We Go Together Like… Pretzels and Theatre?

By: Eva Knight*

This blog is part of a series documenting the progress of the Pretzel Theatre Collective, a project within the Incubator for Creative Impact.

Pretzels. They’re twisty. They’re delicious. They’re connected (unless you’re eating pretzel sticks, and then you’re just wrong). Pretzels also originated in Germany, which is where our company was born.

Flashback to October, 2019 where artistic educators, researchers, pedagogues, and practitioners were meeting at 2019 World Alliance for Arts Education in Frankfurt, Germany to discuss the future of arts education. While there was important learning, discussions, and discourse to be had, there were also moments of complete silliness, theatricality, and connection between five presenters who all had backgrounds in theatre and drama education. 

The founding members of Pretzel Theatre in Frankfurt, Germany.

I was lucky enough to be included in that group. 

On one of the last mornings of the conference, I came down to breakfast to a very excited group of people all bursting to tell me some important news about a project they had created and wanted me to be a part of. Clearly, I needed coffee first. Once coffee was procured, I was treated to a proposal for an innovative new form of theatre creation, where students from around the world would create a piece of theatre by collaborating through videos, and email. 

As someone who has spent the majority of her career focusing on using theatre to create supportive communities, I was excited to be a part of something new and engaging. Working with middle school students, there has always been a struggle to find meaningful, achievable work for the myriad of children who come to audition for a theatre production. This project would allow students to create their own work, include everyone, and create connections to different cultures.

Pretzels: They’re Twisty. The Challenges

The challenges for me, in Canada, would be that I had just started in a new school, with no drama program, and I was teaching Grade 1 Music! I didn’t have connections to the middle school students in my school, and my colleagues across the globe were working with this age group. The school I am working in is also only in its second full year of operations, and the staff is striving to create a culture and identity for the students. My principal was very supportive of creating a new program where students would be reflecting on their identity, the identity of others, and to bring this all together in a visual representation of learning.

Announcements were made, and over 30 students came to the very first information meeting for Pretzel Theatre. There were very few male-identifying students (4), and the rest were female. The benefit of a collective creation, is that you aren’t casting specific roles and students aren’t competing with one another for the spotlight. You can create a collaborative environment where every voice can be heard. However, in Canada, there was a distinct lack of male voice. Without having a stronger connection to the middle school community at my school there was very little I could do to bolster this section of the troupe. 

Seeing as how this was the “First Act” of Pretzel Theatre’s inaugural season, I was hoping for a more diverse group of students, in terms of gender and cultural make-up. Canada likes to be viewed as a mutli-cultural nation, but the makeup of the Canadian chapter was very homogeneous, and was lacking in indigenous voices. Since whatever we created was going to be sent to other countries as a small cross-section of Canadian culture, I wanted to make sure that we are accurately portraying the diversity we have in Canada. This will continue to guide the creation of work from a Canadian perspective.

Pretzels: They’re Delicious. The Successes

As of writing this blog, Pretzel Theatre Canada is now comprised of 16 dedicated students ages 11 - 13. Over the past month we have met weekly on Mondays, at lunch. Students are giving up time at lunch when they could be meeting with friends, and playing on their phones, to meet with students from different grades to create a piece of theatre. Our first meetings were about setting norms, establishing ground rules, and getting to know each other. After this, we set about discussing what we may know about the countries we were collaborating with. This is what we came up with:

Pretzel Theatre Canada’s thoughts on the rest of the collective.

This was an excellent starting point for the collective, and the other Pretzelers in the other countries came back with some excellent feedback about Canada:

Thoughts on Canada from China.

Thoughts on Canada from England.

Students in Canada create a tableau about being extremely polite.

Then the real fun began. Since the theatre troupe in Canada is one of the youngest, and the group with the least theatre experience, we began with the students’ creating tableaux based on some of the misconceptions that their partners in England and China came up with. Students created these tableaux, and then created a connected tableaux with a correction of what life is actually like in Canada. One of the best laughs we had this month is when our partners in Shanghai thought that cold weather was -9 degrees celsius. When we received that message it was actually -42 degrees celsius with the wind chill! We quickly sent back a video to China explaining what COLD actually meant.

The biggest success for Canada is that, as of January 20th, 2020, we have created and uploaded the first video for the Pretzel Theatre Collective, and we are eagerly awaiting a response from the other groups. The students in Canada have bonded over creating their first piece of theatre for our school, and are looking forward to presenting our schools first ever drama performance in June 2020.

Pretzels: They’re Connected. The Project Continues

And now we wait! Across the globe, groups of students, led by passionate educators are creating their own pieces of theatre that will connected to ours. As the project grows, so will the theatre pieces. It is our hope that each country will be able to create unique theatre experiences that include digital, or perhaps live streamed performances from other countries. As this new project unfolds I know all of the founders are excited to see how the connection between our students’ grow and how we can all learn more about each other as the journey continues.

Until then….

Warmly (It’s above zero today!), with love from Canada.

*Eva Knight

Eva Knight is a Drama Specialist at Rocky View Schools in Alberta, Canada.