Read the rest of the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html

“As soon as [the Wardenclyffe facility is] completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place ...”

- Nikola Tesla, “The Future of the Wireless Art,” Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, 1908, pg. 67-71.

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Nikola Tesla: The

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Forgotten Wizard

The Niagara Falls Power Project

Since his childhood, Tesla had dreamed of finding a way to harness the power of Niagra Falls. In late 1893, his dream became a reality, when Westinghouse was awarded the contract to create a powerhouse to do just that. After many other failed proposals from experts around the world, Lord Kelvin, the famous British physicist, and his commission asked Westinghouse to use alternating current to harness the power of the falls.

The construction period was traumatic for engineers, mechanics and workers, but it weighed most heavily on investors. After a fiveyear nightmare of doubt and financial crises, the project approached completion. Tesla had not doubted the results for a moment.

The investors, however, were not at all sure the system would work. While the machines were running smoothly in Tesla’s threedimensional imagination, they were still unproved and expensive.

When the switch was thrown, the first power reached Buffalo at midnight, November 16, 1896. The first one thousand horsepower of electricity surging to Buffalo was claimed by the street railway company, but already the local power company had orders from residents for five thousand more. Within a few years the number of generators at Niagara Falls reached the planned ten, and power lines were electrifying New York City. Broadway was ablaze with lights; the elevated, street railways, and subway system rumbled; and even the Edison systems converted to alternating current.

But there were complications. The War of Currents* left Westinghouse financially drained from years of litigation. J. P. Morgan, hoping to bring all U.S. hydroelectric power under his control, proceeded to manipulate stock market forces with the intention of starving out Westinghouse and buying the Tesla patents.

Westinghouse called on Tesla, pleading for an escape from the initial contract that gave Tesla generous royalties. In a magnanimous and history-making gesture, Tesla said he tore up the contract. He was, after all, grateful to the one man who had believed in his invention. And he was convinced that greater inventions lay ahead. The Westinghouse Electric Company was saved for future triumphs. Tesla, although sharing the glory, was left forever afterward in recurring financial difficulties. * read more at: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_warcur.html

Potential Energy: How Does It Work?

Energy is the capacity for doing work. Potential energy is the kind of energy that is at rest. When that energy goes into motion, it is called kinetic energy.

BACKGROUND A big rock sitting on the top of a cliff has lots of potential energy. If we push it off the cliff, then its energy becomes kinetic-energy in motion! If the falling rock lands on one side of a seesaw, this moving energy will lift the other side of the seesaw into the air.

A lake sitting behind a dam also is full of potential energy. If the water is allowed to flow, its potential energy becomes kinetic energy. If some of the water flows through a pipe to a turbine, its kinetic energy will spin the blades of the turbine.

DEMONSTRATION EXPERIMENT: MAKE & OPERATE A TURBINE Materials: 2 popsicle sticks 1 pencil epoxy See instructions at right: GRADE LEVEL Grades 4 through 6 For further exploration, extensions and other activities visit the teacher’s resource page at: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/tt/index.html 25

SYRACUSE STAGE 2010-2011 BACKSTORY STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

ReSources

LEARN MORE...

TEACHING THEATRE/ARTS

ArtsWork.com

http://artswork.asu.edu/arts/teachers/resources/theatre1.htm ChildDrama.com

http://www.childdrama.com/lessons.html Educational Theatre Association

http://www.edta.org/publications/teaching.aspx Kennedy Center

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/teach/hto.cfm Viola Spolin

http://www.spolin.com/

INFORMATION SOURCES & RESOURCES HIP-SHAKE

Complete Works of Shakespeare <http://shakespeare.mit.edu> Flocabulary <www.flocabulary.com/shakes/shakeshome.html> Poetics of Hip-Hop <http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/3656> Shakespeare-HipHop Analogues <www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/staff_top_10/ top-ten-shakespeare-hip-hop-analogues.htm> www.Shakespeare.com www.Shakespeare-online.com www.bardweb.com

ANNE FRANK

Anne Frank Center <www.AnneFrank.com> Anne Frank Museum <www.AnneFrank.org> Anne Frank Tree <www.AnneFrankTree.com> Time Magazine <www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/frank01.html> WWII <www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm> http://teacher.scholastic.com/frank http://www.annefrank.eril.net/contents.htm http://www.uen.org/annefrank

ROSALIE RANDAZZO

Century of Immigration <www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-century.html> Industrial Revolution <http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/Industrial.html#CLA> www.pickens.k12.sc.us/pmsteachers/jordanrg/Child%20Labor/webquest.htm> www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson289/web-child-labor.html>

NIKOLA TESLA

Wizard: the life and times of Nikola Tesla : biography of a genius By Marc J. Seifer Tesla: man out of time By Margaret Cheney

http://www.pbs.org/tesla

“A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure” By William J. Broad http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html

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