imaginate

Sometimes it seems like Edinburgh has more festivals than any other city, and I say that before even having experienced August in Edinburgh when the legendary Fringe and International Book festivals take place and the town is apparently overrun by actors, writers, comedians, and festival visitors.  This month saw the Imaginate Festival, a theatre festival with the very youngest of audience members in mind.  

This was children’s theatre of the very highest order.  Inventive, clever, funny, magical.  During the three shows I attended, I found it difficult sometimes to decide if I wanted to watch the performance or the audience; there is something very entrancing in witnessing a row of little faces surrounded by the darkness of a theatrical auditorium, staring up entranced at the action on stage.  I’m not exaggerating.  Even amongst the very youngest, their level of focus was extraordinary.  Testament to the engulfing power of theatre.  At its best, it can literally swallow you up, transporting you to another world where men come dancing down from the moon, and whole cities can appear on a table top, and the world can become white, white, white...

The performance I saw geared toward the very youngest was First Light, a love story about Dawn’s encounter with the Man in the Moon.  The diminutive audience watched with absolute wonder.  Produced by Starcatchers, an innovative Scottish project that makes theatre specifically for babies and toddlers, I spoke briefly with the director Matt Addicott afterwards and we talked about his desire to create a narrative for a show for ages 0-2.  Others had questioned why a story was necessary for an audience not yet able to grasp the concept, but he was keen to provide an experience which could extend beyond the performance itself, and felt that the story was something which the grown-ups could take away from the show and continue sharing with the children once they got home.

I haven’t written much on this blog yet about writing for children, mostly I suppose because my first picture book isn’t yet out (it’s coming later this year), and also because Polly Dunbar has already blogged about the process so eloquently.  What surprised me most about writing for very small kids was how deceptively difficult it is.  While the idea for my book was dreamt up on a bus ride to Islington and scribbled on a piece of notepaper, what followed was more than two years of working on the manuscript and so many drafts I lost count.  And that was all before the illustrator even started work.  I imagine it’s much the same when it comes to creating theatre for youngsters.

Miss Ophelia was devised with such wit and ingenuity and was so visually inventive it left the audience agape, adults and children alike.  The set was like a picture book come to life, with a paper-cut-out Ophelia who grew up before our eyes and brilliant use of a gramophone played at different speeds to indicate the passage of time.  Oddly, in the case of this piece, I felt it was the story that let the whole down.  The grand parental ambition of the opening premise seemed lost half way along, lending the remainder the ramble of a spontaneously-told bedtime story.  The play had been based on a book by Michael Ende, and maybe a lot of condensing had gone on.  Clearly very talented though, I’d love to see more by this Dutch duo Het Filiaal - they have a children's show based on Einstein's concepts coming up that sounds great.

My very favourite show, and the one that was the biggest hit with my tiny daughter, was White, produced by Catherine Wheels.  Like First Light, its premise was beautifully simple - in an all-white world live two amiable clowns Wrinkle and Cotton.  They obsessively maintain order and cleanliness, eliminating any rogue traces of colour, whilst they await a mysterious arrival.  Creator Andy Manley must have intended a wry reference to Waiting for Godot, but unlike in Beckett’s play, the eagerly-awaited arrivals do finally come.  They appear in the form of eggs dropping from the sky which Wrinkle and Cotton take custodianship of with touching tenderness.  Until, that is, a red egg drops from above.  With this red egg, colour begins unstoppably to seep into the white world, to spectacular effect.  Ultimately, the story conveys a gentle message about the beauty of inclusion and the joy of colour.  I was amused to learn afterwards that the inspiration had come from a page of an interior design magazine and an all-white interior!  White was quite magical and reminded me of something else I discovered in the process of learning how to write for very young children; often it’s the very simplest of ideas that work the best.