Helen Nicholson expressed that "the main aim of TIE was to use drama as a tool to explore ideas, feelings and values”, describing this medium as “Theatre of ideas” (2009, p. 24). It is with this feeling that our group formulated the key intentions of our piece. As a company, our goal was to focus on children's emotional response to a story-based depiction of TIE. Due to the educational aspect of TIE, we chose the historical story of Pocahontas, allowing the group to retell and modify the famous Disney animated film. with an additional historical element. The group designed and collaborated on the performance to focus on the underlying question of identity and to get the audience asking: what makes each person an individual? Pocahontas is forced to choose between her family home and a new life in England with her partner John Smith, and it is through this dilemma that the group steers the overall performance. Eager to create a "hybrid" play (Wooster, 2007, p1), the group wanted to include both historical and thematic techniques in the story, thus getting the children to think critically about the play with arguments both factual and emotional. Throughout this essay, I will examine the development process within our rehearsals and the group's use of audience participation through different theater and education techniques, in order to achieve the goals of our company. Anthony Jackson states that when forming a TIE piece, the first questions asked should be, "Whose song is this?" And what does he say and what does he do? (2007, p57), assimilating the group to determine that the performance should be aimed at lower level 2 students and also that we wanted the piece to be information...... middle of paper ..... . chieve our company aims to create intellectual stimulation and enjoyable performance. The combination of in-depth historical research and several TIE methods supported the performance, allowing us to rely on a well-structured evidence base. We found that our work was most successful when it included an element of audience participation and so made the creative decision to engage and connect with the audience throughout the show. This was highlighted through the question of identity which was placed under each scene and activity of the play and demonstrated most effectively in the two separate name sections, illustrating the key message of the performance, namely that giving up one's identity is not an easy thing to do. . We wanted our audience to question what makes Pocahontas who she is and thus lead them to contemplate their own personal identity..