Big ambitions for T.O.’s littlest audience
In the performing arts we’re always talking about bringing in new audiences — opening theatre up to people who think that it might not be interesting or accessible to them.
Early years theatre is a decade-old movement that takes the word “new” rather more literally. Its productions are created for audiences 6 years and younger, down to shows for babies as young as 2 weeks old.
From May 11-21, Toronto’s littlest audiences will have the chance to see a wide array of such programming at the third biennial WeeFestival, English Canada’s first early years theatre festival. WeeFestival follows on from the Festival Petits Bonheurs, which since 2005 has been bringing early years theatre to audiences in Montreal and several other regions of Quebec.
WeeFestival is the brainchild of Lynda Hill, artistic director of Theatre Direct, the Torontobased young audiences company, who caught wind of this new movement a few years ago and started to attend European festivals to see what it was all about.
WeeFestival launched in 2014 with a program of seven shows, six of which were imports. A full four of this year’s dozen shows are locally made, including one ( Tweet Tweet, a show for 1- to 3-year-olds by the circus/dance company Femmes du Feu) that is a WeeFestival commission.
The festival is therefore clearly achieving its goal of seeding early-years creativity with local performing artists. Hill also points out that this new Canadian work is unique.
“Canada’s always been good at playing by its own rules and not just importing an approach,” says Hill, “and so when I look at Tweet Tweet, when I look at Flying Hearts (a Theatre Direct show for ages 2 and up), or I look at Baby Berio (a music theatre piece for 3- to 18-month-olds by Xin Wang and Marie-Josée Chartier, currently being developed by the festival), it’s unlike anything anywhere, and so it’s very exciting. It’s truly Canadian. And that’s what we really wanted to spark, that Canadian movement.”
Any presupposition that theatre for little-littles might be easier to make than theatre for adults needs to be left at the door, Hill says. “This audience has the capacity to engaged with complex, sophisticated ideas, and they don’t have any preconceived notion of what a proper play is.”
I had the chance to see a show for babies a few months ago — Young People’s Theatre’s One Thing Leads to Another — and can attest to how enthralled that group of tiny audience members was, as they watched two performers create patterns with sounds, music, their bodies and colourful objects. For adults at such shows, spectating the spectators is at least half the fun.
“The look on their faces is so magnificent,” Hill agrees. “It’s not a stunned look. It’s just so complex. You can see how their brains and bodies and their breath is being affected by this very powerful experience of witnessing performance, art and music.”
Part of Theatre Direct’s challenge with WeeFestival has been convincing preschool teachers and daycare owners that it’s feasible to bring their cohorts to the shows. “It was a little bit, ‘What do you mean? To the theatre? They’re not going to sit through this,’ ” says Hill. “But they will sit. Because it’s made for them.”
Year-round, Hill and her team run outreach and professional development sessions with early childhood educators and kindergarten teachers — what she calls “missionary work promoting the value of the creative arts and theatre in the kindergarten classroom” and beyond.
Getting them while they’re young — and of course helping parents see the benefits that engaging with the arts bring their kids — will then have trickle-up effects, Hill hopes. “When that child starts kindergarten, that parent is going to ask, ‘What are you doing for the arts in your school? How come you’re not taking them out to the theatre? I know the impact that theatre can have.’ ”
WeeFestival’s hub is at Theatre Centre, which will host a number of shows and activities including Biinoojiinyag Gitgaanmiwaa (in the Children’s Story Garden), a space curated by Leslie Kachena McCue where children and their parents can engage with Indigenous cultures. The festival has always included work in both English and French, and this year four francophone shows come from companies in Montreal, Ottawa and the Basque region of France.
With the Harbourfront Centre launching Junior, a festival for audiences aged 4 to 14 from May 19-25 this year, the provision of arts programming for Toronto’s younger people is steadily growing, and for Hill this is “a good news story ... it’s a great opportunity to advocate for increased funding and increased arts education in the schools, and increased support for theatre attendance outside of schools.”
Programming for children, Hill believes, “should not be just one week or two weeks. It should be throughout the year.”
WeeFestival productions and activities run from May 11-21 at Theatre Centre (1115 Queen St. W.), Alumnae Theatre.