From Page to Stage: The Making of Childhood, Interrupted

When asked about the kind of journalist I am and would like to be, I've always led with the same response: I am a creative first, and I've chosen to embody this creativity through journalistic work. If creativity is the soul of what I wish to do, journalism is the body that carries it forward. One doesn't necessarily come before the other, but both coexist symbiotically, actively feeding each other in a continuous agreement toward professional and personal development.

Fast-forward to Jan. 2024, I walked into Professor Sonya Fatah's introductory lecture on live journalism. While I had some brief experiences with the fairly new form, Fatah's approach reset my idea of what journalism is and could be. Although in j-school, I've had discussions around the ethics of journalism and the future of combatting what can be a corporate, transactional, objectivity-oriented landscape, it was clear from the jump that Fatah was putting these conversations into practice through her live journalism studio stitched!

She told us what the rest of the semester would be like -- that we would create an investigative live journalism show that would be performed in front of a live audience in Apr. 2024.

The theme for this year would be childcare, more specifically, investigating the state of the Canadian childcare system through the eyes of those who have experienced it up close.

Throughout my teenage years, I worked in the childcare sector, often as a camp counsellor or a local after-school program staff member. I built connections with a diverse group of children, ranging in age, socioeconomic status and familial backgrounds. I witnessed first-hand just how many children required more -- more time, more resources, more play, more gentleness and simply more attention.

To be transparent, I was apprehensive of what I would uncover while working on the story. In some ways, it felt too personal, but if there is one thing I've learned about journalism while working with Fatah, it's that personal is inevitable and necessary.

Over the next few months, our class of nearly twenty learned to rewire our approach toward the journalistic process -- starting with making deliberate and conscious choices with language.

We, as storytellers, would be working in tandem with three story-sharers, usually referred to as "sources." These three story-sharers, who survived and continue to survive the childcare system, had control over their narrative and played an active role throughout the journalistic process. We didn't leave them in the dust until the curtains opened but emphasised the importance of their "okay" to the final script. If they felt unhappy with how we represented their story, we were responsible for returning to the drawing board and reworking the script.

As a matter of fact, Fatah stressed the idea of hierarchy-less production. Of course, we still had roles like director, producer, researcher, writer etc., out of necessity. Still, we made an effort to maximise interaction and collaboration, giving all of us a chance to incorporate our lived expertise.

I was brought on as a stage manager and a writer, but by the end of the course, I also dabbled in set design, lighting and audio. Getting to do both editorial and production work on Childhood, Interrupted shifted something inside of me as a journalist.

I was the "(wo)man in the middle," overlooking the narrative and the space in which it would exist.

I had to embrace the idea of listening to our story-sharers' experiences and being unafraid of the emotions that would naturally arise, like sadness and rage, alongside an increased motivation for change. These feelings acted like fuel, pushing me to do right by our story-sharers and making sure every minute detail contained nuance, from the tone of the lighting to the arrangement of a dishevelled bundle of childhood books.

After an emotional show on April 12, 2024, I took a moment to reflect on the entire process. Our team bid our final farewell, and we wrapped up our production of Childhood, Interrupted.

Or so I thought.

Professor Fatah contacted me a couple of weeks after the semester ended, asking me to join her over the summer as a research assistant for a revamped version of Childhood, Interrupted. We would be bringing back a few members of our initial team to help put on two additional shows. This go-around would give us the time we needed to curate an environment that could maximise the show's potential for change.

As a journalist, revisiting and improving previous work is a rare opportunity. We felt the script could do with a few more edits, the set design could be transformed to symbolise each storysharer's journey rather than representing the overarching theme of childhood spaces, and we could clean up other production aspects.

Most importantly, we wanted to be more conscious of our target audience and centre the concept of a post-show discussion. To do so, we had to carefully invite experts in various fields, such as law, social work, policy making, childcare, etc., so we could create calls to action that could directly target our goal of bettering the current condition of the childcare system whether through personal actions or through taking part in petitions and supporting ongoing legal cases. You can access and contribute to our work-in-progress “calls to action” document  (google doc) here (external link) .

With the summer showcase of Childhood, Interrupted now behind us, it may seem this story has finally wrapped. But it has not, and it never really does. Stories and the people who share them continue to evolve long after the journalist has left the stage. 

Just recently, our team received important documents from one of our story-sharers, and we've decided to continue our investigation.

Childhood, Interrupted will be back, and whether on the stage, in words, or through a podcast, our goal remains the same: reimagining the concept of child care in its entirety. 

Hania Noor worked alongside Professor Sonya Fatah as one of Toronto Metropolitan University’s URO research assistants. Their research project merged practices in various fields (documentary, journalism, performance) with the aim of pushing the boundaries of creative and non-creative practice in journalism and establishing an opening for more variations in non-fiction storytelling. Examining audience responses to the summer showcase of Childhood, Interrupted was the focus of this project.