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Marvellous Microbes is more than just a workshop – it’s an adventure into the unseen world of microorganisms. Perfect for children aged 4-7, this project combines our creative brilliance at Cap-a-Pie with the scientific expertise of researchers from Newcastle and Durham Universities. Through engaging storytelling, music, and interactive activities, young learners will discover the incredible roles microbes play in our world. Join us as we chat with Artistic Director, Brad McCormick to learn about the journey from concept to reality.

What inspired the idea for the Marvellous Microbes workshop?

A few years ago, we worked with Dr Pavlina Theodosiou and Dr Sharon Velasquez-Orta on our show Climate Change Catastrophe! and learned about their amazing work using microbes to generate energy. 

We thought it was a really strong area to focus on for a piece on its own because not many people are aware of what microbes can do, but they are so important for us and the environment.

It was also a world that would really lend itself to working with young people – microbes and what they do isn’t far from stories of magical creatures you might find in an adventure story. 

Can you describe the process of integrating storytelling with scientific concepts? 

Because it’s a workshop for younger children (4-7 year olds), it was about identifying the key messages/scientific concepts and getting those across. Anything more than that risks getting too complicated for the age group. In consultation with the researchers, we chose the important ideas. I planned the workshop based on those and then checked in with them to double-check the science.

How did Katie Doherty’s music and Laura Lindow’s direction enhance the project?

We’ve worked with Katie several times, and the process is so easy because you explain the science, tell her the basic message of the song, and she always comes back with an incredibly catchy song that captures the research brilliantly. Roma Yagnik did a fantastic arrangement of the song and used it to inspire all the other music that you’ll hear – all of it brings lovely texture to the workshop.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve worked with Laura in this way, the past few times, she’s been a scriptwriter on our shows Woven Bones and Credit. I really enjoyed being back in the rehearsal room with her, she’s so clear, has great ideas, and the room is very light when she’s running it.

How did the collaboration with researchers from Newcastle and Durham Universities come about? 

We’d known Sharon and Pavlina (Newcastle) for some time, and in the past couple of years, we’ve also collaborated with Dr Lorraine Coghill, who works in Science Engagement at Durham University. Lorraine was a great help with some of the science, but she also put us in touch with the G. J. Russell Electron Microscopy Facility at Durham University, who took beautiful microbe images that are seen in the show.

What role did the scientists play in shaping the content of the project?

When I first chatted with them, the three key questions were:

1. What is your research?
2. What do you want the young people to know/think about?
3. What are the misconceptions about microbes that you would like to address?

After they answered those and other questions I had, it was a matter of putting the content together and then coming back to them to make sure it was accurate, taking on any notes they had, and rectifying any errors that crept in. Researchers are invaluable in the process – even if you’ve misunderstood the science, fully understanding it can open up new opportunities in the workshop.

What key messages about microbes do you hope young people will take away from the workshop? 

That microbes are everywhere, they’re really amazing and even though there are some that can make us ill, they are so important for the planet. 

How do you balance scientific accuracy with engaging content?

I would argue that the accurate science is the engaging part! The challenge is to make it accessible, but I’ve found that researchers are always good at distilling their complex subject down into ideas that people can understand – I would say Pavlina and Sharon are particularly good at this. And as a performer/facilitator, knowing that the science you’re talking about is sound and comes from rigorous and highly skilled research gives you real confidence when you’re delivering a workshop. which helps to make it more engaging.

What types of hands-on activities can people expect in the workshop? 

There are some dance moves that will be happening, but the main thing is that everyone will be invited to move around as a microbe (and maybe even speak like one).

How do these activities help in understanding the role of microbes?

Kids of KS1 age are still engaging in imaginative play at home and school, and what we’re doing in the workshop is inviting the kids to play a game with us: pretending that we’re in someone’s tummy seeing fish fingers float past, imagining that we’re next to molten hot lava or in Arctic ice (all real places that you’ll find microbes). These activities help to put the learning in their bodies, makes it fun and hopefully encourages them to imagine being microbes in their play outside of the workshop and to tell others about them.

How did Rachel Glover, Imogen Melhuish, and Anne Hornsby contribute to the project? 

Rachel was instrumental in putting together all the technical elements for the show – making sure the speakers and other devices talked to each other and generally solving any problems and coming up with innovative solutions.

Imogen put together a beautiful and portable design. We gave her the challenge of the set and costume being able to be transported on my bike, which was quite a tight parameter, but what she’s achieved with the amount of space/weight we gave her is impressive.

Anne is an expert in audio description. On this and our previous show The Vanishing Act, she educated us on how to integrate description into the show to make it more inclusive for visually impaired audience members.

Also worth mentioning is Anna Melling of ‘Talk to the Hand’ who helped with the Makaton signs in the show.

Can you share any particular moments or ideas from the team that were especially impactful?

From our first conversation, the researchers identified the challenge of a microbes workshop being: “making the unseen, seen” which really stuck with me, and I was thinking about that idea when I was planning and rehearsing.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of working on Marvellous Microbes for you personally? 

I’ve really enjoyed trying to integrate access into the workshop. We’ve included integrated audio description and Makaton signs into the script, which was a really interesting challenge. I feel like the skills I’ve learned on this will impact delivery of our other work as well.

Can you share a memorable experience or anecdote from the development process?

The microscopist from Durham University, who took some amazing images of micro-organisms for us, dropped by rehearsals on the first day to see what we were up to. We performed Katie’s song, and he seemed genuinely blown away that someone had written a song about microbes.

We recently collaborated with Professor Andrew Newman from Newcastle University. Together we created a new project on brain health and dementia for Key Stage 2 students. Below Andrew explains how we can look after our brains, and his experience of working with Cap-a-Pie and primary school students.

Can you explain why brain health is important, especially in relation to dementia prevention?

People are aware of the importance of maintaining a healthy heart, as this reduces the chance of cardiovascular disease. However, they are less aware of the importance of having a healthy brain, which helps prevent dementia. In a research paper published in the Journal Nature in 2024, a distinction is made between non-modifiable (about 60% of cases, which you can’t do anything about) and modifiable risk factors (about 40% of cases, which you can influence, affecting some 22 million people worldwide). The risk factors include blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, weight, alcohol, smoking, depression, hearing, inflammation, pollution, sleep, exercise, diet, socialisation, and education. Clearly, educating young people about the importance of these factors could mitigate the toll dementia takes on individuals and their families, as well as reducing the cost to wider society.

Why did you want to collaborate with Cap-a-Pie on a project about brain health?

I’ve known about the work that Cap-a-Pie undertakes in making the results of research available to the wider public for some years and have been impressed by it. They were the ideal partners for this work on healthy brains with young people.

What are some key factors that contribute to maintaining a healthy brain?

It is important to remain healthy during your life so that the small blood vessels in your brain are not damaged. Keeping physically active, managing blood pressure, limiting alcohol consumption, and not smoking are important. Research has also shown that staying in school beyond the age of 16 and connecting with other people reduces the risk of dementia later in life.

How does understanding brain health early in life contribute to overall well-being in later years?

The development of healthy habits in young people, which they maintain throughout their lives, reduces the chance of developing dementia in later life.   

What unique perspective or expertise does our theatre company bring to the project on brain health?

The teaching and communication skills demonstrated by Brad and Katy provide an excellent medium to engage young people with these topics. They find the exercises fun and, at the end, can demonstrate what they have learnt, which is great to see.

How do you see the arts and theatre playing a role in educating and engaging students about complex scientific topics like brain health?

The arts and theatre have a unique role in communicating complex ideas. I was surprised how easily the young people understood what was being communicated.

How has the collaboration between you and the theatre company enhanced the effectiveness of your work?

This collaboration has enabled me to engage with communities in a way that would otherwise be very difficult. If it results in just one person not developing dementia, then it is worth the work involved. One school student said that she had told her uncle, who was hard of hearing, to get a hearing aid as this may help him avoid dementia – which was great to hear about. 

In what ways do you hope this project will influence students’ understanding and awareness of brain health and dementia?

The project has given the young people an understanding of the relationship between brain health and dementia that will last a lifetime. Hopefully, they will talk to their families and friends and spread the information more widely.

“I genuinely did not expect to laugh as much as I did, or be as profoundly moved. That ending was so powerful, and retained its power each time I watched it.“

– Cathy L Shrank – Professor of Tudor and Renaissance Literature at University of Sheffield

If you ask someone ‘have you heard of Thomas Nashe?’, we’ve found that people will probably say ‘no’.

If the name is new to you, Nashe was a writer mostly active in London during the 1590s. After coming out of the Elizabethan version of higher education, he found a total lack of employment opportunities and struggled to be seen, heard and read. His frustration with the world comes through strongly in his very nihilistic and scathing works. He managed to get by with the help of various patrons and work as a ‘hack’ writer (a pen for hire) until his death at 32 while in exile in Norfolk.

Researchers from Newcastle University and the University of Sheffield have been looking into Nashe’s writing and making strong connections between his own situation and what young people are facing today – the changing world of work and economic precariousness brought about by the hoarding of wealth and outside factors like pandemics (just as we had Covid, Nashe had to deal with outbreaks of plague).

As part of the wider ‘Penniless’ research project (one of Nashe’s most famous works was called ‘Pierce Penniless’), Cap-a-Pie was asked to devise a piece of theatre that responded to Nashe’s works and looked at those modern-day themes. What was created (a work co-devised by performers Emily Corless, Rachel Stockdale and Mahsa Hammat Bahary) was ‘Propa Penniless’, a mixture of Nashe’s words, our contemporary take on him as well as sections involving the actor’s own experience of work and the difficulty of trying to be an artist.

‘Pierce Penniless’ is a dense and difficult text but the researchers knowledge of it and the world that Nashe lived in was invaluable to us when we were devising. We were really proud of what we made – feedback from the audience showed that the piece both amused them and moved them.

Sections of the piece were filmed to be part of a short documentary about the project that will be released soon.

In June 2022, we delivered a project in partnership with Newcastle University Education Outreach team at the Robinson Library, inspired by some archival material about coal mining disasters that took place in Heaton and Wallsend in the 1800s. In both cases, many men and young children lost their lives.

Over the course of a week, Year 5 and 6 students from both Carville Primary and Chillingham Road visited the University to see some of the historical documents and artefacts, and learn more about coal mining and the local history. After this, they created a performance devised from everything they had learnt and found interesting or fascinating. The students were intrigued and moved by the fact that children as young as 5 were sent down the mines to work. These pieces of theatre were performed outdoors in a beautiful venue in Gateshead, West Hedley Farm. Luckily, the weather was on our side and both schools did really well. 
 
To create a piece of theatre in a week is a huge achievement and to do it outdoors in the round too! Well done to all involved. 

“The children were incredibly proud of their achievements, and it was great to see the child-led learning take place.”

– Year 5 Teacher

In mid-November 2021, Cap-a-Pie headed to COP26 – the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Our filmed theatre show ‘Climate Change Catastrophe!’ had been chosen to be shown as part of the conference.

We were really excited to share the news with everyone, especially the students who helped us to make the show:

“I think it’s very good that Climate Change Catastrophe! is being shown at COP26 because it’s a better chance that kids ideas are getting out into the world”

– Year 5 student, Hotspur Primary School

Our one-hour slot included a brief introduction by me and our engineer collaborator, Dr Alistair Ford; then the 6 episodes of ‘Climate Change Catastrophe!’ were screened, followed by a Q&A with people in the live audience and those watching at home.

Despite competing against well-known composer Brian Eno, who was on elsewhere at the same time as us, our screening was almost at capacity and hundreds more were watching a live stream of the event.

We heard and saw loads of positive reactions to the films with some young people in the audience particularly enjoying themselves. We also had some great questions come in including “Why do you think governments don’t listen to children?” and “Can we legislate our way out of the climate crisis?”

Thankfully Alistair was on hand to handle the trickier questions.

Even if the outcomes from the conference don’t seem enough at this point to make a significant difference to the climate crisis, it was a great privilege to be a part of COP26. And as one student put it:

“Maybe most of our ideas can’t happen, but at least they show something can happen” 

Find out more about Climate Change Catastrophe! here.

‘Climate Change Catastrophe!’ has always been a collaboration between Cap-a-Pie and three groups of people.

In the first phase of the project, we mostly worked with two of those groups: engineers at Newcastle University who are studying climate change; and primary school-aged children.

Through working with these two groups, we were able to generate material for 6 short films that cover a wide range climate change science: the greenhouse effect, carbon capture, heatwaves and more. The research and expertise of the researchers was poured into a series of lesson plans that were brilliantly delivered by teachers in the classroom and parents at home (all of this happened when schools were closed at the beginning of 2021). Students created characters, scripts, scene ideas, drawings and more to help us make the show.

April 2021 is when we started to work intensively with the third group – our amazing creative team of freelance actors, designers, production managers and filmmakers.

Hannah Goudie-Hunter and Liam Scarth will be the two faces you will see on-screen when the films come out – they play all the characters and do a brilliant job of interpreting, enhancing and performing the children’s ideas.

Katie Doherty wrote all the music that you will hear in the show – from jingles to instrumentals to incidental music as well as three unbelievably catchy songs that you will be humming along to in next to no time. One of the songs, ‘Who’s Gonna Stop the Rain?’, includes a rap in the middle and we were very fortunate to have this performed by local rapper Kema Kay.

Verity Quinn designed the sets and costumes. Our set is a beautiful classroom space – the warm colours and sharp geometric lines that you’ll see on the film makes the set great to look at, but what is also brilliant is that the space is also incredibly versatile. We cover a lot of ground in these films – classrooms, newsrooms, arctic landscapes, cities underwater – and the set allows us to do all of those things.

Dan Saggars is the lighting designer – as well as providing lighting on-stage to cater for all our different settings, Dan had the idea to install special lighting panels behind the windows of the set (you’ll see what I mean when you see the film). They were so versatile and allowed us to really use the window space in our classroom set.

Production Manager Rachel Glover is a regular Cap-a-Pie collaborator, making sure everything is running smoothly, keeping us on track and on time – not an easy job when there is so much to be done.

Finally, Lindsay Duncanson, Marek Gabrysch and Dan Wallder were the filmmakers behind capturing all these scenes on film and putting them together – consulting on angles, laying tracks for tracking shots and making sure everything can be seen and heard. They even indulged us with some stop-motion animation!

Now that the films are all finished, we’ll be working with another group of people – our audience – who we’re hoping will watch, learn and even change their behaviours based on the combined work of young people, engineers and creatives who put together ‘Climate Change Catastrophe!’

You can watch the show on our website. We’d love to hear what you think. Tag us on social media @capapiecreative on Facebook & Twitter.