Theatre for Babies

Images, video, bloggings, links and more, all about performing arts experiences for the very young. You can contact me via email: benfletcherwatson AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @bfletcherwatson.

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Art in its infancy: The baby as creative consultant

Anna Newell’s work draws on neuroscience and empathy of working with very young

A brilliant article from the Irish Times about the work of Anna Newell, doyenne of baby theatre in Ireland.

Newell’s work, which she describes as “theatre adventures”, for audiences she describes as “extraordinary”, has been developed over more than a decade of collaboration with the youngest possible cultural citizens and their parents. In that time she has developed the “optimum conditions for connecting with babies: portable performance spaces that cut out all the visual and aural noise that makes it difficult to engage with cognitive processes, a calm environment, a way of talking to and welcoming people [that allows] a personal connection to exist”. This discovery, she explains, has been made possible by the babies themselves, who are “invited to come in as creative consultants from the start, from day two” of any rehearsal period. “Because it is the babies who train us really in what works for them and that is crucial. I can’t imagine making the work [without their input] anymore.”

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Puppet Animation Festival: 'There's a place for art to be a connecting force'

Ahead of the festival's return this Easter, Charlotte Allan of Ipdip Theatre speaks to us about playfulness in the face of fear, and why early years theatre is more vital than ever

'Theatre is about the human presence, the physical present and being in that space,' says Allan. 'It's such a relevant art form for early years in particular because play is their world, so we play and imagine, and we create and we explore.'

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Centre Stage; A Little Scientist

Look at all these babies together, theatre for babies? What will happen? […]

A witty and enlightening piece by Schoemé Grobler for the South African wing of ASSITEJ:

In between the energetic, magic moments between babies and performers, my eyes can’t help but catch the baby boy sitting center stage. His eyes are transfixed, he sits firm, and unlike his peers, he is not showing any plans to move soon. But above all, it is his facial expression that strikes me: the biggest frown I’ve ever seen a baby frown, shifting from one eyebrow to the next as he watches one performer and then another. It is as if he is watching a very stressful tennis match and not agreeing with Roger Federer’s game plan. I expect the frown to fade into a new expression, but it doesn’t, this deep frown sticks. I can see the little wheel turning inside and the hypothetical smoke coming from his ears as he asks himself: what on earth is going on here? He reminds me of a scientist having an existential crisis. 

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To Baby or Not to Baby: Shakespeare Show for Theatergoers Who Are Barely Walking

In recent years, the New Victory Theater, a cultural group based in New York City’s Times Square, has extended its domain to include drama for the very youngest—as in infants and toddlers.

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Is it possible for a child to be too young to get started on the arts? Going by a new children's theatre festival opening in Singapore, 0-year-olds is not too young at all.

A short article about the new Imaginique Children’s Festival in Singapore, for children aged 0 to 12, which features work from Siri Dybwik among others.

Imaginique’s festival consultant Annie Pek says: “Baby theatre is a condensation of reality for babies, the best way to tell them about life, about stories, through cognitive experiences. It taps on a human instinct and innate ability to tell stories, and to connect through non-verbal ways.”

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Imagining Together - Starcatchers

Through arts and creative experiences, babies and young children develop a sense of their own agency and learn about their rights. As part of our campaign Making My Mark, Starcatchers' board member Dr Ben Fletcher-Watson reflects on the importance of ensuring children can experience theatre from the earliest possible age - not because it will help them when they are older, but because they are audiences now with their own imaginations, ideas, knowledge and able to enjoy art as much as adults do.

I’ve written a short blog for Starcatchers’ new Making My Mark campaign, titled Imagining Together:

We take children to the theatre not because it’s good for them, but because they have a right to enjoy art just as much as us adults. We take them because we need their imagination and openness and honesty to complete the experience. We take them because theatre, perhaps more than any other art-form, is about being together and imagining together.

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Sensory Performance Practice Part One: Where We Are And Where We’re Not

I was extremely excited about this symposium. Entitled, “Sensorial Practices in Performing Arts for Babies and Neuro-diverse Audiences – A Critical Perspective”, it was run by Dalijia Acin Th…

A nice description by Hana Holloway of attending Ellie Griffiths’ and Dalija Acin Thelander’s recent session on theatre for babies and theatre for neurodiverse audiences at the ASSITEJ meeting in Norway. Part two is here.

A lot of the conversation focused on how audiences and participants feel taken care of in a theatre space, and the responsibility theatremakers should take when it comes to the safety of the audience. We discussed how to foster a safe space, and considered this concept of safety in great detail – connected to each of the five senses. This involved thinking about the respect endeared between performers and the audience, as well as how we may work collaboratively with the helpers and parents of neurodiverse audiences. “We need to be aware of who holds the power of where we are,” Griffiths said...

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Applications Invited for Fully Funded PhD Scholarship in 'Early Years Performance'. - Moore Institute

GALWAY DOCTORAL RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP In EARLY YEARS PERFORMANCE in collaboration with Baboró International Arts Festival for Children & Branar Téatar do Pháistí The College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies (CASSCS) at NUI Galway is pleased to offer ONE postgraduate scholarship to support full-time PhD research within the Structured PhD in Drama and Theatre... | Read on »

A brilliant opportunity to secure a fully-funded PhD place at NUI Galway to work on theatre for Early Years.

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A new artistic research project funded by Creative Europe

Mapping is a large scale cooperation project supported by Creative Europe, Culture sub-programme, from 2018 to 2022:

Mapping is an artistic research project focused on creating a sensory-based relationship with very young children, from 0 to 6 years, through performing arts. In particular, it explores the idea of “children-spectators of today and not only of tomorrow”.

The very young children’s aesthetic moments reveal themselves through long silences, wide eyes, imperceptible sounds, sudden excitement, surprise, unexpected laughter, and stances that display the total involvement of their senses.

A process full of generative questions to start to map the aesthetic dimension of very young children, trying to detect the tracks, the many aesthetic moments, that children reveal during the artistic relationship and the underlying reasons.

Not a Manifesto on how to make theatre, dance or music for early years, nor a Charter that set of rules to create the “perfect” show, but a Map that helps to find our way, step by step, within the sensitive relationship between young child and artist (the key elements of this relationship: the Contact, the Proposal, the Reaction and the Balance), when we intersect them with the fundamentals of the performing arts (the Filters: Sound, Word, Image and Movement).

The research path will lead to identify the first points of a dynamic map on the aesthetics of performing arts for early childhood.

Two other researches will accompany the main one: A New Audience, the research on Audience Development, will focus on the recipients of the partners’ festivals and activities; and a research process focused on dramaturgy and direction, the Follow Up meetings.

The partnership, spread across the entire territory of the European Union, involves 18 partners from 17 European countries: theatres, institutions and artists who have established a deep relationship with early years over time, and who are willing to offer their specific know-how in developing this piece of research.

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Play as audience-led performance

A seminal theory of participation that persists in its influence is Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. From an article of the same name published in 1969 in the Journal of the…

Professor Jenn Stephenson of Queen’s University, Kingston responds to my 2015 article, Seen and Not Heard: Participation as Tyranny in Theatre for Early Years:

Fletcher-Watson’s ladder is organized in three broad categories — non-participation (spectating and therapising) at the bottom, adult-led (educating, testing, interacting) in the middle, and child-led (co-creating, re-interpreting, and playing) at the top. Play is certainly an effective mode of participatory learning. The question is “Is it art?” “The claim that free play can be considered theatre is obviously contentious,” he writes with amusing understatement (35).

However, play shares a core raison d’être with art. The business of play is at the heart of being a child. It is how children explore, process, and understand the conditions and qualities of their world. It is how they absorb, reflect, and reimagine what it means to be a child. It is not a huge leap to say that this is what art does for (adult) humans too. Art is a mediation on what it means to human. Play and art meet similar cultural “outcomes.”

So by extension, what does play as high-agency participatory theatre mean for adults? Interactive, experiential sims might fit the bill, allowing immersive explorations of unfamiliar or future-oriented situations. Conversely, what is the aesthetic component of children’s play? Can children engaged in play be valued from an aesthetic perspective? How can we describe/capture the synergy between aesthetics and utility without setting those up as exclusive poles of value? How do we talk about a contingent and improvised aesthetics of participation without denigrating it as lesser? Is that possible?

I love these questions! The article was intended to be provocative and playful, and I think Jenn has hit the nail on the head with the question, ‘Can children engaged in play be valued from an aesthetic perspective?’ Increasingly, I find myself watching non-participatory Early Years productions like the brilliant Stick By Me or MamaBabaMe (or even adult work like Enclosure 44 - Humans by the late Janis Claxton) through the lens of children’s play - watching adults engage in child-like or child-inspired play activities, as distinct from clowning or improvisation. There’s obviously immense craft and intentionality, but there’s also a mirroring back to the audience of the potential of objects and spaces for playfulness. We see what a simple circle can be used for when it’s inhabited by a performer, and the performance becomes an invitation to inhabit (albeit mentally) that space.

As Andy Manley says: “I thought I’ll make [My House] completely performative, and see what happens. Because all these buzz words were becoming popular, like ‘multi-sensory’ and ‘experiential’ and ‘participatory’, and it seemed like this was the norm for Early Years Theatre. I want audiences to be actively involved, but if they’re physically involved, then the most difficult problem of participatory theatre appears: how do children actually follow something if they’re right in the midst of it? Instead, I wanted to see if very young children could be an audience. I wanted to see if they could be passive, actively passive. And they can be. They absolutely can be.”

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Elizabeth Sullivan, Director of Performing Arts, Amanda Pintore, Associate Director of Performing Arts & Education, and Ric Averill, Artistic Director of Performing Arts Emeritus traveled to Minneapolis this month to The American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE) conference. Amanda and Ric were recognized for

Great to see Theatre for the Very Young recognised at the American Alliance for Theatre & Education Awards!

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A theatre experience for babies, performed in a tent

A new Christchurch theatre company offering plays for babies.

Theatre for babies comes to Christchurch, New Zealand!

"Our vision is of a world where high quality art is as integral to early childhood as the playground, and as accessible," [Melanie] Luckman said.

[Hannah] Wheeler said she experienced baby theatre performances while living and working in South Korea.

"What I experienced [five years ago] has stuck with me ever since, so I'm really excited about bringing high quality, respectful and intelligent theatre to children in Christchurch," Wheeler said.

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Mumbai to host its first baby theatre festival this month - Times of India

The drama fest is aimed at kids from the ages of six months to six years.

A brief report in The Times of India about the very first festival of Early Years Theatre (EYT) in India. Mid-day.com has more details:

"There is something amazing about watching a child experience theatre for the first time. It involves alertness of all senses. Parents have come and told me, 'I have never seen my child sit and watch something for 30 minutes'," reveals Choiti Ghosh, object theatre artiste, puppeteer and the artistic director of TAT, adding that she has come across 20-odd EYT productions in India in the last two years. "And this is just what we know of, which is why fests like these should happen all over the country," she adds.

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Children are as big a diversity problem for theatre as any other group

Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. It’s one of an increasing number of children’s arts and theatre festivals around the country. But children’s theatre has a long history of being marginalised by critics.

Wise words from Lyn Gardner about the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival:

And most of all, I admire the fact that at one year shy of its 30th birthday, the festival places such an emphasis on work for babies and the very young. It is an act of faith and a genuine investment in the future.

As choreographer Siri Dybwik, of Norwegian company Dybwikdans, who was here with Toddler Room, a dance piece created for three-year-olds and younger, says: “Childhood is not a waiting time to be an adult.”

Toddler Room was just one of six shows in the festival, many from international companies, aimed at the under-fives.

That may well reflect the Scottish government’s wise policy of investing in early years, but it’s even more than that. It is a reflection of a festival that understands that while presenting theatre for the very young may be enormously costly and brings logistical challenges, it is an investment in the future that brings unlimited returns.

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Shishu/Baban: Theatre for Babies - Wales Arts Review

Gary Raymond spends a few days experiencing the work of Theatr Iolo and ThinkArts of Kolkata during the Welsh leg of their Wales/India collaboration on developing theatre for 6-18 month …

Theatre for babies is almost impossible to describe, because, like its form, it rests somewhere outside of the parameters of the “grown up” experience. It is not, as it were, revolutionary. It takes many of its key pointers from decades of academic educational theory that has explored infant neurology amongst other things. There is obviously a whole world of television programmes, tactile games, and more recently apps, that prod at the same neurons as the stage show does. But theatre for babies does not simply replicate these experiences. It absolutely brings something new to the table. There is the emphasis on sound and colour and movement, but also there is much to be said for the reality of the experience, for having a flesh and blood human in the same space, enacting these pieces in close proximity to the captive audience. Here we are in that special place where anxiousness meets excitability. In theatrical terms (although of course not health and safety terms) this is dangerous.

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What made you compelled to start Spellbound (and I know you must have been compelled because something like that is tough to do!)?

I have worked with very young children as a teaching artist, visiting classrooms and leading workshops for families for many years. In that work, I often got to see professional performances for young children under 5, which were always European or Australian companies visiting New York on tour. I absolutely loved the work – it is so creative, and sometimes abstract, and always compelling and I wanted to make some work like that…but when I looked around there were no New York companies that created theater for children under five. So I started one. It started with just one show and some weekly storytimes led by myself and my friend and colleague, Margot Fitzsimmons. But once I started I wanted to do more and more!

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More theatre productions target babies

Several infants cry during the theatre performance and no one bats an eyelid. At least two mothers breastfeed their young ones. One baby grabs the hand of a dancer close to him, while another reaches up to touch the strips of tulle that hang overhead.. Read more at straitstimes.com.

Baby theatre comes to Singapore:

Theatre for babies is "based on the understanding that a child learns from his or her environment at any age", says Ms Luanne Poh, 38, director of The Artground.

"It aims to create an environment where parents and babies can be at ease," says Ms Poh, who worked for 10 years at the Esplanade, where she was involved in its children's programmes such as Playtime! which is meant for two-to four-year-olds.

"I felt that baby theatre was something that we don't have and should have (in Singapore)," says Ms Poh.