True stories on stage: Teater Fryshuset to share the method that reaches young people others can’t

Many young people at risk of being drawn into crime, violence or extremism rarely meet anyone who understands how complicated their lives are. For 15 years, the Swedish theatre company Teater Fryshuset has put real stories on stage to spark recognition and conversation. Now Kavli Trust is giving the theatre NOK 7.5 million to develop a method that theatres in Sweden, Norway and the UK can take up.

In public debate, stories about crime, violence and extremism among young people are often told in black and white. Simple explanations, clear villains, tidy narratives. The reality young people live is rarely that simple, and when complex lives are squeezed into neat storylines, the distance between groups grows rather than shrinks.

Teater Fryshuset has pushed back against this kind of simplification for more than 15 years. The theatre is part of Fryshuset, a Swedish foundation running around 60 programmes for children and young people, and it tours the country with productions built on real stories of violence, crime, extremism and social exclusion. Last year it reached almost 15,000 young people, seven in ten of them through school.

‘Teater Fryshuset has found a form that meets young people where they are, not where we might wish they were. Now that they want to share the method more widely, many more young people can have that same experience of being seen,’ says Ingrid Paasche, CEO of Kavli Trust.

What makes Berättelser som förändrar (Stories that Change) new is not a new production. It is a method. Fryshuset will set down how it works so that other theatres and organisations can use the approach themselves: an existing production is rooted locally through a ‘bridge-builder’ with networks in the target group, and each performance is followed by a facilitated conversation centred on the audience’s own reactions.

The method will be tested through three pilots in Sweden, the UK and Norway, in partnership with Norrbottensteatern, Coldstore Theater and The Globe Ensemble. Schools will be the main setting: pupils receive preparatory material before the performance, watch it together, and work through it afterwards in conversation and follow-up sessions with their teachers. The aim is to reach young people who rarely go to the theatre, through bridge-builders who know the communities they live in.

‘When real experiences are brought to the stage, they can create recognition and open up conversations about things that are otherwise hard to talk about. Teater Fryshuset shows the power theatre can have in prevention work. Through this project, the method will be developed further and shared, so that it can benefit even more young people, beyond Sweden too,’ says Malin Lasse, Grant Manager Sweden at Kavli Trust.

Kavli Trust’s NOK 7.5 million will fund method development, project management, artistic guidance and the delivery of the three pilots, as well as documentation and evaluation. Teater Fryshuset and the host theatres are contributing substantial resources of their own in the form of stage space, technical support and staff.

When the project ends in 2029, the plan is for the method to live on as a permanent part of Teater Fryshuset’s work, with new theatres able to adopt it through a licence agreement. More young people, in more countries, will then be able to encounter the same true stories, and perhaps feel a little less alone in their own.

About the project

• Teater Fryshuset will develop and test a transferable method that uses verbatim theatre, based on real stories, to prevent social exclusion among young people.
• The target group is young people who are in, or at risk of entering, harmful environments, reached through schools and local networks.
• The method will be tested through three pilots in Sweden, the UK and Norway, in partnership with local theatres.
• Kavli Trust is providing NOK 7.5 million over three years to make the method available to more theatres and organisations.
• Kavli Trust has previously supported Fryshuset through the 4uvas project, but this is the first time funding has gone directly to Teater Fryshuset.