Cirque du Soleil · Education
A field trip that counts as a lesson.
The show was only the beginning. We helped Cirque du Soleil carry its worlds into the classroom, giving teachers a way to turn a performance into questions, discoveries and creative work of students’ own.
Inside the guide
Inside the guide
A teacher can take the performance into the classroom: an aim, a discussion before and after the show, and the standards it meets.
- Aim
- “How can we prepare for and reflect on the LUZIA performance?”
- Vocabulary
- Imagination, metaphor, performance, production
- Standards
- ELA speaking & listening, writing; NCAS 7, 8, 9, 10
- Before the show
- “What do you think you will see and hear?”
- After the show
- “In what ways did the production use design and choreography to explore metaphors in the imagined and natural world?”
- Go deeper
- “I wonder if…” “I hope…” “I am inspired to…”
The show was the easy part.
A Cirque performance doesn’t need selling to a student. It needs selling to the teacher who has to sign the permission slip, book the bus and explain the day to a principal.
Cirque already had plenty of material: videos, press kits, behind-the-scenes footage. What teachers lacked was a way to use it. A field trip had to connect to what students were supposed to be learning that term.
We built on what Cirque already had.
Instead of starting from scratch, we treated Cirque’s existing library as the backbone and wrote around it. Each guide pairs curated videos and show material with original activities for before and after the performance.
Students might map a character’s journey, design a costume, choreograph to the show’s music or work out the physics behind the acrobatics. The framework connects those activities to arts, science, English language arts and social-emotional learning. Touring guides were also adapted to UK curriculum standards.
One framework, many shows.
The activities change with the production; the structure holds. Cirque returned over several rounds for guides to different shows, including Blue Man Group.
The guides
Five of the nine. Each names its grade band on the cover.
The show is a starting point.
Cirque returned over several rounds for guides to different shows, including Blue Man Group.
Each guide gave teachers another way to make the show a starting point for their students’ own explorations.
Credits
- Client
- Cirque du Soleil
- Education & curriculum
- Protagonist Ink
- Writing & design
- Protagonist Ink
- Show photography
- Cirque du Soleil