Engaging younger audiences

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Harradine on February 21, 2012 at 13:04

Hi Naomi - what do you mean when you say "younger audiences"?  I think the actual age range for a project has a significant influence on these decisions around scale...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Naomi Cortes on February 21, 2012 at 17:20

The age ranges I am thinking of is between 3 and 7 years.I find there is so much variation between the ages and abilities, I am interested in what factors decide how big or small we can go with our work.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Maria Giergiel on March 20, 2012 at 22:07

I think this is a really interesting point.

Recently as part of my theatre course, we made a show for 3-5s which had 13 people in it (they were all our class and our brief was to create an ensemble show)

What was interesting for me was that the large number of "us" meant that we could each have really high quality interaction with our audience. But in my experience, it seems like shows that are toured to nurseries and theatres seem to have small casts, I certainly haven't heard of many casts that number above 5 or 6. I guess what I'm sharing is the experience of making a show that was an interesting mix between epic and intimate.

I personally believe in more intimate work, as it allows for the audiences participation to be direct and experiences to be shared between the performer and the audience. But that isn't to say that there isn't a place for larger pieces, I just think that a larger performance relies on a supportive out of theatre environment that fosters questions and allows the child and audience to digest the performance and really get something from what they see.

Just my two cents :)

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion