THEY aren’t called your formative years for nothing. When you’re a teenager, songs, books and films can sometimes seem to imprint themselves on your nervous system. You feel things more.

Teenage Trilogy, the new show from movement-based performance company Curious Seed, began in 2015 when artistic director Christine Devaney began to think about what it’s like to be a teenager now in comparison to her own teenage years. Since then, she and visual artist David Maxwell have spoken with groups of teenagers, parents and grandparents from Scotland, Denmark, Belgium, India and Australia about what it means to be a teenager now and in the past.

“What’s come up a lot is the feelings people have,” says Devaney, who did much of the overseas research work while touring previous Curious Seed production Chalk About. “There’s no getting away from the emotional and physical changes you have to deal with. There’s so much going on in your brain, your heart, your body. You have to deal with it all, no matter where you live or when you are a teenager. What changes through the years is the particular pressures. For example, technology is such a big thing now.”

Rather than being an issue-based piece directly addressing, say, sexting or mental health, Teenage Trilogy is more about exploring those emotions. Featuring a pre-performance hang-out space and visual art exhibition, and finishing with an all-ages silent disco, the Trilogy’s central element is a live performance by an inter-generational band and dancers Andrew Gardiner, Hayley Earlam, Nerea Gurrutxaga and Alexander McCabe.

“There’s a mood swing dance,” says Devaney. “I met this group of teenagers in Stirling a couple of years ago and was chatting to them about what should be in a show about being a teenager and they were like: ‘There has to be a mood swing dance.’”

She adds: “The way I work is I take what’s in my head and heart to other people. We share stories and from that more questions develop. I collect stories and make them into something which resonates with what I’m trying to say.”

More issue-based work, she says, can often run into problems.

“When people make work for a particular age group, especially teenagers, there’s an idea that it should have a particular message. The last thing I wanted to do with this was to patronise teenagers, or anybody. It’s not a documentary, it’s more a response, a piece of art.”

As well as featuring work from composer Luke Sutherland and?designers Karen Tennent, Simon Wilkinson and D Fie Foe, Teenage Trilogy was developed with the help of “vintage teenagers”, participants aged over 50 from the communities around Perth Theatre and Glasgow’s Tramway.

The inter-generational aspect is key, says Deveney.

“At a meeting of our vintage teenagers in Perth, a young boy came along as he’d missed the workshop for teenagers,” she says. “There’s an interview with him and two older people, and they were saying to him: ‘Don’t limit your friends to just your age group.’

“Communication between the generations can be a bit amiss at times because of presumptions we might have about each other.”

Teenagers can forget the adults around them were once their age, just as older people can forget being teenagers themselves.

“Music gets those feelings back,” says Deveney, explaining that the silent disco will feature three channels spanning different eras from the 1950s to the present day. “Ask people to talk about the music of their teenage days and a light comes on in people’s eyes.”

Today and tomorrow, Tramway, Glasgow, today 7pm, tomorrow 2pm, £12, £9 concs, £6 teenagers. Tel: 0845 330 3501. www.tramway.org

Feb 16 and Feb 17 Perth Theatre, 7pm, £7.50, £5 concs. Tel: 01738 621031 www.horsecross.co.uk www.curious-seed.com