Southland schools are getting sex wise. Six schools have been visited over the last two weeks by Sexwise, a performance troupe run by Theatre in Health Education Trust Aotearoa. 

Trust artistic director Evelyn Mann said the programme had been very successful already this year.

Sexwise last visited Southland schools in 2013. The trust was glad to bring the programme back to Southland, Mann said. Since 2011 the trust has organised troupes of actors to tour New Zealand schools with a sexual education theatre presentation and workshop.

The programme uses a mix of comedy and realism to act out scenarios that teens may find themselves in, helping them to navigate what to do.

The programme is set around an imagined phone or tablet app and teaches children about the risks around sexual material online. Using modern melodies, the group sings precautionary tales about nude pictures leaked on Facebook, contracting STI’s and unplanned pregnancies, changing hits such as Get Lucky by Daft Punk to Wrap It Up to Get Lucky. At the end of the theatre presentation students are encouraged to ask the performers while in character and out of character questions that could ordinarily be awkward to openly talk about.

Mann said it was the degree of separation that made students feel more comfortable asking intimate and potentially embarrassing questions.

“It allows students to discuss sex impersonally.”

Students asked questions about situations and problems the characters have and not on behalf of themselves, she said.

Source: Southland Times

Read the full article at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/67338164/Sex-education-tackles-online-era-issues