We're Stuck! show trailer from China Plate on Vimeo.

Writer & Director
SARAH PUNSHON

Set Design
JOANNA SCOTCHER

Sound Design
ELENA PEÑA

Lighting Design
JOSHUA PHARO

Production Manager
CHRIS WHITWOOD

Stage Manager
JENNIFER HUNTING

Producer
CHINA PLATE

Performed by

SEIRIOL DAVIES

CLARE DUNN

DANIEL BYE

KIRSTEN FOSTER

What professional interest could an educational psychologist have in a piece of children’s theatre? Actually, quite a lot. Learning is not a smooth process of building up knowledge in a particular area – it goes in fits and starts, often pushed on by sudden insights that make what seemed perplexing previously click into place as if it never was anything other than obvious. This sense of being stuck and then seeing the light is also very often a highly emotional experience that stymies and motivates by turns. Above all, it is frequently not in the classroom that these liberating insights occur, but in some other real experience that connects dry content to something that is more intuitively understood, helping it to come alive.

We’re Stuck! tackles all this with number by placing it in a dramatic context. Many children have difficulties with number because it is an abstract system with what can seem like arbitrary rules that are hard to keep hold of because they don’t make intuitive sense. For many, the bafflement builds up over time into dislike, a feeling of failure, avoidance and ultimately anxiety. They need those moments of insight, of connection to something real, to realise that numbers can and do make sense – and their active involvement in the We’re Stuck! story creates just such moments.

In itself, this might be just one small lesson. We’re Stuck tries to do something much bigger too by demonstrating that feeling stuck is not a permanent condition, but simply the step that comes before insight, and that the next step forward will happen if they give it time – not just with number but pretty much anything. Once children see this, they have grasped a fundamental principle of knowing how to learn – and a key predictor of educational outcomes.

Why do we need a piece of theatre to do this? As a kind of ‘resting’ actor – I went to university initially to study psychology and drama – what caught me about We’re Stuck! from the start was my awareness of the capacity of theatre to vividly crystallise ideas with real-life resonance. It creates a super-real space within which understanding can be permanently transformed within a brief period, rather than being gradually shaped. For children in particular this experience is all so fresh that the educative potential of theatre is enormous.

Talking to Sarah and her team as they’ve developed We’re Stuck! has felt from the outset mostly like a process of agreement. As far as I could see, they had a compelling insight into the nature of learning, and a compelling way of going about helping children to understand it. Seeing one of the early performances at a school in Hackney confirmed that, especially watching children’s engagement with the unfolding plot. It’s been great fun being involved, though – and an important reminder about the value of theatre as a tool for teaching at a time when we’re thinking more creatively about effective education than at perhaps any previous point in history.

Professor Andrew Tolmie | Chair of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education, University College London

We’ve been working with director Sarah Punshon, Maths On Toast and games designer Sophie Sampson to create a high quality activity pack based on the maths and learning principles included in We’re Stuck!

Together with Jubliee Primary School and William Pattern Primary school we’ve been testing lots of different games and challenges to include.

Supported by The Mercers’ Company the pack will be given free to every child who comes to see the show. It is designed to be taken home rather than used in the classroom features games and activities including a build your own robot net and a freepost postcard for them to return to Dr Volcano with details of the activities they’ve been stuck on.

The funding from the Mercers’ Company also gave Maths On Toast as chance to develop extensive teachers resources based on the show that extend the ideas and aims of the show into a variety of subjects including PSHE, PE and English.

If you are a teacher who is interested in bringing your class to see a performance please email kaya@chinaplatetheatre.com for a link to the downloadable resources.

The Volcano Industries Handbook was designed by Velcrobelly.