Award-winning theatre company One Tenth Human has developed an interactive theatre performance designed to get children aged 7–11 more interested in STEM subjects and will be taking it on a national tour from February.
Part-funded by Lancaster University, So Unfair! is performed by a live, in-person performer (Daniel Bye) and a performer who appears via video (Toni-Dee Paul), supplemented by video call contributions from a diverse range of scientists and engineers. Children explore how they can help to make the world a better place by participating in ‘an unexpectedly ridiculous adventure involving interactive engineering challenges, bad dad jokes, and an extraordinary amount of molten chocolate’.
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The pre-recorded interactions are central to the creative design of the show, culminating in a sequence where the audience members use their newly learned structural-engineering skills to help Paul escape from a lift by building a structure that’s strong enough for Bye to stand on. The show’s innovative model enables children to interact, apparently live, with a diverse range of very relatable engineers.
Early R&D for So Unfair! involved workshops with 265 children and teachers at two different primary schools, one of which had a Pupil Premium rate of 38 per cent (the national average is 25 per cent) indicating high levels of local deprivation. More than 100 of the children received a hands-on engineering workshop as well as a work-in-progress sharing of a first draft of the interactive show.
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Almost 60 per cent of children who took part in the workshop said they knew ‘lots’ about what engineers do at the end, compared to just nine per cent at the start of the session. Children were more than twice as likely to say ‘yes’ they would like to be an engineer at the end compared to the beginning.
Following the success of the workshops and work-in-progress sharing, the show is currently being developed further, with a national tour planned for early 2025, visiting arts venues, libraries and schools. The finished show will be suitable for all Key Stage 2 (KS2) pupils, supporting and enriching children’s learning of the KS2 science curriculum, as well as supporting teaching around sustainability, climate change and personal social, health and economic education (PSHE). If the tour goes well, the company plans to tour again in 2026.
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Confirmed dates include:
Saturday 15 February: The Dukes, Lancaster
Monday 17 February: Thatto Heath Library, St Helens
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Thursday 20 February artsdepot, London
Saturday 1 March: Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne
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Saturday 29 March: Z-arts, Manchester