“My brother is in the class of another schoolmistress. Sometimes he picks her up at her house and then they walk side by side to the school. When he sees her in the distance, he calls her: ‘Hello miss!’ When I dare to call miss Stove like that, she would push everyone aside, ran towards me. And even when it happened at the middle of the marketplace, she would give me a box on the ear. And nobody would hold her back.”

In the book “Juffrouw Kachel” writer Toon Tellegen does not beat about the bush: Miss stove spanks. And that’s where this diary of a schoolboy is about. About the things that happen and about his feelings of revenge. Because mis Stove is like a shrew.
Djara, a pupil from the Nicolaasschool in Rotterdam, prescribed that terrible teacher as follows: “Miss Stove beats children because that is her hobby. she is corpulent and mean. She cannot love their pupils!”

Powerlessness

During the performance finds character Gerald Bastiaanse, teacher at the publicschool Basisschool “Jan van der Veen”, an anonymous diary, hidden, in the byciclestore. Hij is worried and reads aloud, piece by piece, the stories from the diary. With the help of the listeners, Gerald tries to reconstruct the experiences the writer of the diary went through. The anger, the fears, the hope and the powerlessness of the boy become perceptible.
The performance changes slowly into a discussion between Gerald and the listeners. Could it be real or just fiction? What can you do, as a child, against violence and injustice? Are we allowed to read this diary? What should we do?

De program

De performance is an adaptation of the book “Juffrouw Kachel” of writer Toon Tellegen. The programme is intended for children of eight years old and above and can be performed in theatres and schools. The performance will last about 50 minutes.

The program is produced by:

• Text: Toon Tellegen
• Adaptation and performance: Marco Holmer
• Staging: Jan van Rossum
• Scenery: Roos Klaasen
• Production: Het Verhalenbedrijf in cooperation with the “Culturele Kring Hoekse Waard”.