"How I Learned About Consent" School Play

How I Learned About Consent is also a play about WHAT you want, HOW you want it, IF you want it, and what happens when you DON’T. This play aims to foster dialogue, understanding, and positive change among secondary school pupils surrounding consent, communication, and the complexities of navigating relationships in the modern age.

The play explores sexual experiences, or experiences of a sexual nature, and what leads to that outcome using drama, comedy, satire, and abstract theatre. The play doesn’t just follow one person’s experience, but an array of experiences across relationship type, gender, and sexual orientation.

Equally addressing and representing relevant issues young people face, the play doesn’t just explore negative sexual violence experiences; it represents the positive points of consensual experiences and acknowledges the complex relationships that young people have as teenagers.

The play was developed in collaboration with Drama, Theatre and Performance students responding to research data on young people’s knowledge, attitudes and experiences of consent and feedback from teenage audiences detailing the issues they would like to see staged.

Having successfully toured colleges nationally twice as “The Kinds of Sex You Might Have at College”, it was adapted from the source material for teenagers between 15 and 18 years of age. The play has successfully toured the Republic of Ireland in Autumn/Winter 2022 and Spring 2024 to over 2,000 pupils from 20 different secondary schools.

Details

Runtime: 80 minutes, including a 20 minute Q&A talkback session with the cast

Content: The show contains sexual language including jokes and references, and references, discussion and depiction of sexual harassment, violence, abuse and rape.

How I Learned About Consent is not planned to be staged for the 2025 calendar year. However, theatre and film based resources are being rolled out for secondary schools (senior cycle), Youthreach centres and organisations working with adolescents. If interested please contact activeconsent@universityofgalway.ie.