21 YEARS OF Y TOURING Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
Y Touring has developed a powerful tool and with this power come responsibilities. These include: the responsibility to ensure accuracy and fairness; the responsibility to ensure that students are properly supported during and after performances; and the responsibility to maintain the high standards that have been set. Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
Left: Mind The Gap, 2004 © Robert Workman Below:The Gift, 2000 © Robert Workman
Be careful what you wish for: An evaluator’s perspective on Y Touring By Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
Both those who fund, and those who deliver, activities to support or stimulate public engagement are generally hoping for some kind of impact on the people that the activity engages. In science-based public engagement, this was true even in the days before wider debates about impact became central to the research funding process. Evaluations of Y Touring’s theatre in education work suggest that this is a powerful mechanism for making an impact, but this very power, means that funders should be careful what they wish for. Early Days When we, separately, first encountered Y Touring we were working for different organisations, Mark was at the Office of Science and Technology and Suzanne was at the Wellcome Trust. Over the years, through different mechanisms, both of those organisations have provided Y Touring with significant amounts of financial support and both were keen to
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understand how, or indeed if, Y Touring’s work was having any influence on the audience members’ knowledge or attitudes. Funding often came with an evaluation requirement attached and Y Touring may, at times, have felt as if they were in a state of continuous evaluation. However, as this article will show, Y Touring is now in possession of a significant amount of evidence proving its capacity to have a measurable impact on its audiences. The Gift was our introduction to Y Touring’s work and it was immediately apparent that the compelling nature of the drama gripped the audiences. Between us we have seen many performances of The Gift in different settings, for different audiences and with different casts, but engrossed audiences have been a common feature to all the performances we have seen. Anecdotal feedback from those who observed The Gift and other Y Touring plays and debates in schools talked about ‘a real buzz’ at performances, lots of people joining in, and so on but did the
21 YEARS OF Y TOURING Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
performances really make an impact on the students? Did they open minds to different perspectives? Did they communicate the scientific concepts underpinning the plays’ subject matter? Did they support debate around the issues raised by the various subjects? Did the idea of following the play with a debate between the audience and the characters add to, or detract from, the performance?
“Cracked, which dealt with mental illness, provided quantitative evidence that the performance and debate had a measurable affect on students.” Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
Early evaluation work indicated that Y Touring performances did more than stimulate and entertain, they influenced and informed as well. Evaluation Associates’ 1998 report on Cracked, which dealt with mental illness, provided quantitative evidence that the performance and debate had a measurable affect on students. The students became more knowledgeable about schizophrenia and depression and more sympathetic towards people suffering from these conditions. In 2000 the Tavistock Institute’s evaluation of Pig in the Middle reported that teachers had identified that this play had helped to raise students’ awareness of issues relating to organ donation and xenotransplantation. Similarly, a qualitative evaluation of the video of The Gift showed that it fostered discussions about the implications of genetic technologies. Getting ‘the science bit’ Right Since those early days, we have seen many of the company’s science-based productions, a number of them more than once, and while the quality of individual productions and casts can vary, the company’s commitment to producing high quality drama has always shone through. This is particularly important in the context of the educational nature of much of the work. Scientific, legal and moral issues are raised, but they flow with the stories. In Cracked, a character’s descriptions of “sad” and “mad” provide a poignant differentiation between depression and schizophrenia and the prejudices attached to each. In Nobody Lives Forever it seems natural for an excited schoolgirl to describe the scientific information that she has discovered to her family, rather than being a clunky “and now for the science bit”. Over years of working on science-based productions, Y Touring has come up with a particular way of developing new plays. This involves bringing up to five playwrights together with scientists, other experts, and partners in the
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same room to explore a particular topic over a day long workshop. Conversations cover the science, possible exploitation of the science and the social and ethical issues the science raises. The writers go on to submit synopses for plays. The workshop is intended to help the writers to understand the technical aspects of a topic well enough to be able to incorporate them in natural dialogue. Writers are free to contact any of the experts who attend the workshop for more information to ensure that their ideas represent the science in an appropriate way. The funder, a subset of scientists and experts from the workshop and Y Touring select one synopsis from those submitted. The ‘winning’ writer then develops a draft play for comment by this group and the play is developed through various drafts. This method ensures that the science is correct – and we will see why this is so important – as well as ensuring that the story works for the age group. Mind the Gap There was mounting evidence that audiences, funders, teachers and students were gripped by the productions, and that there was an impact on students who saw the productions, though sometimes this was reported by teachers rather than directly measured. People, Science and Policy (PSP) were commissioned to undertake an evaluation designed not only to measure whether a new Y Touring production had an impact on young people’s understanding of, and attitudes towards, mental illness but also to assess the value added by the process used to develop the play. The evaluation was a particularly interesting commission in that it was, if not cradle to grave, certainly conception through to independence. We were asked to review the whole process from writers’ workshops, submission and selection of synopses, through casting, rehearsals and an initial pilot tour to the first national tour. By the time of this commission against the broad brief The Ethics of Brain Research (early in 2004) the Y Touring process described above was well established. So the project began with a workshop but this time in addition to the “expert” advisers, Y Touring also invited a group of young people from a school that regularly hosts productions. Conversations at the workshop were wideranging: the science behind brain research; the capacity for pharmacological and other technological developments; the potential impacts of drugs and technology on individuals and society; the limitations of what might be achievable; and the social, legal and ethical issues raised by possible technologies and how people with mental health disorders are treated. This workshop was intended to ensure that the
21 YEARS OF Y TOURING Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
subsequent synopses developed and the final play were scientifically credible, opened up the issues for debate and, oh yes, could still provide good theatre. PSP observed the workshop using structured observation techniques and tracked the process of selecting synopses, casting and rehearsals using more flexible observation. We conducted indepth interviews with scientists and other experts and the writers (successful and unsuccessful) during and after the process to provide feedback to Y Touring on the development process. Each writer submitted a synopsis of their idea and the funder, a subset of the scientists and experts and Y Touring together selected a writer. Selection was based on judgements on a range of factors – whether the key scientific, legal and ethical issues were picked-up, whether the idea was theatrically feasible and the scope for the synopsis to grow into a full-scale production. The selected outline by Abi Bown became Mind the Gap. Once Abi had been selected, the play was drafted. The process positively encouraged a collaborative approach between Abi, the funder, the experts and Y Touring to develop the play. Finally, the new play went into production with a cast recruited by Y Touring. The play weaves together themes of memory, cognitive enhancement, the impact of both legal and illegal drugs on the mind and the capacity of the mind to cope with different types of trauma. The staging of the play in traverse with a London underground platform as the central scene was typical of many of Y Touring’s productions. The formula is a relatively simple set (as it has to be
From Left to Right: Cracked, 2001 © Robert Workman The Gift, 2003 © Robert Workman
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for touring and setting up in a variety of school environments) that works flexibly, takes the audience to the site of the action but does not intrude.
“Engrossing theatre can stimulate learning and change attitudes. This means that it can embed knowledge that is scientifically ‘wrong’ as well as right.” Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
The process part of the evaluation found that Mind the Gap could not have been developed without the ideas and information from the workshop and access to the experts after the workshop to clarify points and test out ideas. The process was central to developing the play. We also found that some of the other writers hoped to develop plays based on attending the workshop. So there were also unexpected spin-offs from the process in potentially generating other plays that reflected current scientific understandings and raised the issues identified by the funders. As Mind the Gap became a real production, going on tour, initially to London schools and subsequently nationally, the impact part of the evaluation began. We used a mixed method approach to the evaluation of performances including before and after questionnaires for students, observation of performances and debates, interviews with teachers and focus groups with students. The main findings are that there were: • statistically significant improvements in students’ understanding of the scientific concepts;
21 YEARS OF Y TOURING Mark Dyball and Suzanne King
the subject matter within an overall context of unease and uncertainty left confused messages in the minds of some students. In this situation the power of the medium was greater than the strength of the message.
All this was unequivocal evidence that Y Touring could demonstrate a measurable impact from a new production. For those who are interested in the findings the full report is available from either PSP or Y Touring.
Full Time On a far more positive note the evaluation of Full Time, a Y Touring play exploring sexism, racism and homophobia in football, sponsored by the Football Foundation and evaluated by the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation found that “Seeing the play and being involved in the debate may have led to greater self-reflection in the students.” After seeing the play students were more likely to think that they had personally made a racist, sexist or anti-gay comment while playing or watching sport. The capacity of Y Touring to stimulate this personal analysis, as well as to provide entertaining theatre that can communicate complex concepts, should be cherished.
So why should you “be careful what you wish for”? The evaluation showed that engrossing theatre can stimulate learning and change attitudes. This means that it can embed knowledge that is scientifically ‘wrong’ as well as right. Similarly, this powerful medium can stimulate changes of attitude that might be considered ‘undesirable’ as well as those that might be seen as more ‘positive’. More empathetic teenagers would widely be regarded as ‘a good thing’, but what about the finding that more teenagers agreed that “I would take a pill that helped me to remember things to pass exams” after seeing the performance? The Silencer For a later play, The Silencer, which explores the scientific and political issues associated with climate change, we completed a similar, albeit smaller scale, evaluation. We found increased levels of concern about the issue and fear of the implications of climate change, but the sense of fear conflated understanding of a variety of natural disasters. For example, we found that increased numbers of students considered volcanoes and earthquakes to be consequences of climate change, even though the play tried to give the very opposite message. Partial recall of
From left to right: Cracked, 2001 © Robert Workman Mind the Gap, 2004 © Robert Workman
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• statistically significant changes in attitudes towards mental illness, students became more empathetic; and • statistically significant changes in students’ attitudes towards medication of the mind.
Power and Responsibility Y Touring has developed a powerful tool and with this power come responsibilities. These include: the responsibility to ensure accuracy and fairness; the responsibility to ensure that students are properly supported during and after performances; and the responsibility to maintain the high standards that have been set. To help the Y Touring team meet these responsibilities it is important that the process used to develop productions continues to draw widely on different sources of expertise. The Y Touring format; and we mean the entire process and not just the performances and debates, generates impact and given a fair wind should continue to do so for another twenty one years.