Play! Performance! The profound sense of awe and wonder provided by the transformative power of the arts had me hooked from an early age. Being a kid in the North West of England, in an area that is deemed as socially deprived, these experiences were oxygen to my imagination.
I’m 3. I’m sitting on the floor of the school hall in my primary school and I am face to face with a dragon! My first experience of theatre was a Theatre In Education production of The Hobbit.
I’m 13. I’m sitting in the glorious open-air arena of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. I am on a week’s residential at RAF Hereford, with the Air Training Corps, and the timing is amazing to have a trip off base.
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I’m 37. I’m watching Hamlet performed by Benedict Cumberbatch at the Barbican in London. In a month, Cumberbatch comes to the school I am working at in London, to celebrate the work of students who perform the “To be, or not to be” speech. This is to be part of the South Bank South documentary, filmed by Sky Arts.
The lesson that changed his life,
A school in struggle and strife,
A government that uses a knife.
These three lines are the blurb for my new play TEACH. It will be performed 22 times at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is a new 50-minute, one-man show.
TEACH is about celebration. My personal experience over the past 16 years has morphed into the character of “the teacher”. My primary school teacher had us draw dragons like the ones she had seen on her summer holidays in China. I said to myself then, I would go to China (I was 7) and in 2002, I did - as a TEFL [Teaching English as a Foreign Language] teacher. I’ve been in the classroom ever since.
Teachers at ‘breaking point’
The play celebrates the passion that educators have for seeing all students excel. Knowing you are making a difference is the jewel in the teaching crown. But at what cost?
TEACH is about survival. It is about a teacher at breaking point. I have structured the play so there are three votes. The main character asks the audience directly: should I stay or leave teaching? This aims to create a discourse about the piece.
Having to deal with the death of a student due to knife crime; with leadership whose toxic micromanagement borders on bullying; with the bottomless pit of need due to educational cuts. These issues begin to chip away at the integrity with which the teacher entered the profession 16 years ago.
I was inspired to write the play because my educational idealism had been smashed. I had to find my authentic voice as an educator again. My morning commute on the train to school and back again became my writing den. Parts of the play would be written on the note pad of my phone. The teacher Twitter-sphere was like conducting a piece of action research and was also the source of news stories that connected with the experiences that I was writing about.
In 2012, I went on a march against school cuts and in response to the changes that were being made to the curriculum by the then secretary of state for education, Michael Gove - “something was rotten in the state of Denmark”.
I used research from the inspirational book How to Survive in Teaching by Dr Emma Kell. The statistics punctuate the play to make personal experiences political. The most recent protests against relationships education in England, sparked by the protests in Birmingham against the teaching of LGBT relationships, have been shocking. The very nature of equality, the very nature of living in modern Britain, has been challenged with government bodies such as the Department for Education being too slow to respond. Where is the humanity?
TEACH is about shining a light on the profession and showing teachers that they are not alone. The incredible Education Support Partnership provides mental health and wellbeing support to all staff working in education. It has a free and confidential helpline: 08000 562 561.
I hope the audience, whether they be working in education or not, see the humanity, humour and strength of spirit of those working in a profession that is now in need of drastic change.
The London preview of TEACH has sold out. Both nights. This reflects the resonance of the story. After the Fringe, I will be presenting the epilogue from TEACH at the #FundSchoolsNow march in Westminster on Friday 27 September.
I hope my primary school teacher would be proud!
Hold a mirror up to education
Show teachers their own virtue
Government policies their own scorn
The very age and body of teaching its form and pressure.
Matthew Roberts is a teacher of English in London. You can find out more about his Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, TEACH, here. He tweets @ProBreadButter
