Yes! Yes! Yes! The Value of Theatre-Based Comprehensive Relationship and Sexuality Education

Comprehensive sexuality education is shown to have a range of benefits in preventing dating and intimate partner violence as well as encouraging the development of healthy relationships amongst youth. Classroom-based relationship and sexuality education forms part of the educational landscape of sexuality education, however, education within the classroom hosts potential barriers to comprehensive sexuality education and therefore, is often critiqued as being dependent on the availability of trained and confident teachers. Social stigma around the delivery of reproductive and sexual health education can make classroom-based education fraught for both teachers and learners. To address this, Yes Yes Yes, an original Aotearoa New Zealand theatre production, has been developed as an alternative piece of sexuality education focused on increasing nuanced understandings of consent and therefore, promoting positive sexual experiences among young people. Through a critical realist lens, this research employed a mixed-methods design that examined Yes Yes Yes and highlighted the role of theatre as a potential educational tool for comprehensive relationship and sexuality education. This was examined by analysing (i) how Yes Yes Yes functions as a piece of sexuality education, and (ii) capturing the audience response to viewing Yes Yes Yes. I used performance analysis to examine the function of Yes Yes Yes and explored the theatrical conventions used to achieve its educational intentions. The response to viewing Yes Yes Yes was captured in both a quantitative and qualitative sense. Firstly, I examined whether the viewing of Yes Yes Yes elicited any statistically significant immediate attitude changes towards understanding consent and the perceived benefit of relationship and sexuality education. This was captured through a survey design that used a 5-point likert scale, with 132 pre-test participants, and 66 post-test participants. Following this, two later focus groups consisting of three participants each were analysed to capture audience members response to viewing Yes Yes Yes in a qualitative sense. These were analysed through a process inspired by reflexive thematic analysis. While the survey measure did not yield any significant attitude changes, participants of the focus groups felt encouraged to refer to their negative interpretation of prior educational experiences and used a referential lens to articulate their positive response. Significant findings from this research were that Yes Yes Yes operated as a piece of comprehensive relationship and sexuality education through its disruption of audience members' expectations of educational norms, particularly due to its use of theatrical conventions. This allowed Yes Yes Yes to bypass the potential barriers to comprehensive relationship and sexuality education, and allowed participants to critically reflect on their positionality, and the positionality of their peers regarding sexual harm. These findings highlight the value and potential of theatre, through its use of specific theatrical conventions, to deliver comprehensive relationship and sexuality education to young people.