Special Thanks to…

The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive
The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive have kindly given us access to their archives. The oral history testimonies captured have been instrumental in supporting the creation of the show and making sure that the truth of the history of the Kindertransport events are reflected. During the show we use real verbatim clips from Kindertransport children and huge thanks to the University of Michigan-Dearborn for granting us permission to use this fantastic resource. You can visit it here: https://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/

The Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust
The Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust has given us special permission to use an original image of one of Sir Winton’s pieces of paperwork. The image shows a list of the Czech-Jewish children and the location, names and addresses of where they were housed across the UK. To read more about the trust, please visit https://www.nicholaswinton.com/

About

Kinder is a brand new show, aimed at teenagers. The story focuses on the one little girl’s adventure, as she is evacuated, on a Kindertransport train from Prague to Margate, to escape persecution just before the start of the Second World War. The story draws inspiration from the real life Czech Kindertransport event, where Czech-Jewish children were evacuated to seaside towns, across the UK. The Czech Kindertransport was pioneered by a British man, called Nicholas Winton and he saved 669 children. The initial concept for Kinder was conceived after a week of development support from the Little Angel Theatre, all the way back in 2016. A combination of other shows, commissions and touring commitments meant we weren’t able to revisit these ideas until 2020 and despite the pandemic, we were able work on the show remotely and then in bubbled rehearsals across 2021. Our resounding memories of seeing shows, as teenagers, are often uninspiring so we wanted to create great quality theatre, to take into non-theatre settings, including schools. To enable this, we have created a self-sufficient, self-contained structure that will be able to go into these settings and transport our audiences away from where they are. It gives us complete creative control over the environment, which is hugely exciting. It’s been an ambition for a while, to make a show that is specifically for this audience. Our experience working with teenagers is that they are brimming with life and ideas, they are exciting and challenging because often they refuse to accept what most people take to be a given. Whilst making Kinder, our world’s refugee crises have been at the forefront of our minds, first it was the Syrian Refugee crisis and in our current times, the war in Ukraine. Thousands of families are fleeing persecution and it’s been really interesting to look back at our work on Kinder, understanding that there is still a lot to learn about this and how humanity and kindness can make all the difference; it is what unites us when there is a divide.