Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tiny Theatergoers Ride Trike To New Experiences
World premieres and plays in their infancy don’t happen on just the adult stages of Northwest Arkansas. “Hurry Up … And Wait!,” starting this weekend at Trike Theatre in Bentonville, is an original play written by Kathleen Fletcher; it’s in its second production; and it’s intended for 2- to 4-year-olds.
“She developed and premiered the play at Pollyanna Theatre in Austin, which is where I saw it,” says Trike founder and artistic director Kassie Misiewicz. When she’s producing the Little Trike Series, Misiewicz says she looks for “plays that reflect the experience of our young audience members. It needs to respect how they view the world around them, be interactive and involve the audience in the storytelling, and have moments of delight and wonder.”
“Hurry Up … And Wait!” is a lesson in patience through songs, games and storytelling, as two siblings plant a new garden and discover when it’s best to hurry up and when it is best to wait.
The same might be said for the experiences of toddler theater.
“Acting for the very young is a 30-minute improvisation exercise,” Misiewicz says. “You’ve rehearsed the play, but you never know what the kids are going to do or say. During our prior production of ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff,’ the two trolls have a fight at the end of the play, and the young audience members always shouted out their advice to ‘be nice to each other, be friends, say you’re sorry,’ and sometimes would even come onto the performing area to make sure the actors listened to them.
“For most of our young audience, this will be their first experience of theater,” Misiewicz goes on. “We hope that they have a delightful time and that they, and their parents, are inspired to return to the theater. We know that after the show, the children will want to retell and act out the story they just saw, [and] to facilitate this process, every family goes home with a Play-in-a-Box. The original kit allows families to re-create and reinvent, at home, the play they saw.” — BECCA MARTIN-BROWN BMARTIN@NWADG.COM