This weekend, Dublin teenagers will bring to the stage a series of plays written, performed and designed by themselves. They talk to Sara Keating

Tenderfoot. The word evokes a certain hesitancy, a tentative type of dipping-the-toe-in-the-water experiment to see if the cold is bearable. But there is nothing cautious about the 40 confident teenagers taking part in the Tenderfoot Theatre Apprentice Programme, which comes to its fruition this weekend at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght. They are self-possessed and articulate, mock-mortified at the attention of a journalist from a national newspaper, but happy to play up to the camera all the same.

Tenderfoot is a landmark theatre-in- education programme, sponsored by the South Dublin County Arts Office. The brainchild of Bríd Dukes at the Civic Theatre, it involves transition-year students from eight schools in the council's catchment area who were invited to work with theatre professionals for three months to develop, write and produce their own work, culminating in two days of performances.

Programme director Veronica Coburn says the idea of apprenticeship suits both the discipline of theatre and the philosophy that underlies the transition-year curriculum.

"The whole idea of 'apprenticeship' is learning by doing, and that is how I came into the theatre, through Dublin Youth Theatre," she says. "I didn't study it, I just did it, and I think that's a very valid way of learning. Plus, it fits well with the whole idea of transition year. Increasingly, the whole education system drives towards this strong academic route, but there are other ways of learning and [transition year] encourages that. Out of a whole academic system, they make this one year which is all about experience, trying different, new, things in the real world.

" sits very well with the educational system behind transition year, and with the alternative vocational route [in education]. It also sits well with . Young people get interested in things by doing them, and theatre is great fun for them in that way because it is an active thing."

LIAM HALLIGAN, OF Storytellers Theatre Company, which is co-producing the project with South Dublin County Arts Office and the Civic Theatre, is directing two of the students' plays alongside Coburn and Gavin Kostick. He agrees that the project encourages different forms of learning.

"The students are from very different backgrounds," he says. "Many of them would not be from very academic backgrounds; they are the kids who don't really like school. But here they've learned something very practical, and there is a great sense of achievement for them."

In the rehearsal studio, lighting and sound experts Sarah Jane Shiels and Ivan Birthistle take notes with the "wobbly group of three or four" who have chosen to focus on the technical side of things.

"Designing six shows in a week is a real challenge," Shiels admits. The students, however, are fairly undaunted by the challenge, although they almost uniformly admit that they had no idea how much work went into producing a play. Adam Hamadache (aka "the handsome one"), from Collinstown Park Community College, admits that "I didn't think about light or sound or set before. I thought that was just automatic. There's a lot of work to do, but it's easy work and it's fun."

Helena Bracken, from St Paul's Secondary School, Greenhills, agrees. "You see plays and you don't think they look that hard, but there's a lot of work that goes into it," she says. "You just look at the acting, not the other stuff, because it's all background."

At the start, most of the students "wanted to do acting or costume", Veronica Coburn admits, but having sat through day-long workshops on all elements of theatre production before getting into the rehearsal room, their understanding of theatre is now more sophisticated, although they have learnt a lot about acting too. As Ellen Tannem, from Sancta Maria College, Ballyroan, who is also preparing for a school musical, Fame, says: "The musical is all about showbiz and jazz hands, but is about real acting."

Tannem has also written Fashion, one of the plays that will be produced, which is about "two stereotypes - a rocker girl and a D4 - and they have to do work experience together in a fashion magazine".

David Fennell, from Old Bawn Community School, Tallaght, took part in the writing programme too. While he had done some creative writing before joining the Tenderfoot project, he had never written a play before.

"It was difficult at the start to learn the format for a play," he says. "You'd forget you're not writing for a film, that you can't just do it scene by scene, that a play has to be in real time."

Ebo Emakhu, from St Kevin's Community College, Clondalkin, did not find it such a challenge. "I did lots of writing before. I write poems and I wrote a play when I was back in Nigeria."

COBURN SAYS THAT the majority of the plays developed explore "family problems and sexuality. There was also a futuristic play, one set in 1916 and another set in 1920s Hollywood. But family and sexuality were the big ones; coming in contact with the 'will you, won't you' problem and the consequences of 'will you, won't you'."

In fact, many of the students mention Danti-Dan, Gina Moxley's landmark play about teenage sexuality, which they attended together at the Civic Theatre.

"It was brilliant," Ellen Tannem says with self-assurance. "It was really interesting to see what [teenagers' attitudes to sex] were in the 1970s, because they didn't know anything. We know all about that now."

Many of the students, however, had little or no contact with professional theatre prior to Tenderfoot, although some of them had been to "theatre with a school group or to musicals or the panto", as Coburn explains.

"We have people with different too," she says. "We have one student who made it to boot-camp on X Factor. We have some who have been to drama classes. A few are in youth theatres. And some no experience at all - but that's the purpose of something like this."

Coburn's main aim, in fact, is that the students enjoy the contact they have with new experiences at the theatre, and the new challenges it has presented them with. "And I think that they will look back and remember it. The purpose for a project like this is coming into contact with something new. I think there were some students who came and didn't think they could do it. Now they know they can; but, more importantly, they liked doing it.

"For the project to be a success, the students don't have to become playwrights or actors. And I think they will think differently about theatre at the end of it."

Coburn will be especially pleased with this final achievement. "The reason that Bríd Dukes wanted to organise was for the young people. It is about access. Why do we expect young people to go to the theatre? Why do you want them to be engaged when there aren't things set up so that they can engage with it? The important ingredient is that they need to want to do it."

Tenderfoot's productions will be performed at the Civic Theatre Tallaght tomorrow and Sat, 8.15pm.