Tenderfoot: Civic Theatre’s Apprentice Programme

TENDERFOOT, meaning neophyte, newbie, greenhorn, is The Civic Theatre’s apprentice theatre programme for transition year students.

Now in its seventeenth year the programme provides students from nineteen different schools in the South County Dublin region the opportunity to create and perform original work for the stage.

During the programme young people are introduced to all aspects of theatre – writing, set design/film for theatre, music & sound design, costume design, stage management and acting – under the guidance of working theatre professionals.

From January 25 to 27 this work can be seen in The Civic Theatre.

Plays written by young people, telling their stories, presenting the world as they see it.

These diverse and exciting plays, the work of young theatre makers, include – Burden by Gaius Leopardas – Moyle Park College; The World’s End by Alix Brady – Collinstown Park Community College and In Memory of Margret by Anna Byrne – Holy Family Community School/Rathcoole.

Tenderfoot is unique in providing a professional support system within which young people are empowered to make their own theatre and also provides the space for that work to be encountered by a peer audience.

Tenderfoot is a model of excellence of an arts in education programme which empowers creative expression in a vocational educational model.

Apprenticeship is the mode of learning. Students learn by doing under the guidance of working theatre professionals.

Tenderfoot welcomes the Minister for Education’s announcement in March 2022 of the introduction of a new subject, Drama, Theatre and Film Studies, to the Leaving Certificate programme in direct response to the need highlighted in the Senior Cycle Review: Advisory Report (NCCA, 2022) for additional opportunities in the creative arts for students in senior cycle.

Such provision will pave the way to the considerable array of opportunities for students who wish to follow further or higher education courses in the areas of drama, theatre or film where students can focus on analysis, performance or technical routes.

Tenderfoot, in offering senior cycle students a hands-on opportunity to explore these learning streams in a practice-based programme, facilitates embodied learning.

Embodied learning is invaluable in helping our senior cycle students navigate the major life decisions that face them towards the end of their second level education.

Indeed, embodied creative practice provides them with valuable skills for contemporary life – creative problem solving, imaginative thinking, self-confidence, social skills, empathy, and engagement with society and the wider world.

Since 2007, in excess of 1,100 students from 21 different schools have had the opportunity to be part of a Tenderfoot theatre ensemble.

Many of those students had never been to the theatre or taken part in any drama activity before Tenderfoot.