This teacher narrative reports on a Mantle of the Expert study with a class of Year 7 students at an intermediate school on the East Coast of New Zealand. The aim of the study was to integrate a range of curriculum areas in an inquiry into events surrounding the New Zealand Land Wars of the 1860s and especially the controversial figure of Te Kooti. The study sought to incorporate a number of key aspects of Brechtian pedagogy/theatre and of the Orff Schulwerk approach to music education into the study design. This narrative is essentially one teacher's critical reflection on what happened, what worked and what didn't, at least within the constraints of the study itself.