BADATE

ASSESSMENT FEEDBACK FORM

Contemporary Studies

Student Details:

Surname: Virgilio

First Name: Chiara

Date: 03/07/2019

Unit and Assessment Details:

Unit Title: Directed Project

Assessment task/ 1800-2500 words illustrated essay

element:

General Comments (referring to unit learning outcomes and assessment criteria)

First Marker:

In order to improve your work further, I would encourage you:

Name of first marker:

Agreed Provisional Mark:

 This is a pass/fail unit, so the numerical
mark is only indicative:

This essay is honours weighted:

Roots and Wings: the future is the encounter.

Introduction

“The Bexliest Day of Our Lives” was the result of nine weeks of devising, writing, improvising and starting
again, in order to create a piece of theatre that could teach the children of Bexley to value the differences
amongst their community. The play, set in 2099, narrates the story of a planet called Parbexia and its
inhabitants, most of whom - the Bexperts - became so obsessed with Bexley to forget their own culture and
endanger the future of their planet. The other people on the planet, who never appreciated Bexley, value
the roots and history of their planet, but initially refuse to collaborate to save it. During a one-hour
performance where the children of Bexley are taken around different locations of the planet, with a
particular focus on the Museum of Parbexia, the characters realise to be in danger and start a journey to
rediscover who they used to be and work together in order to save their planet from dissolving. The play’s
message lies in the last scene and explains that Parbexians do not have to forget Bexley and everything
they learnt about it, but neither they can forget their own traditions otherwise their history - and,
consequently, their present and future - will cease to exist. “The Bexliest Day of Our Lives” was represented
for the Bexley community in Erith’s Library, an old and historic building near Bexley. Because of the
tensions in the community, the play’s purpose was to send a positive message to the younger generation
about the value of the diversity among them. In fact, as the plot of the play was able to demonstrate, it is
the encounter of differences that creates progress.

For this reason, interpreting the theme of the encounter, I have decided to structure this illustrated essay
with three colour sections: the parts in red will refer to the history and “roots” of the objects of my
analysis; the parts in green will refer to the future, the “wings” of the objects; the parts in blue will analyse
the theme of “compromise” that binds them. If read subsequently without following the colour criteria, the
essay will demonstrate how the encounter between roots and wings, along with the encounter between
different cultures or traditions, is the only way to the progress. If read by colour sections, the themes will
be singularly described through the process and each colour section will be self-conclusive. To enrich the
analysis and demonstration of the thesis concerning compromise, roots and wings, I will use the old Erith
Library (Carnegie Library) as an example of evolution of a place and I will also compare the events of the
play to my personal experience of international student in London.

When places compromise: the old Erith Library

The first bricks of a house are often beneath the earth, they are the history that will not be told but will
stand as the beginning of something new. Similarly, the historic Erith Library hides deep roots and untold
stories. With holes in the walls and scraped off paint on the floor, it secretes moments of absolute
perfection: a painting room with a wide window, or the golden hour enlightening hundreds of leaves.
Despite the holes and the dangerous stairs or maybe because of them, Carnegie Library was a magical place
waiting for a new beginning: a connection, or encounter, between the past and the present.

The natural evolution of an encounter, whether it is an encounter between different places, different
cultures or even different planets, brings the alternatives of a conflict or a compromise. In case of a conflict,
as it often happened during colonization, one of the two parts must dominate over the other. In case of a
compromise, common points of view can be found to move together towards a shared goal. For places like
the old Erith Library, where the show was set, the compromise is the only possible starting point for growth
and evolution. The reflexion about the evolution of encounters is directly supported and enriched by the
plot of “The Bexliest Day of Our Lives”. As painful as the compromises may be, if the old library had not
become something else to host a piece of children theatre, it would have probably disappeared because of
time and the increasing use of technology, and if Parbexians had not asked for Earth’s help, they would
have lost their homes in 2019, eighty years before the events of the show, when, as the play narrates:

CHILDREN Once upon a timings there was a planet called Parbexia, and Parbexia was in a little bit of
troubling. The sky was a falling, the walls were a crumbling and all the Parbexians were jolly well
complainaling. Until one day Presidentist Willoughbeanie, Mr Willoughbean’s Great Grandmother said:

‘Right I’ve got a plan,

it is time to understand

We must stop burying our heads in the Parbexian sands

Our planet needs help

Or it will be put on the shelf

And if that is what happens we can only blame ourselves.

Now our answer is on earth’

(The Bexliest Day of Our Lives, 2019)

This extract of the script explains that Parbexia was saved by Earth long before the events of the play, and
similarly Carnegie Library was brought back into the life of the children of Bexley before it became set of
the play. Since 2017, the ground floor of the Library has hosted a Cafè and a creative space for children,
with Musical Theatre Classes. In 2019, the journalist James Twomey reported on the London News:

The Carnegie Library opened in 1906 when Erith town centre was a buzzing industrial town on the banks of
the Thames. It closed in 2009 due to rising maintenance costs. A local company, The Exchange, is now set to
occupy the building after work between Bexley council and Historic England ensured the building was
refurbished in the style of its original architecture (Twomey, 2019).

The financial investment from The Exchange has given new life to a place full of history, and so has “The
Bexliest Day of Our Lives”, directed by Ben Buratta. Only through constant growth and evolution, a place is
able to resist time. The moment when the historic library was able to become the setting of a play about
parallel universes was the moment it could come back to life. By using its imperfections, its wrinkles on the
forehead and the signs of its past, the history of what it used to be was enriched by this last purpose: to
create something beautiful for the children of Bexley. As the visitors' book in the hall of the library records
with the comment of a little girl named Violet, the library can still be “fun, and the best place in the world”,
if only it can be re-invented with the encounter of new ideas, generations and experiences.
When people compromise: Foreigner students abroad

After the past events on Parbexia, the people who became the most obsessed with Bexley are called
Bexperts. Bexperts worship and celebrate Bexley, constantly comparing it to their miserable, unfashionable
planet. As a foreigner and international student who moved from Italy to London to attend university, I
have also found personal relatable situations with the Parbexians who visited Bexley and started studying it
to become Bexperts. I have experienced firsthand how easy it is to forget who you are and endanger your
culture until it risks dissolving, especially when you are struggling to fit in. When you are a Parbexian and
you land on Bexley - or you are an Italian who lands at Gatwick Airport - the expectations are high both on
yourself and your new life, and many are the questions that torment you. Will you be Bexpert enough? Will
you understand the slang, with words like “lit” or “bruv”, which were used in the script of the play to
highlight the effort made by Parbexians to make a good impression and “look cool”? And most of all, will
you prove everybody that all your sacrifices were worth it? For people like Parbexians, who have been
studying Bexley for years, it is hard to recognise when reality does not measure up to the expectations. For
Italians who grew up with the aspiration and ambition of the United Kingdom it is the same. In our society
English language privilege is a reality, as explicated - among the others - by the academic Peter Coclanis: “At
this late date, it’s hardly news that English rules, dominating the worlds of science, business, academe,
tourism and travel, and diplomacy -- not to mention the internet, where English-content sites prevail”
(Coclanis, 2018). Therefore moving to an English-speaking country and attending the top drama school in
the United Kingdom creates the need to compromise between two cultures and sets the the expectations
high enough to create a social pressure. It is the same compromise that is the final message of the play
“The Bexliest Day of Our Lives”, which highlighted the importance of finding the best of both worlds: it is
the compromise that every foreigner student has to face when they move to a new country, after moving
out of a geographically located “comfort zone”.

When cultures compromise: Parbexia and Bexley

The final scene of “The Bexliest Day of Our Lives” reveals that Parbexia was saved through the discoveries in
the Parbexpert Archive of what the planet used to be and through the realisation that it is possible to
respect and maintain differences amongst a united group, valuing the individuality along with the
ensemble. Just like an ensemble piece of theatre where every character has different qualities but every
actor has to collaborate, when Parbexians realise to be in danger they immediately understand that they
need to work together if they want to save the planet. In the play, Parbexians had been neglecting their
roots, endangering the planet and losing the focus on themselves, but most of all they had been ignoring
the value of encounter and compromise. The biggest achievement of the characters is to be able to tolerate
differences and collaborate. In fact, although it is true that, as Rebecca Burton says: “Working in a group
can be problematic if there are too many disparate ideas, and most especially if there is too much
compromise going on in the effort to find common ground” (Burton, 2017, p. 41), it is also true, as she
argues later in her thesis, that: “No one person can change the system, but if everyone works together
(from within and without), then change is more than possible; it is inevitable” (Burton, 2017, p.41). This
quotations explain why, when Parbexperts and Bexperts put their differences aside, they become stronger:
it is the difficult process of rediscovery and exploration. This extract of the script, taken from a moment of
big realisation of the play, is the emblem of the unity of differences and the beginning of a new era for the
planet of Parbexia:
ANNABELLY For years Bexperts and Parbexperts have been arguing, calling each other names, not listening
to each other. Half of us have been obsessing over how things used to be and the other half obsessing over
how things are somewhere else.

LORRAINING She’s right. We all got it wrong. We can’t live like that. We have to work together, side by
side. And we have to start by remembering who we are.

(The Bexliest Day of Our Lives, 2019)

The Archive of the planet can be interpreted as an archive of experiences along with traditions, treasures
values, customs and objects from the roots of Parbexia and it was a crucial resource for the process of
rediscovery. This process, as hard and troubled it may be, is a necessary step towards growth and
evolution: not only for the characters of the play but also for foreigner students and even for historic
places. It is an important message to communicate to the Bexley community itself, which recently had
conflicts among different groups of people, divided by factors such as age, cultural heritage and ethnicity.
In the play, this climax reaches the maximum level of tension in the last scene where, after saving the
planet, Parbexians realise what it means to be themselves:

ANNABELLY That’s it! I get it now! We can all be Parbexian but that doesn’t mean we have to be the same.

LORRAINING We can be bexperts

MR W and Parbexperts.

- (to the audience) We can borrow the best bits of what you do.

- And add it to the best bits of us.

EVERYONE We can be proud to be Parbexian. With a bit of Bexley mixed in.

(The Bexliest Day of Our Lives, 2019)

Roots and Wings: the future is the encounter

The message that derives from the imminent dissolving of a planet that had forgotten its culture is that
roots and wings are both necessary for progress. It is possible to take the best from both worlds: evolve
whilst learning from the origins; move abroad, maintaining a relationship with your home country like a
foreigner student; host a play and a Parbexian museum, keeping the walls and history of a library like the
Carnegie building. If Parbexia had forgotten its funny alliterative phrases and the celebration of its diversity,
it would have lost its identity. Although on the other hand, as the play highlights during its final scene, Earth
was able to bring something new and diverse to its complimentary planet and even save it from a
dangerous stillness. The collaboration of Bexley and Parbexia started the process that saved the planet in
2099: the compromise between different cultures, the encounter of different stories. Only through a
difficult process of growth, appreciation and unison of different roots, it is possible to find new common
wings. This toleration and appreciation of differences are what the play aims to communicate to its young
audience, to whom these values are particularly relevant because of the tensions among the Bexley
community. As the play was able to demonstrate, the only progress is the one that considers the past
before going into the future; the only growth derives from the encounter and compromise of differences.

Bibliography:
Burton, R. (2017) Playing the Long Game: Some Pros and Cons of Working Collaboratively. Available at:
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/Citations/FullTextLinkClick?sid=ba6bbe0a-5321-49a9-ac05-
a0255a48bbba@sdc-v-sessmgr02&vid=2&id=pdfFullText [Accessed: 29/06/2019]

Coclanis, P. (2018). Campus Politics and the English Language. Insidehighered.com. Available at:
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/06/05/often-unspoken-privilege-speaking-english-academe-
opinion [Accessed 15 Jun. 2019].

Sting (2011) Sting - Englishman In New York (Official Music Video). Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27gTrPPAyk [Accessed: 02/07/2019]

The Bexliest Day of Our Lives by BA CPP: 1st year DATE (2019) Directed by Ben Buratta [Erith. June 2019].

Twomey, J. (2019). The historic Carnegie Library in Erith set to reopen after 10 years of closure.
Londonnewsonline.co.uk. Available at: https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/the-historic-carnegie-library-
in-erith-set-to-reopen-after-10-year-of-closure/ [Accessed 20 Jun. 2019].

Virgilio, C. (2019) A map in the library [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) Before-After Carnegie Building [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) Changing room [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) Song writing [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) The Archive and Parbexperts [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) The Carnegie Building: Painting Room [Photograph]

Virgilio, C. (2019) The visitor’s book [Photograph]

Wilson, M. (2019) Goodbye Song [Video]

Wilson, M. (2019) Holding hands [Photograph]

Wilson, M. (2019) The Bexliest Day of Our Lives Cast [Photograph]

Wilson, M. (2019) The Bexliest Day of Our Lives Final Scene [Photograph]