Qualitative MethodsInterdisciplinaryTeaching Tools

Theatre as Data: Using Performance Reviews to Teach Qualitative Analysis

UUnknown

2026-02-14

8 min read

Use theatre reviews like Gerry & Sewell to teach qualitative coding, theme-building and communicating findings—transferable skills for environmental social science.

Turn theatre reviews into classroom data: teach qualitative analysis with Gerry & Sewell

Students and teachers struggle to find classroom-ready, trustworthy exercises that teach rigorous qualitative methods while staying engaging and curriculum-aligned. Theatre reviews — compact, rhetorically rich, and publicly available — solve that problem. This lesson uses the Gerry & Sewell review as a concrete data source to teach qualitative analysis, coding themes, and communicating findings — transferable skills for environmental social science, policy studies, and research methods courses.

Why theatre reviews work as teaching data in 2026

Theatre criticism is ideal for a classroom qualitative exercise because reviews are short, densely interpretive, and publicly accessible. In 2025–26, education trends show rising demand for interdisciplinary, active-learning approaches that teach data literacy across STEM and social science curricula. Reviews like the Guardian’s take on Gerry & Sewell combine narrative, evaluation and social commentary in a few paragraphs — the perfect micro-corpus for introducing coding, theme development and argument writing.

Teaching aims and learning outcomes

Introduce students to open and axial coding and building a codebook.
Practice identifying rhetorical devices, sentiment and social themes in text.
Build transferable skills: qualitative interpretation, triangulation, and communicating results visually and verbally.
Link classroom practice to environmental social science: how to analyse public discourse about policy, place, and community responses to environmental change.

Snapshot: the Gerry & Sewell review as a case study

Use a short passage from the review to model coding. For example:

"This tale of two hard-up reprobates in Gateshead, who dream of getting a Newcastle United season ticket by hook or by crook, encapsulates hope in the face of adversity…"

From one paragraph you can extract initial codes: place (Gateshead), economic hardship (hard-up), aspiration/hope, moral ambiguity (by hook or by crook), and tone (tragicomedy). This micro-example shows students how a single passage yields multiple analytic angles.

Full classroom exercise: step-by-step (90–180 minutes, adaptable)

Preparation (teacher, 30–60 minutes)

Collect 4–6 short theatre reviews (250–700 words each). Include Gerry & Sewell plus 3–5 other reviews of similar length. Aim for a mix of regional and national outlets so students can compare voice and framing.
Create a worksheet with the passage excerpt, a coding template, and reflection prompts.
Decide whether to use low-tech (printed text, sticky notes, spreadsheets) or digital tools (Taguette, QDA Miner Lite, NVivo, or an LLM-assisted workflow).

Phase 1 — Familiarisation (15–20 minutes)

Students read reviews quietly and annotate marginalia: highlight striking phrases, note tone, and underline statements about place, class, or politics.
Prompt: "What four words or short phrases capture the review's central point?" Have pairs compare answers.

Phase 2 — Open coding (20–30 minutes)

Introduce open coding: label meaningful content in each review. Start with 6–12 codes per text.
Use simple labels: "austerity", "humour vs tragedy", "character empathy", "authenticity", "regional identity".
Make coding visible: sticky notes on printed copies or tags in a qualitative tool.

Phase 3 — Building a codebook and axial coding (20–30 minutes)

Across pairs, collate all codes into a class list. Merge synonyms and define each code (short definition + inclusion/exclusion criteria).
Introduce axial coding: group related codes into higher-order themes (for example, group "austerity", "regional betrayal", and "drained resources" under a theme called "political economy").

Each pair selects one theme and pulls three evidence quotes from the corpus that illustrate variation within the theme.
Students write a 150–250 word thematic summary: what the theme captures, how it appears across reviews, and why it matters.

Phase 5 — Visualisation & communication (20–40 minutes)

Options for outputs: a one-slide evidence-summary, a short poster, a 3-minute lightning talk, or a one-page policy memo linking the theme to a social/environmental issue (e.g., cultural narratives about regional austerity and place-based climate adaptation).
Teach basic visualization ideas: code frequency bar charts (spreadsheet), co-occurrence networks (Gephi or network visualization tools), and thematic maps linking themes to evidence.

Tools and workflows appropriate for classrooms in 2026

By 2026, many classrooms use a mix of low-tech and software-assisted qualitative analysis. Key options:

Low-tech: printed texts, colored pens, sticky notes, Excel/Google Sheets for simple code tallies.
Open-source/small-scale QDA: Taguette, QDA Miner Lite — accessible for secondary and undergraduate classes and ideal for quick coding projects.
Advanced/commercial: NVivo or Atlas.ti for larger projects and advanced visualisations.
AI-assisted workflows: In 2025–26, LLMs and specialised AI tools accelerated initial coding and summarisation. Use them critically: ask students to compare AI-generated codes with their own and to identify biases or misreadings. Teach students to use AI for rapid familiarisation, not as a substitute for human interpretation.

Sample codebook (starter list)

Austerity / economic strain: references to poverty, hard-up, drained resources.
Place & identity: Gateshead, Newcastle, regional belonging, local culture.
Hope & aspiration: dreams, season ticket, rags-to-riches narrative.
Tone / register: comic, tragic, tragicomic, satire.
Authenticity / adaptation: adaptation from novel/film, voice authenticity, staging choices.
Political commentary: references to political betrayal, policy context.

Assessment, differentiation and curriculum alignment

Align this exercise with A-level, IB, or undergraduate research methods learning objectives:

Short formative task: 250-word thematic write-up (KS5 / Year 12–13) assessing coding accuracy and evidence use.
Summative assignment: 1500-word report comparing thematic patterns across reviews and reflecting on researcher positionality (undergraduate methods course).
Rubric ideas: clarity of code definitions, consistency of coding, quality of thematic synthesis, use of evidence quotes, and quality of communication output.

Differentiation

Lower-attaining groups: focus on identifying tone and 3–4 broad themes; use visual coding (colours) rather than verbatim codes.
Higher-attaining groups: ask for reflexive memos, inter-coder reliability checks (Cohen’s kappa), and a short critique of AI-assisted coding outputs.

After learning on theatre reviews, students should apply the same steps to environmental social science texts. Project ideas:

Analyse local newspaper coverage of a proposed wind farm: identify themes like "NIMBY", "green jobs", "heritage".
Code public consultation comments on flood defences for perceptions of risk and trust in authorities.
Compare stakeholder statements in a biodiversity policy debate to identify competing values (economic, cultural, ecological).

These tasks show why qualitative skills matter: policymaking and community engagement are driven by narratives and values, not just numbers.

Ethics, copyright and reliability

Reviews published in newspapers or journals are public and can be used for analysis, but teach students to cite sources and respect copyright when reproducing longer extracts.
Discuss researcher positionality and reflexivity: how do a critic’s background and editorial context shape a review?
Teach inter-coder reliability as a quality check. In classroom settings, simple percent agreement and short discussions are effective starting points.

2026 trends & responsible use of AI in qualitative pedagogy

Recent developments (late 2025–early 2026) have made AI tools widely available for text analysis. Many universities updated syllabuses in 2025 to include digital literacy and data ethics. Practical guidance:

Use AI to speed up initial familiarisation (auto-summaries, candidate codes), then require students to validate and revise outputs.
Discuss model bias: LLMs reflect training data and sometimes flatten nuance or misread local idioms (e.g., regional humour in reviews like Gerry & Sewell).
Make AI transparency part of assessment: students must declare prompts used and explain how AI results were edited.

Example student deliverables (templates)

1. Thematic summary (150–250 words)

Structure: concise theme statement, three supporting quotes (with line references), two sentences on variation across reviews, one sentence on implications for a related environmental topic.

2. One-slide evidence summary

Title: Theme name
Left: three quotes with code labels
Right: quick visual (bar chart of code frequency)
Bottom: one-sentence implication

Example feedback points for teachers

Positive: "You linked theme to clear evidence across three reviews and explained variation."
Improve: "Be explicit about how you combined similar codes and why you grouped them under the theme."
Extension: "Critique how publication bias might shape these reviews and propose how to deepen the corpus (e.g., include audience responses or social media)."

Final tips for success

Keep the corpus small for first exercises; depth beats breadth when learning coding practice.
Model live coding with one paragraph to reduce student anxiety — thinking aloud is a powerful teaching tool.
Emphasise evidence: always link themes back to precise quotes or timestamps.
Use theatre reviews as a bridge: they teach nuance, tone, and context in short texts — perfect preparation for bigger environmental social science projects.

Closing: actionable next steps

Try this in your next lesson: select 4 short reviews (including Gerry & Sewell), run a 90-minute class using the steps above, and have each student present a 3-minute thematic summary. Use low-tech tools first, then introduce Taguette or an AI-assisted workflow in a follow-up session.

Call to action: Download the worksheet, sample codebook and rubric on our resources page, adapt the lesson for your syllabus, and share classroom outputs with colleagues. If you’re an educator, post a 1-slide summary of your students’ themes on social media with #TheatreAsData — and tag us so we can share exemplary work and help you scale this exercise into a larger qualitative methods module.

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