Theatre for Young Audiences
Spark: Annual: 25 May – 7 June 2009: Leicestershire
December 26 - 30: Bruxelles: Noel au Theatre. Events in several locations. See programme at La Montagne Magique Also at: www.ctej.be
2009:
April 16 – 26: Turin: Giocoteatro: Organisers are a major development centre for TYA. ASSITEJ EC Meeting: www.casateatroragazzi.it
April 19-26: Ballerup, Denmark: Annual Showcase Festival. www.teatercentrum.dk
October 13-19: Cakovec, Croatia: Annual ASSITEJ festival. www.assitej.hr
October 18-22: Baltic Festival.
October 31 – November 8: Moscow: 3rd Big Break Festival. Info in English at www.bigbreakfest.ru
November 10-12: Darlington: Takeoff Festival : Cultural Diversity www.ctctheatre.org.uk
MOSCOW SUN
Paul Haman has a three year bursary from Arts Council England to explore international relationships for UK theatres for young audiences. He was invited to Moscow for an international conference on Children’s Theatre festivals in Europe at the 2008 Big Break Festival.
It did not snow as it should in early November. The half term break saw bright sun gleaming on the golden domes of Moscow’s many churches. Walking the streets of this huge city was a great pleasure, filled as it is with a riotous chaos of buildings in many styles and on many scales, from the tiny reconstructed 16th Century Kazan cathedral, smaller than the most modest English parish church, to the vast hotels and office blocks that scream oil and gas money from their tasteless, post-modern bulk. Russia’s charming 18th and 19th Century version of classical style, the individual two and three storey mansions painted in bold colours with white details, are still there, jostling with Stalin’s wedding cake skyscrapers and the modern boxes. The famous Metro stations are jaw-droppingly vast and lavishly decorated – the newer ones still celebrating science, industry – and the arts.
Above ground, every square has a bronze statue, usually of a poet or writer. Every street, it seems, has a theatre. But the secret life of central Moscow, mostly built in great blocks with towering facades facing wide avenues, bleak in the winter months, lies in behind, in the pereuloks, the side streets and internal courtyards. That is where new cultural businesses – including studio theatres – flourish in basements and odd corners. Theatre Praktika, organiser of Big Break since 2007, is a lively model of the new enterprise, running festivals and workshops, producing and presenting smaller shows to niche audiences. The larger institutional theatres also have new studios, sometimes high up in the roof or in a converted office or rehearsal room.
TOP DOWN
My experience across Eastern Europe of a top heavy structure of big companies, huge buildings and heavy overheads is of course repeated in Russia, but the shows selected for Big Break 2008 were almost universally small in scale, playful in approach, warm in the effort to make contact with young audiences. The least successful examples, including some performed by young people, showed clear evidence of standard Russian practice: writer and director imposing ideas, styles and concepts upon talented and – in the case of the adults - highly trained, mature actors.
Anatoly Praudin’s company presented House at Pooh Corner, a three hour epic in which each character is a fully developed and complex adult. It is Chekhov for Juniors with a difference: the young audience is taken seriously and expected to cope with weird adult behaviour. The framework linking the stories is of a community of human adults, led by the dreamy and imaginative middle-aged Pooh, the archetypal Russian writer, creating spaces and settings from a stage full of bricks, fabric lengths, and ladders. At one moment the teenage Roo insists of having her mother remove the cumbersome tail part of her costume so she is free to climb a tree. Eeyore is a disillusioned 40-something woman, frustrated by life all round, typical of the Russian situation in which women are supposed to hold everything together while the men philosphise. Rabbit is the irresponsible, selfish modern businessman. Piglet transforms from a pampered adolescent in a pink frock to a hunk in a sailor suit – pursued by Kanga, elegant mother of Roo. The performances are clear, open, detailed and warm.
Maly Theatre Novgorod is in the hands of a younger team, keen to develop new styles of puppetry and object theatre at the small scale. Their show with paper puppets was delightful if a bit overplayed for my taste. Moscow Arts Theatre committed massive resources to a modern version of a Russian classic folk tale, the Little Hump-backed Horse. You could call it a Russian version of our traditional panto, but the scale and the production values are far superior. The structure is of the journey made by a simple fool, led by the magical horse through fantasy lands, under the sea, to the Emperor’s palace etc. A technically superb company of 40 actors able to play a vast range of characters in contrasting styles, dance, sing and tumble, made for a delightful family show. The lively text is well crafted with jokes for all ages by the Brothers Presnyakov, among the best writers in Russia today. Gogol’s classic story The Nose was reportedly another fine piece of acting and direction from the oldest dedicated company in Russia, Moscow Theatre of the Young Spectator.
The foreign companies from Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark offered typically worthy western European shows, a little dated, well presented but lacking the spark of the best Russian work. By all accounts, most of the other shows by established Russian companies were dutiful, condescending relics, giving the impression of having been created in the 1950’s and not rehearsed since.
The worst show I saw was by AKHE, Engineering Theatre, supposedly renowned for off the wall clowning. What we got was just that, a series of clowning numbers cobbled together and interspersed with kids from the audience telling horror stories. Good mime artists with nothing important to say.
RENEWAL?
The aim of the festival was to explore, among other things, the premise that established theatre for children is dead and only children doing theatre or artists from the so-called adult theatre can provide artistic renewal. On the evidence, people dedicated to young audiences do it better, provided they have the extra resources which are needed. Standards in Russian theatre are high because of long and rigorous training for actors, directors and other artists and because of the strength of a tradition that produced Stanislavsky and Chekhov, Meyerhold and a host of modern masters of the craft, from Dodin and Liubimov to Korogodsky, Shapiro and Praudin.
Russia needs to see the best writing and small scale work for younger children from the UK. Our own tradition is at its best in these areas. Many Russians attending the seminar on European festivals for young audiences were also frustrated that a wider range of topics and approaches was not addressed – street theatre, drama for development, youth theatre and theatre made with problem kids, dance and music theatre.
Russia has a civilisation of its own; deep, rich and radical. Culture mattered enough to send artists to prison in times gone by. It still matters and has a quite different social role than in most of Western Europe. UK theatre makers for young audiences have probably more in common with colleagues in Russia than our peers in many Western European countries. Get beyond the barrier of the language, as you can with so many younger people, get off the main street, travel to other cities and you will find many theatres keen to build international partnerships in which the skills and experience on both sides can be generously shared.
Paul Harman
MOSCOW: PART TWO
Guy Holland of Quicksilver Theatre, London, takes up the story.
In November 2008 I had the pleasure of participating in Moscow’s 2nd BIG BREAK INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL FOR CHILDREN organised by Praktika Theatre.
My contribution in 2007 at the first festival had been a Masterclass on Story Telling -Story Acting as well as two performances of my play Teddy In His Rucksack in a Russian language co-production with the Vedogon Theatre from Zelenograd. This year I had the luxurious task of seeing as many plays as possible by both Russian and other European companies over a four day period. I have a long association with Russia - and previously with the Soviet Union, which I first visited in 1984, generally having a good time, meeting or working with many practitioners in the theatre who always demonstrate a total commitment to the highest standards possible in the delivery of their art.
BACKGROUND
In recent years though there appears to have been a decline in those standards. I asked this question of the festival’s director and principal organiser Maria Kublanova. She gave three reasons as to why this is so in her opinion. She mentioned there’s a lack of quality writers wanting to engage with the field of theatre for children. This comes directly as a consequence of the second reason she provided. Theatre for children suffered a substantial diminishment of status after the fall of communism and the political and economic turmoil of the past 17 years. The third reason she gave follows on from this; a lower status and lower pay attracts a lower calibre of artist, not just writers but also directors, designers and actors. Having dedicated most of my professional career to children’s theatre it was depressing to be told that frequently it is the artist that is failing to succeed in working for adults that ends up working for children. I’m glad and relieved to be able to say that although this in the UK had a ring of truth in the past, it is no longer true now.
It was Maria Kublanova’s hope that the festival would provide an opportunity to address this dilemma by confronting it head on through its artistic programming, master classes and seminar and conference subjects. The plays on show were a demonstration of the two extremes - the very good and the very bad - so as to illustrate about the present condition in the most graphic form possible and so hopefully kick starting the process of artistic renewal.
I saw a number of youth theatre productions that served as clear demonstrations that theatre for and by children and teenagers continues to grow in popularity as a means to explore self expression and issues of youth and play. Based on this I’m sure the future is bright. In addition I saw;
SHOWS
From Sweden’s Mittiprickteatern the play Coraline, a curious and peculiar comedy horror exploring an identical parallel universe in an apartment with one important difference. In one world the parents and neighbours of a young child are remote and indifferent but also quite normal and in the other world these same people return as rather frightening monsters. After this experience the realities of the ’normal’ world do not appear so boring anymore.
From Estonia there was the State Puppet Theatre who brought us Chuh Chuh, a very gentle performance for infants that was very pretty but also bereft of ideas and content. Basically a train drives from village to village picking up and dropping of a number of furry animals on the way.
From Bulgaria’s Credo Theatre we had Daddy Is Always Right. In my opinion this was one of the better and splendidly entertaining offerings of the festival. A series of comedy sketches involving cotton wool puppets conjured up with fantastic skill and good humour and perfect timing.
From Russia’s city of Mariinsk there was Zheltoe Okosha’s production About Knights And Princesses. This musical play concerns a war of the sexes, or a competition for supremacy - who is better, man or woman, fought with zest and fun and with a lot of chalk and black boards and score keeping.
From Mali Theatre heralding from the Russian city of Novgorod there was Prince And Giant’s Daughter a paper puppet fairy tale told with anarchic and zany preference involving dragons and many other monsters and heroes in various adventures presented by and commented on by three ’operators’
From St Petersburg there was Once from Derevo, a company that has been to Britain too, where I had seen them before. This was a marginally decadent dance and mime show principally aimed at adults, a tragic love story told in a highly stylized way. Gloriously good entertainment.
Also from St Petersburg there was Pokatukha presented by Licedel Theatre. This company too has been to Britain. I saw them twice in recent years (The Family). Without a doubt one of the most accomplished clown shows you are ever likely to see.
From the Hermitage Theatre of Moscow there was Keep Talking, undoubtedly one of the most dated performances of the festival about what happens in the children’s bed room after the lights go out - all the toys come alive and the fun begins.
Finally there was Once Upon A Time There Lived Heracles from Samara’s SamArt Theatre. I also read the English language version of the script of this play and it came across a lively and witty play. However, this did not come across in the performance which I found a little stilted. Set in ancient Greece it is set on Mount Olympus and tell of the adventures and tasks of Heracles.
Guy Holland