Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children as Film Actors, in Theatrical Work and in Ballet / presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of His Majesty, August 1950.

  • Great Britain. Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children as Film Actors, in Theatrical Work and in Ballet
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Children as Film Actors, in Theatrical Work and in Ballet / presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of His Majesty, August 1950. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in his school: “although the record books brought by the children often contain schemes of work, it is impossible to follow out the suggestions. For example, four books last week presented me with four different history schemes.” The problem of practical work and of school supplies is also exceedingly difficult. The children “can do no satisfactory work in needle- work and crafts. Even if we had the materials to spare the children would get no satisfaction from work just begun. Of the children who visited this school, none has brought notebook, pen, ruler or pencil. It would be waste- ful for me to issue them with exercise books if I could spare them. All their written work has been done on loose sheets of paper.” Rehearsals 76. There is some doubt whether the power to make Rules prescribing conditions for the licensing of children for performances in entertainments is sufficiently wide to extend to rehearsals. Some recognition of rehearsals is taken by the Rules made by both the Ministry of Education and the Scottish Education Department. In the form of licence prescribed by the Ministry there is the foot-note: “the period [of permitted absence from school] must include any absence from the named school necessitated by rehearsals.” The implication is that there is power to deal in the licence with rehearsals requiring absence from school but no power to deal with rehearsals which take place at other times. The Scottish Rules go further and define “ entertainment” to include “a rehearsal for an entertainment”, and * performance ” to include “a rehearsal for a performance.” <A defini- tion of “rehearsal” is nowhere attempted. 77. Where a child is taking an individual part, rehearsals during the day when the rest of the cast are available are inevitable. These rehearsals may be in school hours and the inference to be drawn from the note to the prescribed form of licence is that an exemption from school attendance should be included in the licence. When children are living away from home any preliminary rehearsals normally take place in the theatre where conditions are much the same as for the performance. Some local authorities have met this situation by administrative arrangements which require the usual provisions for welfare during this period. 78. We understand that normally children training for pantomimes re- hearse in the evenings after school, on Saturday mornings or afternoons, and sometimes on Sundays. These rehearsals may be carried out on the premises of the dancing school. In other cases rehearsals may be held in special re- hearsal rooms, a practice common when children are engaged in response to advertisements. During the few days before the show, when school holidays may have begun, intensive rehearsals are usually carried out in the day time in the theatre in which the entertainment is to take place. At other periods of the year the procedure is substantially the same. The show may include dances which the children have practised as part of their lessons at the dancing school and it would be difficult to say where an ordinary practice session ends and a rehearsal begins. 79. It is frequently the case that a much larger number of children is rehearsed than is used eventually in the troupe which performs in the show. Those to be engaged are not selected until a date near the opening of the entertainment. It is not usual for the children to be paid for intensive rehearsals in the theatre, though there have been occasional examples of such payments. 80. The practice of one local authority has been to require a statement of the times and dates of the rehearsals during school hours and, while aS
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