INTRODUCTION TO CHILDREN'S THEATRE

WHAT IS CHILDREN THEATRE?

Children theatre is a thinking theatre that helps to pump start the imagination of the children
and lengthen their attention span. The engagement of children in theatre practices helps
deepens their knowledge - creatively, imaginatively and technically. Plays for children may
range from reimagined fairy tales, adaptations of favorites plays, brand new plays and musicals
about physics, history and problems in schools, such as bullying.

Children theatre aims at achieving the following values:

 Psychological growth: problem solving powers

 Educational exposure: truths and ideas
 Entertainment
 Aesthetic appreciation
 Culture of appreciating arts: future theatre audiences

The child is a potential anything. What you expose the child to is what he learns. In performing
for the children, their age group must be taken into consideration. The children audience can
be divided into four age groups:

1. 5-6 years old

 Age to attempt theatre
 Short attention span
 Need adult supervision
 Curious, can't sit still
 Likes anything, new movements, shapes, strong-visual impressions
2. 7-9 years old
 Stage of rules and roles
 Assumes control
 Sensitive and emotional; insists on fairness
 Can manipulate objects
 Begins to enjoy hobbies, group sport
3. 10-13 years old
 Problem of self acceptance
 Physically stronger
 Aware of sex differences and individual differences
 Love tales of adventure
 Like natural history, adventure, suspense, sports, romance, etc
4. 14-18 years old
 Trying to become adults
  Can make decisions on their own and responsible for their actions
 Achievement oriented and gates to disappoint
 Aware of friendship, honor, success and fashion
 Develop self discipline

PLAYWRITING FOR CHILDREN'S THEATRE

One should write plays not plays for children. Let the material dictate the audience. Creativity is
what is important in playwrighting. If there's need for a play to be a children's play, it should be
revised by the playwright using whatever guidelines are useful. Below are four destructive
principles for writing for children which must be guraded against:

1. Typical Hero:
 The feeling that the hero must be young or slightly older than thise who see the
play.
 Or the ideology of a virtuous hero.
 Hero must be a male.
2. Shadow conflicts:
 Error of having a less villainous character or antagonist.
 A balanced conflict should present 'forces of good just manage to defeat the the
forces of evil.
Such pampering undercuts drama itself because 'drama is people in trouble'. It also
undercuts the protagonist's raisón détre.
3. Simplification of ideas and conflicts
 Simplicity and complexity are irrelevant variables.
 Explains his materials forgetting 'entertainment is key'.
4. Morality
 Morality shouldn't be forced into a play
 Believe that plays that have no moral value are unworthy or just there to entertain.
 There should be no rules between a playwright and his inspiration

Conditions necessary for evaluation of scripts for children:

1. Respect
 Understand their fragile nature
 Challenges involved in the developing of their young minds
 Styles in their natural play
 Address them directly
 Love for poetry over other genres (musicals)
 Recognition of themselves in adults
2. Contemporary issues
 Issues relevant to them. For example, a play about problems and issues of growing
up will be of more interest to them than a okay about old age or gone by days of old.
3. Action
  Must not be "talky". Show it, don't tell it.
 A play that depends so much on what the audience must hear us not a play for
children.
4. Unity
 A storyline with chronological sequence of events is best for children.
 Sequence does not distract children but still need variety in plays that contributes to
a single point.

DIRECTING FOR CHILDREN'S THEATRE

Guidelines for directing for children:

1. Emotional truths
 Greatest error is emotional condescension (simplifying life for the childlike mind)
 A child learns from emotion long before his reasoning power starts to function
 Removing emotional response from children's play is to cheat the children
 Children are receptive to emotions, therefore, the need to control irrelevant
emotions in their play
2. Visualization
 The child is helpless in the areas of rich vocabulary, inferring from words and judging
ideological conflicts.
 Children rely heavily on what they see. Therefore, visual language of children's play
must be emphasized through visual actions.
 The visual effects shouldn't carry away the depth of content or attention to the
language or idea(s) of the play.
3. Variety
 His shorter attention span, expanding curiosity and continual seeking for new
wonders, make him crave for variety.
 One solution is the staging of a play with which includes a variety of unified
activities.
4. Age consideration
 The Director should aim at creating a production for age at the same time.
 It is necessary to cover the artistic interest of each age level.
5. :Casting and identification
 Casting stereotype roles is important for instant identification if characters.
 Except to teach children to look beyond externals in their future judgement of
others.
6. Audience participation
 Perform a good play
 Make sure the children are comfortable.
 Note the difference between 'noise' and 'participation'.
7. Effect and Spectacle
  Scenery and costumes should be elaborate
 But care must be taken not to over excite and dampen the imagination of the
children.
 Give them a frame work which the children, using their own minds, can fill in.

ACTING FOR CHILDREN'S THEATRE

In acting for children, one must play for the adult level for the success of the performance. The
actor must also into take into consideration the following:

1. ROLE
2.
 Characters in children's play should be played as real as the actors can.
 If the character fails to achieve believable human characteristics, the
children/audience will tune off.
3. AUDIENCE RESPONSE
 Recognizing the different kinds of response from the audience is a skill required to
be a successful child actor.
 The child audience responds differently from the adult audience. They also respond
differently from a mixed audience. This is because children are used to deferring to
adults model of behavior.
 The positive response cn be identified by the audience's participation.
 Negative response can be identified from the audience's restlessness and physical
discomfort. This may be caused by insincere and poor characterization by actors or
too much talk and little action on stage.

DESIGNING; CHILDREN'S THEATRE

Design contributes in setting the atmosphere, conveying visual images for the action
of the play and also contributes to the story of the play.
These narrative and graphic functions of design in theatre can be appreciated by
children. They are capable of appreciating and enjoying the elements of visual arts:
form, color, mass, line and balance. This can be identified in their early stage of
through:
 Imagination of creating fantasies of their own (mother and father, using pieces
of sticks to create toys or pieces of paper to create birds and aeroplane).
 Love for Spectacle (magical transformation of fantastic scenery, bizarre and
original costume, special effects, lighting tricks)

CHILDREN'S THEATRE: MANAGEMENT

Management in children's theatre is more complicated. This is because children
rarely control their own time and finances. Therefore, anything meant for the
children must be sold to both the children and the adults who control them,
namely parents and teachers.
The theatre manager must always bear in mind the following goals of children's
theatre:
 Development of personality
 Aesthetic education
 Teaching social skills and psychology self
 Teaching arts and
 Entertainment

The above guarantees the children theatre to become a force for education
and development. Some factors to take into consideration to ensure this is
the facilities and means of publicity.