Watch with baby performances

Comment by Rebecca Hanna-Grindall on January 21, 2010 at 15:36

i like the idea of scream nights at cinemas too. I always feel very sorry for mothers who are unable to stay in an art gallery/theatre/cinema experience because of the disapproving looks being cast at their little ones. we need to encourage more events that welcome screaming babies so that mothers who are used to blocking out the noise can do so in the company of others. and for live theatre, a controlled environment where the actors are prepped for this type of audience 'reaction' can only be a good thing ...

Comment by David Harradine on January 21, 2010 at 15:42

Hmmm...it's a tricky one that one, I think. I think if a piece has been made specifically for babies, then the people making it should have thought about the ways in which babies use their voices, and noise shouldn't be immediately be seen as a problem. But when a piece has been made for older children, and parents bring babies along too...then I think that there has to be some awareness of how a crying baby can interrupt the experience of another, older, child, and how the person who brought the baby has to be responsible for keeping a check on that, and being sensitive to the fact of theatre as a live, fleeting, communal experience. Scream nights that give parents a chance not to be feeling criticised for the noise their baby's noise making are a brilliant thing, but when it comes to an experience which is for children to watch, I think it's much more difficult to feel OK about letting that baby keep on exercising its lungs...

Comment by Rhona Matheson on January 25, 2010 at 11:33

I think this is a huge issue for people who are creating work for very young children - who are we making work for and how do we communicate with that audience so that they get the most out of the experience. Quite often parents are taking their toddlers to the theatre for the first time and some of them seem to approach this in a different way from if they were going to see a piece of adult performance. Some parents and carers are very relaxed about the experience, but we've certainly found that some need more information/guidance. The information we give needs to be the right information for the performer/s and also delivered in the right way so that the audience don’t feel alienated before they’ve even got into the space.
I was at a performance of a Danish piece for 2 year olds where the FOH staff were too overbearing about telling adults that if the children were disruptive that they would have to leave, this immediately put the adults on edge and the children feed off this.
I think we have to be realistic that babies cry and I sometimes think that the crying babies are more disruptive for the grown ups than for the other children - siblings are used to hearing their younger brother or sister crying and this is the same in nurseries or day care and the other children seem to be able to block that noise out and remain focussed. This might be something we could explore a little bit as part of the overall Starcatchers research we're developing with the University of Strathclyde...

Comment by David Harradine on January 25, 2010 at 15:14

I think that's a really interesting thing, that how older children react and respond to crying is bound to be different from how adults react and respond. It's funny that although I'm always trying to get a handle on how children are different from me, and to understand things about the world from a child's-eye point of view, I'd kind of just presumed that children find a baby's crying during a performance as distracting as I do. Yes, I think this is a very interesting - and important - thing to think about, and a good focus for a piece of research...

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