Ben Fletcher-Watson

From Cradle to Stage: How Early Years Performing Arts Experiences Are Tailored to the Developmental Capabilities of Babies and Toddlers

Theatre for early years (TEY) has become increasingly popular around the world in the last 30 years but has struggled with legitimation. Scholars have challenged TEY’s validity and have declared performance to children aged younger than 3 years to be frivolous or even impossible. However, new models of aesthetic sensitivity and intersubjectivity have become allied with artistic practice, as artists choose to collaborate with developmental specialists. This article provides case studies of recent early years performances and explores how they have been tailored to specific developmental stages throughout early childhood. The authors propose that this comparison of the routes by which contemporary artists combine age appropriateness, accessibility, and aesthetic validity may define two alternative models of current praxis.

Seen and not heard: participation as tyranny in Theatre for Early Years

This paper uses the frame of participation as tyranny to trouble the concept of ‘participating freely in cultural life and the arts’ within Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, especially as it relates to the youngest children: when childrens experiences are curated and determined by adults, participation may resemble manipulation rather than control. Heavily influenced by Article 31, contemporary Theatre for Early Years relies on audience participation and often takes the form of a wholly participatory experience. For many audience members, these moments can be liberating, but others may feel unsettled by a tokenistic experience which appears to legitimise the artists hegemonic status. Sherry Arnsteins Ladder of Citizen Participation provides a provocative typology of participatory practices, which this paper reformulates in relation to the very young. As a route away from the often unconscious tyrannies which may accompany adult-led arts projects, it is proposed that participatory power structures can be created which grant agency to child audiences to engage on their own terms. This includes the ability to take control of the theatrical event, to withdraw from participation and to have childrens innate imaginative capabilities recognised as comparable to those of adults.

Toward a Grounded Dramaturgy: Using Grounded Theory to Interrogate Performance Practices in Theatre for Early Years

Research on theatre for early years is polarized, either delving deeply into an assumed but unproven dramaturgical praxis, or providing anecdotal, often contradictory diktats of limited practical use. It could be argued that no coherent dramaturgy has yet been described in a genre barely three decades old; as David Pears (1971, 29) notes, “practice nearly always comes first, and it is only later that people theorize about practice.” This article explores how an early-years dramaturgy (meaning a contextual exploration of composition, whether artistic, technical, or theoretical) could be formulated from current practice by employing the grounded theory method.

Three Decades of Pioneering Practice: A Review of Oily Cart: All Sorts of Theatre for All Sorts of Kids, Edited by Mark Brown

Oily Cart is often described as a pioneer in theatre for young audiences (TYA), creating theatre experiences for babies, children, or young people with complex disabilities that blur the boundaries of multisensory performance, interaction, and participation. To celebrate the company’s thirtieth anniversary, theatre critic Mark Brown has compiled a richly varied assortment of reflections on practice, interviews, scripts, reviews, scholarly contributions, and even audience feedback. The book is perhaps of greatest interest to TYA practitioners, although educators, researchers, and critics will also benefit. The bulk of the material consists of short chapters focusing on three elements of artistic practice, by the core members of Oily Cart: Artistic Director Tim Webb explores writing, directing, and administration; Head of Design Claire de Loon examines design and educational outreach; and Musical Director Max Reinhardt discusses composition. After a brief look at the history of the company and a timeline showing their seventy-seven productions to date, Webb and his colleagues reflect on the development of the company’s unique style, with detailed examination of three recent productions: Blue (2006) for young people with complex disabilities and/or an autistic spectrum disorder, Baby Balloon (2007) for babies aged six months to two years, and Ring a Ding Ding (2011) for children aged three to six. Of particular interest is the inclusion of the full script for Blue, as very few play texts for this audience are publicly available. I would have liked to see the cue list for Baby Balloon (“as close to a script . . . as we got”) for the same reason, especially as an abbreviated version is provided later for Something in the Air (2009). These early sections are the most valuable for practitioners, as they pick apart the nuts and bolts of Oily Cart’s performance making and address recurring TYA debates such as education versus aesthetics. Each of the team demonstrates how theory (child development, autism spectrum disorder, kinesthetics) has been folded into practice over time. Indeed, pioneering devices such as the use of “airlocks” (a space between foyer and theatre where objects and themes are presented to ease entry into the fictional world of the play) have become standard practice across the United Kingdom. Webb defines the company’s main goal as making work that is “theatrical not educational”; practitioners working in theatre for early years (TEY) will find this familiar, although it remains contentious for artists creating work for older children, despite the decline of the Theatre in Education movement in the United Kingdom. Although never explicitly named, the spirit of Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Toward a grounded dramaturgy, part 2: Equality and artistic integrity in Theatre for Early Years

ABSTRACT Theatre for Early Years (TEY) has grown in popularity in recent years, but while diverse practices have emerged around the world, coherent and robust theory concerning this challenging field is lacking. An earlier article outlined a possible research study design using Grounded Theory methods to gather data for analysis and interpretation from TEY practitioners. Forming the second part of an investigation funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, this article seeks to contribute to the field by proposing an explanatory theory grounded in these data, and described as the theory of equality and artistic integrity. The development of the theory from two core categories is explained, and its relevance and theoretical contribution are then considered. The theory may offer a new framework for examining TEY as a set of uniquely sensitive practices. The model is designed to provide relevant knowledge to practitioners, drama students and tutors/teachers, programmers, and audiences.

Enhancing relaxed performance: evaluating the Autism Arts Festival

ABSTRACT ‘Relaxed performances’ allow theatre spectators to experience a non-judgmental environment, featuring adjustments to make them more accessible to a range of audiences. The Autism Arts Festival attempted to develop the idea of relaxed performances further to create an entirely autism-friendly festival in Canterbury. The organisers developed a suite of features to make the festival more accessible, and the suite as a whole was effective at increasing the accessibility of the festival. Moreover, discussions with performers indicate that the festival, as an ‘autistic space’, was conducive of both a sense of community solidarity and engagement with the politics of neurodiversity.

Rules of Engagement: Family Rules on Young Children’s Access to and Use of Technologies

This chapter reports on a study conducted in seven countries in which young children’s (aged under 8) digital practices in the home were examined. The study explored family practices with regard to access to and use of technologies, tracing the ways in which families managed risks and opportunities. Seventy families participated in the study, and interviews were undertaken with both parents and children, separately and together, in order to address the research aims. This chapter focuses on the data relating to parental mediation of young children’s digital practices. Findings indicate that parents used a narrow range of strategies in comparison to parents of older children, primarily because they considered their children too young to be at risk when using technologies. However, children’s own reports suggested that some were able to access online sites independently from a young age and would have benefitted from more support and intervention. The implications of the study for future research and practice are considered.

A Review of Theatre and Learning, Edited by Art Babayants and Heather Fitzsimmons Frey

Emerging from the proceedings of the Twentieth Festival of Original Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2014, Theatre and Learning presents an array of material mapping the “highly complex and potentially powerful relationship” between these two topics (xxii). Historically, education and drama have proved uneasy bedfellows, with accusations of instrumentalism on the one hand and subversion on the other. Movements such as theatre in education (TIE), forum theatre, and the burgeoning genre of theatre for babies have adopted, problematized, and developed these discourses, yet the legitimacy of hybridized modes of performance remains contested. Helen Nicholson’s Theatre, Education and Performance (2011) provided an invaluable historical analysis of evolving principles and practices within theatre education up to the twenty-first century, but this text aims to provoke further questions around the purpose of both theatre and learning by focusing on the experiences of a range of contemporary practitioners. Delivery, practice, and intention are interrogated with honesty and humility, as authors reflect on current debates within pedagogy and theatre. Structurally, the book reflects and preserves the dialogic nature of the original event more closely than a traditional account of proceedings. Provocations sit alongside empirical research; reflective analyses are interwoven with practitioner interviews. This mixture of scholarly modes produces some fascinating dialogues between chapters, such as Helen Nicholson’s examination of “the potency of affective encounters between people and things” (181), which enriches producer Rhona Matheson’s subsequent discussion of ownership, performativity, and engagement in theatre for the very young. The book is divided into three sections, entitled Reflecting, Risking, and Re-Imagining, although two major themes resonate through all contributions: the importance of failure and the weakness of binaries. Numerous authors reflect on their experiences of breakdowns in communication, artistic flops, and struggles with resistance. From truculent rehearsal participants to underprepared undergraduates, the pedagogue–student relationship is wittily scrutinized. Mary Anderson’s powerful account of a community theatre project in Tasmania demonstrates the potential for failure to generate rueful but practical self-reflection as part of a practitioner’s own learning. Similarly, Antje Budde’s wry description of her attempts to deliver a course in Chinese theatre at a Canadian university highlights the unexpected consequences that can ultimately derail any bid to challenge institutional or cultural hegemonies. In several chapters, traditional documentation’s inability to capture the ephemerality of live performance is foregrounded and forces authors to question the traces left behind. For example, Cassandra Silver reframes the Boalian spect-actor as a cell-phone-wielding “textactor” whose digital interaction with a production by Praxis Theatre is preserved forever in