Now over 30 years old, Polyglot has evolved from a puppetry-based company into Australia’s bastion of participatory family theatre. In Polyglot’s hands children’s theatre is daring, bold and an opportunity for play where nothing is dumbed down. Sue Giles, who has been at Polyglot’s helm for nigh on 16 years as its Artistic Director, steered it in that direction.
Giles, who has been involved with children’s participatory theatre since leaving drama school in the ’80s, is passionate about it as an art form. “That children’s audience is undervalued,” she says. “It’s not challenged a super amount. But the more I hang out with kids and the more that I can see their responses to particular works that are created, the more exciting and art-form changing it is.”
Giles has firm views about what makes for good children’s theatre. “It has to take into account the breadth of individual response,” she explains. “There’s no one way to do it. We tend to lump kids together into a homogenous blob, according to age group usually. The stuff that really resonates has really strong concepts at the base of it. It doesn’t have to be something with a message, but it has to be deliberately created so that transformation is possible.”
Polyglot has been ahead of the curve with this type of theatre. “The trend now is for participation and audiences having ownership over the works they engage in,” Giles notes. “It’s a really interesting trend and one that’s being led most inventively from Australia. When I think about what’s happening over the world, there is a lot of really beautiful text-based work, but the participatory and interactive works are for very early age groups, whereas Australia is exploring what it means for older children, younger people and adults.”
Polyglot’s piece for Fringe, Bellbird, is half installation, half adventure under the banner of children’s theatre. Albeit, all ages are of course welcome. The concept involves a 15 by 10 metre space in which 360 bells are suspended from the roof so that audience members will touch or make them chime everywhere they move in the space. Participants will be blindfolded upon entry and invited to gently and quietly navigate their way through the space. The actors in the work play host as well as guide for the 15-minute journey, ensuring that there are no major stacks and no one freaks out.
A tiny version of Bellbird was trialled in the Melbourne Recital Centre’s foyer spaces and proved a massive hit, prompting Polyglot to have another bash on a grander scale. While staircases where bubble wrapped and whoopee cushions tucked discretely around the space, they also set up a mini bell room. “That’s where we learned about the power of the blind fold experience,” Giles says. “It’s a really nice leveller between adults and kids.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
Venue: ArtPlay, Birarrung Marr
Dates: September 22 – September 25
Times: 10am-12pm, 1.30pm-3.30pm (entry every 20 minutes)
Tickets: Free
