image: Jassy Earl

Teenage Trilogy’s development began in 2015 during a residency at Aaben Dans (Denmark), when Christine started to think about what it is like to be a teenager now in comparison to her own teenage years; in turn, leading her to consider how older generations would respond to this question.  Since then, Christine and visual artist David Maxwell have initiated and documented many conversations with teenagers and their families from different cultures and backgrounds about what it means to be a teenager both now and in the past. 

Teenage Trilogy has been developed through these conversations and in residencies at St Martin’s Youth Arts Centre (Australia), Krokusfestival (Belgium), Imaginate (UK) and an ongoing residency with ThinkArts (India). 

Inspiration and ideas for Teenage Trilogy have been collated and curated from time spent working closely with groups of teenagers and ‘vintage teenagers’. A small group of local teenagers from Lyra Young Company have become the project’s invaluable volunteer teenage advisors, helping to make video tutorials, as well as taking on a print project to create a Teenage Trilogy ‘zine. The voices of teenagers are also heard through contributions to the Teenage Trilogy digital project: Tell It Like It Is.

Vintage Teenagers

For both Tramway and Perth Theatre we invited people aged over 50 to come to gathering workshops, sharing their teenage experiences beginning with a song from their teenage years. Some people contributed to the work through this, others have continued on to work with the company and some went on to rehearse and perform as part of the show.  

teenage band

As part of the work, we call out for young musicians aged 12-19 to participate and perform in the work.  For the performances in at Tramway and Perth Theatre we worked in partnership with the Tinderbox Collective in Edinburgh which brings young people from all walks of life together to develop their skills individually, develop together as a group and engage socially with each other and those around them through creating and showcasing music. 

Teenage Times Remix - Kolkata

With our partners, ThinkArts in India, we delivered a residency project bringing together 16 teenagers, 3 local dance artists, filmaker and visual artist in Kolkata in March 2018.  This project was supported by The British Council Scotland, Creative Scotland and The Scottish Government as part of the British Council's UK / INDIA 2017 Cultural Programme.  Through this project, and in collaboration with the young people, we created and presented a performance work, an exhibition of artworks and a series of short selfie videos.  A documentary film of the project in progress was created by Limon Khan which can be viewed below and the project was faciliated by Belgium-based dance artist Hendrik Lebon who also created the photographs below.