Oh baby, you’re a star in nappies performing for all the grown-ups
A SEVEN-month-old baby is to be the star of one of the strangest shows at the Fringe.
While other acts share a joke with the audience or perform a magic trick, the infant in Come Look at the Baby – the festival’s youngest ever solo performer – will simply sit on the stage.
The 30-minute show at Just The Tonic at The Community Project, Candlemaker Row, has been described as ‘anti-theatre’ and all profits will be given to charities Unicef and Save the Children.
The baby, whose identity is being protected, will be accompanied on stage by its grandmother. It might play with its hands, drool, or sleep peacefully, unaware it is being watched.
Hannah Madsen, co-director of Thorium Theatre which developed the act, said: ‘The show knows it’s a theatre performance. The audience knows it’s a conceptual show. Ironically the baby doesn’t know.
‘People get mesmerised staring at babies,’ she added. ‘You look at babies in a way you don’t look at other people. You have permission to stare.
‘Parents are very happy for you to stare. It’s when they get to two or three years old that suddenly it isn’t right to stare.’ The theatre company has a licence from its local education authority allowing its star to perform over six successive days, resting on the seventh.
An adult, in this case the child’s grandmother, is also required to be on stage.
Rehearsals have been going well and the baby is said to be ‘chilled and calm’.
And an understudy baby has been identified, should the star of the show go down with colic.