Week 17: TIE (Primary School)

Starting a new project, research and devising

Our new TIE project is based around the idea of a "Survival Guide" aimed at Year 6s who are transitioning into secondary school and have worries about what is going to happened both in school and out of school when they move up.
The client wants a few specific things to be present throughout the piece:

• The message that the students aren't alone and that every year 6 around the country will be feeling exactly the same.
• Highlight the differences between secondary and primary school so that the pupils are ready and know what to expect.
• Give them tips on what to do if they are stuck in a situation or find that they don't know what to do
• Acknowledge that we know they have fears and it's okay to be scared because it is such a big change.

We then brainstormed some worries that some of us actually had and also some that we think they might have:

1. Being Bullied
2. Getting Lost
3. Homework
4. Getting to lesson
5. Catching the bus
6. Older pupils
7. Being by yourself
8. Not making friends
9. School dinners
10. Being the only one who's scared
11. Detention
12. Teachers
13. Exams/tests
14. Growing up
15. Setting plans
16. Corridors
17. Fights
18. Smoking/Alcohol/Drugs
19. Relationships

Other ideas that we thought that we could include are things like:

- "It's the thought of it that's worse" so thinking about all of the scary aspects will make it worse and we know that not thinking about those things isn't an easy thing to do considering it's a major part of their lives and a growing experience for them but thinking about the good aspects will help.

- "We survived!" Saying that even we had the same fears as them when we were their age and we made it through secondary school and we have experienced it and can tell them how it actually is.

- "Your fears are the same as ours." It is okay to be scared and it's a normal thing to be scared about going into secondary school and everybody has them. We also come up with a kinda of slogan which is "Don't be scared, be prepared" meaning that if you're prepared and you know what to expect that it could be slightly less daunting and that's what the piece is going to be aimed at. Getting them prepared so that they know what to expect.

We then discussed the structure of the piece and we referred back to what we thought of at the start of the other TIE piece which was the idea of short bursts of information that keeps the audience interested in the piece with interactive sections in between that help us gage where the audience's understanding of the piece is and we can also help them in those sections if they are stuck.

We then began working on the beginning and we obviously introduced ourselves as N2C theatre and explained what we were going to do in the piece and we had to change some of the language that we were using as we needed the year 6s to benefit from what we were saying and understand how they could use our advice when they move up to secondary school.

We thought of using unrealistic examples of secondary school to ease the audience into the piece and have a quite comedic start and so we decided to use High School Musical as it is a film that is well-known and we could use the US version of what secondary is like to make a joke out of it. So we added in a small section of cheesy dance moves and then we said "yeah, it's not like that" and then we thought that we could contrast that with the extreme which is an all out fight and then we paused that and said "yeah, it's not like that either"

We then thought about the easiest way to get our target audience to understand the fears and stresses that we are exploring and so we decided to split it into named chapters so that the piece was easier to follow so the first chapter is called "Little Fears." I feel like naming the chapters allows the audience to stay grounded on a central subject and can relate everything back to that.

When I went into secondary school, I didn't have any big worries like some people have and so we decided that I should narrate Chapter 1 because I could relate to the "Little Fears" and it might make the audience more understanding towards what I felt and those in the same position could relate as well. So we started off with me saying "When I was moving to secondary school, I didn't have many big worries I just had small ones. Like whether I had the right equipment, whether I was going to get lost, what if the work was too hard and was I the only one having these worries?" Having this section allows us to acknowledge some of the little fears that we know are present in the minds of the children when they think about moving to secondary school. Also having a person on stage that is saying that they felt the exact same way will allow the audience to both open up to us about how they feel and also will begin to relate to what we are saying and this is when they can take the advice we are giving them, understand it and then proceed to use it in real life.