(Steve Hickey)
Stories come alive for us in many ways and children’s theatre is one of them. When I was a child, there was very little in the way of theatre for kids. That has changed; today there are a number of theatres that cater exclusively to children. To its credit, even my small city of Winnipeg has its own theatre for children — Manitoba Theatre for Young People – that has put on outstanding productions for children of various ages.
When I went to London this spring, I was intent on giving my children theatre experiences to remember. Of course, there is no city like London to see live theatre, and the children’s theatre there did not disappoint. In particular, my husband and I wanted our children to see work by Shakespeare and luckily for us, the Unicorn Theatre was staging Twelfth Night at the time of our visit. Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s more accessible plays for children. I read a child-friendly version of the play to my daughter the night before our departure, and it was surprising what she remembered when she saw the production. When the black-clad Olivia first appears onstage, strewing petals into the water, my daughter immediately piped up “She’s sad because her brother died.”
The Puppet Barge is a theatre on a canal boat moored in northwest London. The theatre uses marionettes. They had a production based on poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic — A Child’s Garden of Verse. Using a delightful combination of marionettes, shadow puppets, and even a puppet show-within-a-show of Punch and Judy, the poems came alive through the performance.
What struck me about theatre in London was its multicultural hue. Shakespeare is acted by players of every race and color, and the marionettes displayed on the Puppet Barge came from all over the world. After all, to quote from Hamlet, the play’s the thing! And ‘play’ is certainly something children know all about! Is there some place in your city where your children can see live theatre? Do tell!