Aside from the traditional well-wishing of ?break a leg!?, few people associate theatre with accidents or want to for that matter, writes Ali Fitzgibbon.
But a new partnership in Northern Ireland is set to use the best skills of a professional theatre company to promote accident prevention amongst children. In a unique three-year collaboration, Belfast-based Replay Productions and the Northern Ireland Home Accident Prevention Team of RoSPA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) will be co-producing three theatre programmes for children in primary and special schools across Northern Ireland. Each year will address one of the main causes of accidents in RoSPA's current strategy - fire, falls and poisoning.
In 2002, a new small-scale production will explore poisoning through the fairytale of Snow White. Development of the production will begin in Spring 2002 with a series of master-classes for artists and performers on using drama with pre-school and early primary age children. The production, conceived as a piece of ?miniature theatre? using story telling and puppets, will subsequently travel into classrooms and around playgroups and will also be produced over Christmas in selected theatres and arts centres. The intention is to produce a touring residency programme on the theme of fire in Year 2 for upper primary age children, while in Year 3, the programme will again return to very young audiences in pre-schools and early primary schools to explore the danger of falls in and around the home. As this is an area where the elderly are also at risk, Replay and RoSPA have agreed to run this programme with an intergenerational focus with both young and senior audiences together.
In all three years, the two organisations will collaborate to produce resource materials for children, teachers and parents that both extend learning about personal safety and introduce fun and creative follow-up activities. These will take a variety of forms - child-sized booklets, CDs, Teacher's Packs and hopefully, interactive web pages.
Ali Fitzgibbon is Administrator of Replay Productions t: 028 9032 2773; e: replay@dircon.co.uk