The power of theatre to educate

Nicky Singer’s new play Island highlights how theatre can move, motivate and educate children – as well as entertain them.

The National Theatre’s terrific new play for over-eights is set on what we call Herschel Island in Northern Canada (the Inuit have another, much older name for it). The one-hour play explores the impact of global warming – think Frozen Planet brought to life for children with characters the audience identify with and care about.  Island explores the conflict between scientific and metaphysical truth, colonialism, the exploitation of other people’s environment, the role of religion and the power of storytelling. So it isn’t short of issues for children to think about afterwards, but at the same time it avoids any sense of worthiness and stands up well as a piece of compelling, moving drama.

I saw it at 9.30 in the morning in the hall of Elmwood Primary School in West Dulwich, along with a large group of 9-11 year olds from three different schools because Elmwood is part of a three-way federation. The play is touring London schools for the rest of this month.

Directed by Adam Penford, the play gives us Cameron and his mother, Pascale, on the now uninhabited island, evoked by a grey rocky set and atmospheric sound. She is a permafrost scientist and he a reluctant schoolboy missing the internet. Then he ‘meets’ the spirit teenager, Inuluk.  The audience also sees Inuluk’s grandmother, a magisterial, Prospero-like figure complete with staff and magical powers, although both Inuit are invisible to Pascale. Together the four characters unravel the story of how invaders destroyed the ice-based Island’s Inuit way of life. It is now warming and literally disappearing beneath the feet of visitors. Inuit artefacts, including the contents of their burial grounds, are emerging unbidden, as the ice melts.

Since then I’ve had a chat with playwright, Nicky Singer. ‘I’d never written a play from scratch before’ said Singer, who is best known for her children’s novel Feather Boy which won the 2002 Blue Peter award, was broadcast and won a BAFTA in 2004. A short musical version, which she is currently expanding, was part of a new writing festival at the National Theatre.

Approached by Anthony Banks, Associate Director of National Theatre Learning, she was initially flummoxed and asked for time to consider whether she could indeed write a play. Then, in the serendipitous way these things often work themselves out, the next day a friend’s daughter told her about a gap year project. She’d been with a permafrost scientist to the deserted Herschel in northern Canada and seen at first hand what is happening there. “Suddenly I had a subject” said Singer who then told Banks she’d do the job.

“Since the tour of Island began Singer has enjoyed going with it to schools to work with children and gauge their reaction. Creation myths are an ongoing interest of Singer’s and feature in her play. She told me about one girl who, after seeing Island, wrote her own creation myth. ‘It was a page and a half of extraordinary, vivid, astonishingly good writing. It had clearly hit her buttons and the child was writing from the very depth of her soul.’

Singer is a woman after my own heart as a teacher and educationist because she is passionate about being honest with children, never patronising or underestimating them and refusing to dumb anything down.  “I get very irritated with people who try to prevent writers for children using certain words or mentioning certain issues” she says.

Climate change is a difficult and contentious issue. And it tends to be discussed or denied either in the abstract or very emotively. I was very impressed with Island as a way of getting children to think about it and examine the evidence rationally.

Drama really does seem to be to be uniquely good at addressing issues and making them concrete for children. Polka Theatre’s recent I have a Dream, a play about the civil rights movement, by Levi David Addai was another example. And I was much taken with Paula B Stanic’s play for young audiences (Theatre Centre) about immigration, Under a Foreign Sky, when I read the script and saw it in rehearsal.

Yes, children can – and should – have fun being entertained in theatres or by actors in other venues. But there’s a great deal more to good theatre for young people than that. All good drama involves thinking, learning and developing – for every member of the audience as well as for those who create it.

There will be public performances of Island from 15-25 February at the Cottesloe Theatre on the South Bank over half term.

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