The happy ending is that The Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah has arrived at a clear statement of aims and objectives, and the long story is the 20 years of theatre making within the field of theatre in education, involving moments of clarity followed by periods of complete confusion as to why we were doing what we were doing. The question which triggered the story was simply "what is the long-term impact of the work on your audience?" to which I have answered, "I do not know." However, I am able to describe the long-term impact of working within schools and youth centres on myself as a theatre maker. Within that story I identify my quest for doing the work and show how it either fits in or is in conflict with the institutions which buy-in my theatre. I show how the quest emerged and grew, my quest being to explore the play and the workshop elements of theatre in education and treat them as equal art forms, sometimes working on them as separate entities and other times merging them into a participatory theatre programme. I trace the relationships we have made with schools and youth services: beginning in the 1980s when the Education Reform Act created a hostile climate for TIE in schools; through the 1990s with the growing social educational agenda requiring the arts to deliver on specific issues; up to the present day with the government embracing the concept of artists in schools, sharing their artistic processes as a way for children and teachers to connect into their own creativity. (Contains 14 notes.)