We are a group of science educators, theater educators, science outreach professionals, and local theater artists working on easy and fun ways to use theater techniques to make science more engaging, educational and inspiring.
We develop performances with science content that are exciting, entertaining, easy to produce and result in measurable learning gains in elementary-aged children. Our goal is to provide these models, materials, scripts, and training to collaborative groups in other communities to allow them to put on our shows or develop their own.
Science educators are bound to motivate and help children of all learning styles and cultural backgrounds learn and appreciate science. This job isn’t always easy. Despite our best efforts and pedagogical tools developed in the last decade, a significant proportion of our students decide they are “no good” in science and do their best to avoid it in the future. We believe the cause of “science phobia” is more emotional than intellectual, and have developed outreach models that use tools of theater to engage children’s hearts, imagination, and body in learning science.
Demonstrations are a staple of science education outreach events and feature prominently in our shows as well. However, children often leave shows composed of only demonstrations without any understanding of the concepts behind the spectacle. In the Fusion Science Theater model, we decide what we want the audience to learn first, and then design all the elements of the show, including demonstrations, to teach that concept.
Any science educator, theater educator or theater artist willing to work in a cross-disciplinary team can produce a Fusion Science Theater event. Your team can come from the same high school, community college, or small four-year college. It could also be assembled from separate institutions in your community. We’ll help you find willing partners if you’d like. We’ll also provide the event model, materials, scripts, and training. We mean it when we say: If we can do it, so can you.
The Ringmaster helps Mr. KaBoom figure it out.
"Molecules, any chemist will tell you, have lots to teach us," begins Terry Devitt in a press release from the University of Wisconsin. "Giving voice to the lessons of molecules and other props of science, as the lamentable state of science literacy in the United States attests, is no easy task," Dewitt writes.
Describing Fusion Science Theater's approach to education, Dewitt writes: "The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is really about creating a tool, a model program that can be adapted by teachers and others to channel basic concepts of science to young children. The idea, says Holly Walter Kerby, a Madison playwright and an MATC instructor of chemistry and creative writing/drama, is to adapt the techniques of theater - theme, character and dramatic question - to teaching science to young people."
To learn more, go to "Using Street Theater to Channel the Lessons of Molecules."