Preparations were going ahead yesterday for Liverpool's first festival of children's theatre. And if rehearsals at the city's Unity Theatre were anything to go by, it is the sort of theatre to make adults envious.
The Unity-based festival will run from Thursday, June 3 to Sunday June 5, and will include theatre from Europe as well as locally-created events.
Among the latter shows will be Feast Your Eyes, a strange show first conjured up by the London company Fevered Sleep.
Using an original text from David Harradine and Zoe Bywater, it has been adapted for performance at the Unity by the Unity's director Graham Phillips and Alan Richardson of Liverpool's Hope Street theatre school.
It will involve a large table, a professional all-female company of four and a story in which the audience gets intimately involved.
Unity spokesman Mike James explains:" It is about a queen who has grown fat and young members of the audience will be given crowns to turn them into kings and queens to sit at the table: their parents will be the poor people."
It will use all sorts of theatrical techniques including large puppetry, music and the shadow puppets which were being put their their peculiar paces yesterday.
The show, running Friday to Sunday on the festival weekend, is just one of several special events for the festival, a collaboration between the Unity Theatre, Splatts!, Liverpool John Moores University drama department, Hope Street and Merseyside Development Initiative.
It is also supported by a number of organisations including the PH Holt Trust, Creative Partnerships and the Liverpool Culture Company.
Teatro Piazza O D'occasione from Italy will make their Liverpool debut on the Friday with The Japanese Garden, a sensory theatrical experience and participatory performance for all ages.
From Germany, Theater Handgemenge will perform Lords of the Railway on the Saturday, the story of model railway enthusiasts who tell the tale of a boy who loses his toy dog on a train.
It is said to be dramatic, quirky and great fun.
Britain's Lyngo theatre will return with The Fish's Wishes on the Sunday, a hit last year, and En Masse Theatre will present The Ignatius Trail on the same day, a story of pirates.
Leading children's writer Philip Pullman will be presenting one of his early plays, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Sumatran Devil at the Joe H Makin Theatre.
It is being staged by the John Moores University Drama Department.
The Fish's Wishes will also be staged at the Southport Arts Centre on Saturday, June 4 at 2pm.
Further details and brochure from Unity at 0151 709 4988.
[© ic Liverpool, 25/05/05]
0 comments - Add yours