Wicked behaviour

Given the critically-acclaimed global success of Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, you may already be familiar with its premise. For those readers who are not, the musical follows the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, following her from birth and into school years.

The audience sees Elphaba (the Wicked Witch's ‘real’ name) endure years of bullying due to the fact that she was born with green skin, which marks her out as different from her peers. The show challenges the cultural positioning of the character – whom we all know as the villain of The Wizard of Oz – by positing that it was a reaction to a lifetime of bullying which resulted in her becoming the Wicked Witch as we know her today. Indeed, this central theme of the musical is presented as a question at the very start: ‘Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?’

Now, Wicked and the Anti-Bullying Alliance have gone a step further and joined forces to create workshops to tackle the show's thematic issue of bullying with those in Key Stage 2 and above (for up to 30 participants at a time).

The interactive workshops are geared towards children and young people and are tailored in terms of content, depending on ability and age. The participants use dramatic devices, exercises and script excerpts from the show in order to create strategies to explore different ways that characters could have dealt with bullying behaviour. They look at scenes from the show, including the meeting of Elphaba and Glinda (the Good Witch who helps Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz), and then unpick each character's choices from the perspective of the victim, the bully and the witnesses. As well as developing an understanding of the characters, the participants look at movement and choreography from the show in order to further unpick the ethos and underlying message.

Unfortunately, the emergence of online bullying in modern society is something that many young people will have experienced. The workshops pull in references to social media and cyber bullying in order for the young people to relate to certain aspects of the story. It is opening up a dialogue around this that means the workshops provide a really interesting way of making a timeless story really resonate with today's audiences. In putting the focus on the characters' choices, the workshop not only makes the show itself more accessible to young audiences, but provides that audience with a safe space to discuss issues which are relevant to them today.

Lessons learned

The outcome for the participants, then, is not only to open up discussions about the topic, but through the use of the characters in the story, to allow them to create alternative approaches to negative behaviour on a textual, drama and character-type basis. The hope is that this helps participants to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them. This empathetic ic approach to young people, where they are encouraged to self-evaluate through engagement with drama, has long been a positive way of encouraging social change and tolerance.

Paul Sunders, the resident dance coordinator of Wicked UK & Ireland as well as one of its swings, says: ‘The workshops are a safe place to explore and understand different elements of friendship, hatred, bullying, dictatorship, jealousy, love and many other daily emotions children and young adults go through. Using the characters in the show, the participants can engage on a level they would normally feel uncomfortable doing as themselves.’

He adds that he hopes the participants leave the workshops better equipped to recognise how their behaviour and actions can affect others and what the most constructive way to move forward would be. With the new era of technology meaning that social media, chat rooms and online presence have become an important part of early life, the story of the show promotes the core elements of friendship and acceptance. Sunders also adds that he hopes that the fond memories of the workshop, the show, the music or the story will continually refresh a participant's outlook on growing up so they are not consumed by the day-to-day issues of being a teenager.

Thanks to its mixture of positive feedback and providing an alternative way of unpicking bullying within schools through the lens of a West End smash-hit, these workshops are proving to be very popular.

To book tickets for the show or to discuss booking a Wicked anti-bullying workshop visit tinyurl.com/tdsp1-wicked. For teachers, there are also downloadable resources online.You can also email the workshop coordinator for further information: workshops@theartslink.co.uk