Hundreds of teenagers have let the makers of a new stage show in on their secrets, ranging from harmless admissions to troubling revelations.
I took three sick days at school but I wasn’t sick.
I accidentally vacuumed my pet fish.
I have witnessed my parents having sex.
I think about killing myself every day and have tried many times.
Varying from light-hearted to very dark, the secrets kept by some of today’s teenagers are about to become a lot less secret.
These examples and about 1,000 others were written anonymously by people aged between 14 and 18 in Leeds and Iceland, and handed over to theatre director and choreographer Ásrún Magnúsdóttir to be used in her new show.
Simply titled Secrets, the musical will have its world premiere in Leeds this week, with a selection of the teenagers’ most private thoughts and experiences turned into a script and songs by young local performers.
“They have made lyrics and music from all the secrets that we collected,” says Magnúsdóttir, who is from Iceland. “Of course, many secrets are about love and sex. Many are about family issues. We categorised them and then wrote lyrics and finally music.”
Some common themes emerged – there’s the Friendship Song, the Sex Song and the LGBT Song.
Other tunes are based on specific secrets that immediately inspired an idea.
One is called Chills In My Ass – after one young contributor confided: “I get chills in my ass when I see something that disgusts me.”
Rapper and dancer Hannah Yeboah, 19, who is one of the collective creating the show, says: “We read the line and the first thought we had was, ‘this is the beat, this is how it has to be, this is the rhythm and everything,’.”
Some secrets are funny, gross, trivial or all three (“I like to fart into my palm and smell it”). But others are deeply troubling or desperately sad (“I’m struggling more than I show”; “I hate my body”; “I have been a victim of domestic violence but no-one knows.”).
As the subject matter varies, so do the style and tone of the show.
“There was one category about ‘daddy issues’ that’s about horrible fathers,” Magnúsdóttir says. “So it’s really heavy and sad and dark and yeah, you feel a lot.
“The young people [co-writing the show] came to me and said, ‘we can’t be making fun music about this’. So we finally didn’t make a song about it. But we still tried to keep much of the heavier stuff in because it’s also part of life. But we try not to do it in any fun way.”
Teenagers posted their secrets anonymously into boxes in schools. There was no way of following up any really worrying contributions, although Magnúsdóttir gave participants details of helplines, she says.
“Some of the secrets are very heavy and it’s very horrible actually to know that someone this age is dealing with this stuff.” However, she says some were relieved to unburden themselves of things they had not been able to tell anyone.
A few secrets seemed like “a cry for help”, Yeboah says. “I wish that there was something you could do about them, but you can’t do anything because everything is anonymous. I guess it’s good [that they could write them anonymously] because maybe they don’t want to say them out loud.”
Yeboah and fellow performer Andrea Minos Menlah, 17, are among the group who will give the bearers of the secrets a voice by saying them out loud on stage. The process has made them more aware that people are often dealing with more than they might be willing to reveal, they say.
“Most people really underestimate how much people go through in general life,” says Menlah. “I hope that this project actually gives them the awareness that no matter the age or whatever, people do go through this stuff.”
Magnúsdóttir adds: “I hope some people will think, OK, I’m not alone, there are people out there sharing my worries or dreams or hopes, or whatever the secrets are about.”
Secrets will launch the Transform 23 festival at The Warehouse in Holbeck, Leeds, on 11 and 12 October.
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