This is a story about theatre. This is a story about community-connected theatre. This is a story about Young Company, an old idea reimagined 30 years later, for now.  

In Part 1, of our conversation you heard students from Gananoque Secondary School talk about all the work, all the learning, that goes into, went into, the production of Miss Electricity.  

In Part 2, we talk to the artists from Thousand Islands Playhouse, and the teacher, Robyn Ableson from Gananoque Secondary School, who fulfilled the meta-production role of Young Company.  

Above all else, the vision, the hope to, for this iteration of Young Company was to bring young people to the theatre who never imagined finding a place there: who never imagined themselves on the stage, and so could never imagine a place in theatre that included them.  

How do we find ourselves when we can’t imagine it? How do we see ourselves in the future with only incomplete awareness of what is possible?  

Young Company is project, a collaboration between the Upper Canada District School Board and Thousand Islands Playhouse that seeks to help children see all the ways that they can be involved in theatre as a way for them to imagine all the ways they can be in the world.  

In the real world there are dozens of disciplines that serve every project, but we often only see the face of these projects, missing the multitudes that made the stage for those that represent the project.  

In this episode of the Real-World Learning Podcast, we meet the artists who helped students in Young Company see themselves anew.