The winter school holidays makes it high season for children’s theatre. Sarah Catherall looks at the artistic and financial challenges its practitioners face.
When Emma Rattenbury was emerging from the intensity of Covid and its lockdowns, the children’s librarian struggled to reconnect with the world. “I was feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from people and nature,” says Wellington-based Rattenbury, also a playwright and performer. “I thought, ‘Jeez, if I’m feeling this way as an adult, imagine how difficult this period and the following reintegration back into the world must have been for kids – and maybe it still is.’”
She takes these ideas into her character, Winnie, in The Home Inside, a solo show that premieres at Wellington’s Bats Theatre next month. The play is pitched at children aged 4-8, and Rattenbury will perform the story of a young girl who is anxious about the outside world and compelled to explore big emotions.
A graduate of the Master of Fine Arts theatre programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, the 27-year-old hopes children seeing the play will ponder ways to deal with their own feelings. “We see Winnie struggle,” Rattenbury says. “She’s not perfect, she is brave, and she grows through these difficult experiences when she realises these feelings can’t hurt her but they’re just a part of life.”
The Home Inside is being staged by Wonderlight Theatre, a grassroots children’s theatre company that grew out of the masters’ theatre programme. Lecturer Kerryn Palmer, a co-founder of the company, is producing it, and she has researched children’s theatre extensively to find out what young people want to see, and what types of theatre move them. “A lot of theatre-makers often don’t consider the audience. We think we’re experts in making theatre, but we forget that we’re not experts in being a child any more.”
Children’s theatre is not given the stage time it deserves, says Palmer, who has spent her career lobbying for it to be taken more seriously. She argues there are not enough New Zealand stories in our theatres, and that much of kids’ theatre is designed to give children loud, colourful performances – the equivalent of a sugar high, so children aren’t reflecting or using their own imaginations afterwards.
Palmer’s research found children like variety and they appreciate good theatre. “You should come to the theatre no matter your age and think, ‘That was really great.’ But what can happen is that theatre-makers think, ‘Oh, parents will only bring their kids if they know the story’, so they put on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Treasure Island. These are really outdated stories, they’re not relevant to New Zealand, and they’re often Eurocentric.”
Two companies that focused purely on children’s theatre and New Zealand stories have pulled the curtain for the final time. In December, the Tim Bray Theatre Company in Auckland closed due to Bray’s health. Over 33 years, Bray and his team delivered more than 100 original productions to thousands of children.
Another blow was the demise of the National Theatre for Children – run by Wellington’s Capital E – which commissioned works and toured them. Palmer spent about seven years producing and directing its shows, and talks about the huge loss – it was the only children’s theatre company with dedicated funding from Creative New Zealand, and Wellington has now also lost an important education arm.
Creative New Zealand defends its perceived lack of funding in the sector, with a spokesperson saying the $13 million spent in the 2023-24 financial year on theatre works included children’s theatre, though this is not broken down.
Palmer says only one of 81 arts organisations and artists that received funding in 2023-24 is dedicated solely to 1 to 17-year-olds.
There is also regular competition for parental dollars from big Australian television franchises mounting touring shows. In April, Bluey’s Big Play filled arenas around the country. At the end of June, Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out, an Australian production featuring the beloved British cartoon character, will have multiple shows daily in theatres in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton, with ticket prices ranging from $40 to $90 for VIP packages.
Palmer adds that the box office model is difficult. “You can’t charge a child $60 a ticket,” she says, adding that children’s theatre has become a postcode lottery.
Children in Christchurch are fortunate because the rebuilt $61 million Court Theatre has an education arm, offering drama and improv classes for children from age 7, and a touring primary-schools bilingual production where it commissions theatre-makers to create a Māori or Pasifika show to take around Canterbury schools.
Artistic director Allison Walls says the junior musical is becoming a Court Theatre tradition. In the July holidays, performers aged under 18 will star in The SpongeBob Musical: Youth Edition, a show that has already had a few local school and amateur productions.
Walls says the rehearsals are “loud and chaotic, but ultimately it’s very rewarding” (see “Sponge bath”, below).
In Wellington, Circa Theatre commits to staging three children’s productions a year, along with its family-friendly Christmas pantomime. General manager Caroline Armstrong points out the importance of introducing children to the magic of theatre from an early age.
“You have only to attend one of our shows to see the joy in children’s faces when they see a live play. I’m also a big fan of children seeing magical and beautiful performances, where the production values are just as high as adult shows. If you think you can fool kids, you’re usually wrong. They can recognise good writing, good acting and beautiful set design and lighting.
“If children learn the conventions of theatre (and that sometimes conventions are broken) at a young age, they’re way more receptive to experiencing theatre as they grow older. I suspect some adults who find theatre challenging may not have had much exposure to it when they were young.”
However, the arts are chronically underfunded: it’s a challenge staging children’s works with lower ticket prices but typically the same overheads.
Circa’s forthcoming holiday production is the children’s musical comedy All the Things I Wish I could Be, created by Auckland-based actor Tom Knowles and Christchurch comedian and musician Jed Parsons as his kid’s entertainer alter-ego Jeff Parsnips.
“We’re two dads who like playing make-believe with our kids, so we wanted to share that with an audience and make something really Kiwi,” says Knowles. “We’ll be two lovable bumbling dads trying to work out the world and the moral of our lives, and the message will be that we hope to be so many different things but the best thing is to be ourselves.”
Pitching it at 4 to 12-year-olds plus parents, the duo hope children will laugh, talk and sing along. Children are blatantly honest – if they don’t like something, they won’t laugh.
“We get a little bit twitchy when we see parents shushing kids at the theatre,” Knowles says, “so we will create an atmosphere where the kids are allowed to enjoy themselves.”
The challenge with funding pressures, says Knowles, is to keep making theatre magic, with appealing lighting, sound and set designs to avoid amateurish school-hall production levels. “You want kids to dream and see the possibilities of the arts, and to want more of it.”
There is a desire among theatre-makers to tell New Zealand stories. In doing so, they’ll help to fill the void left by Bray, who was a master of this and often turned New Zealand children’s books into theatre scripts. Knowles acted in Bray’s Mr McGee and the Biting Flea and Kiwi Moon. Along with giving him work as an actor, the company introduced him to the joy of performing for children.
In Auckland, composer-turned-playwright Leon Radojkovic has also got the bug of staging works children will enjoy. In 2017, he adapted the music for a Silo Theatre-commissioned production, taking Sergei Prokofiev’s beloved musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf to the stage. Collaborating with director Sophie Roberts, the play featured puppets and a six-piece band, and toured the country.
It gave Radojkovic the idea to create an original story for children about a taniwha.
Premiering in the school holidays, Silo Theatre’s Taniwha is inspired by books he enjoyed as a child: Robyn Kahukiwa’s Taniwha, Jack Lasenby’s The Waterfall, and Joy Cowley’s The Terrible Taniwha of Timberditch.
Radojkovic created the live musical score, and the stage will be alive with vibrant colours, video and puppets, as young Mereana, tries to protect a taniwha in her neighbourhood being threatened by a construction project.
The story is being told by a roster of actors including Kura Forrester, Jarod Rawiri and Nicola Kāwana. Radojkovic says his wish is that the work will allow children to connect with te ao Māori as well as being fun.
“I hope this will make everyday life a bit more wonderful.”
Sponge left
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Right now, it’s not just SpongeBob SquarePants but some 62 Canterbury youngsters who are caught in the roar of a rising tide of rehearsals, costume fittings and vivid sets as they prepare to raise the curtain on seven months of backstage work.
All aged 19 and under, they’re the stars – in two alternating casts – in the Court Theatre’s The SpongeBob Musical: Youth Edition. It’s a one-hour version of the 2017 Broadway musical of the absurd and subversive Nickelodeon animated series, the 16th season of which debuts this month.
Director Tim Bain says that with a high number of male characters, he was concerned about whether enough young men would audition. But the turnout was impressive.
“The shift in perception around musical theatre has helped,” says Bain. “It’s becoming recognised as a pathway that develops essential life skills. It offers a safe space for young people to express themselves and explore their identities. For many, this will be their sole production this year, but the relationships they build last long after the curtain falls.”
Cast members Libby McMahon, Ben Camm, Eden Taylor, Eddie Keenan, Cole Moffat and Bill Cross are a lively mix of Court Theatre youth production veterans and relative newcomers; some have their eye on careers in the performing arts, others are relishing the chance to do something different and, as Bain says, make new friends.
“I see the cast having the time of their lives. It’s pretty special to work with a huge group of kids from all different backgrounds pulling something like this together.”
Unlike past productions with elaborate foam costumes, Bain’s vision is for something bright and over-the-top but a little more recognisable. “We are given free licence to interpret the aesthetic. The costumes reflect modern streetwear, with nods to the characters – Patrick in a pink shirt and green shorts or Plankton starting off as a soft toy.”
The set design is eco-conscious, using Mylar balloons as a backdrop and rubber rings to create archways.
“It’s all neon. There is no black or white and definitely no brown. The kids have even asked me, ‘Is this what’s in your head?’ and I’m like, ‘Yup, it sure is.’ They tell me it must be exhausting.”
– Dionne Christian
The Home Inside: Bats Theatre, Wellington, June 26-July 5; Whirinaki Whare Taonga, Upper Hutt, July 7; Wairarapa Events Centre, Carterton, July 8; Te Raukura, Kāpiti, July1 0; Pātaka, Porirua, July 12.
All the Things I Wish I Could Be, Circa Theatre, Wellington, July 1-12.
The SpongeBob Musical: Youth Edition, Court Theatre, Christchurch, July 1-13.
Taniwha, Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland, June 26-July 13.