Preparing a performance for assessment
If you鈥檙e preparing a TIE performance for assessment, make sure you鈥檝e addressed the specific criteria that you need to meet. You鈥檒l need to target the specific needs of the audience in an active, participatory way. Arad Goch theatre company chose to perform SEXTING, a play which would be of interest to a teenage audience as it explored the consequences of sending inappropriate texts and images to peers. If you can choose your audience, think about your areas of expertise and enthusiasm so that you can offer the best package of which you are capable.
Once you have a framework, you鈥檙e now ready to develop a devised piece. Look at Creating and staging a devised performance for more information. Remember that although you are aiming to educate the audience, you鈥檒l fail miserably if you bore them. Theatre in education could also be entitled 鈥榚ducation in theatre鈥. To educate, you must engage and challenge your audience.
Using a play as inspiration
You could work on a presentation based on J B Priestley鈥檚 An Inspector Calls. This play鈥檚 main message is the need for everybody to have and accept collective responsibility for the well-being of society. When the Inspector leaves the stage for the last time, he warns the family that unless they wake up to their responsibilities they, and the rest of the world will pay in fire and blood and anguish
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Typically a TIE production based on this play would assume that the audience had studied it or at least were about to do so. The production鈥檚 resources like hand-outs to teachers or programme notes would reinforce the important themes of the play. One way that you could involve an audience would be to freeze or rewind the action to highlight where people make mistakes and where they learn by those mistakes.