Furry fun carries crucial anti- gang message
The Vancouver International Children’s Festival highlight Kutz & Dawgs makes a statement
Adog of the house of Muttague raises the question: Why do we let our political and business leaders off the leash? Muttagues and Catpulets are the beasts inhabiting Kutz & Dawgs, a cuttingedge production by and for youth. Drawn from Romeo and Juliet, the project by Miscellaneous Productions comes to this year’s Vancouver International Children’s Festival with an age warning — both ways.
“It’s R& J done as alley cats and junkyard dogs,” explains Miscellaneous artistic director Elaine Carol, “so there are fights and there are deaths.”
At a festival filled with shows for toddlers and the five- to- nine crowd, Kutz & Dawgs is recommended for young people 10 years and up. But not too far up, Carol warns.
“The ages that they’re starting to recruit young people for gangs is nine, 10, 11,” Carol says. “That’s what we’re hearing from law enforcement and criminologists.”
For a dozen years, Miscellaneous has recruited at- risk youth for performingarts projects that help steer them away from trouble. Carol is now sounding the alert that cuts in government funding and a cooling of interest by corporate sponsors spells big trouble for Miscellaneous and similar endeavours.
“Telus has always been really good to us, we owe a lot to Telus,” she says, “but we’ve never had so little privatesector money [ from others]. They’ve got to start investing in the community, not just a piece of property that they can hang their plaque on.”
Carol says her cast for Kutz & Dawgs doesn’t come from the at- risk category — “these are kids with parents and lots of love in their lives” — but that’s no reason to be complacent.
“The gang issue in the Lower Mainland is a middle- class issue,” Carol says. “It’s not necessarily mirrored anywhere else in the world; it’s not like the stereotypes that come out of the United States, it’s much more complicated here.”
She cites the problems faced by immigrant families.
“The parents come to this country with nothing, they work their fannies off and they do well for themselves and their children. But that means working 80- or 90- hour weeks, and maybe you’re unable to supervise your kids as well.”
Kutz & Dawgs mixes circus elements with hip- hop and what Carol describes as “Fosse- style” street jazz dancing.
“I think it’s the first Canadian hiphop version of Romeo and Juliet,” she says.
All the other shows at this year’s festival can skew to younger audiences — as young as 18 months for Pete the Cat, Eric Litwin’s stage version of his books for preschoolers. Be warned that all performances of Pete the Cat, as well as the duck- pond fun of Quack Attack!, are sold out on Thursday through Sunday, May 31 to June 3.
Wednesday’s Quack Attack! is also sold out, leaving you just the Tuesday, May 29, performance. Thankfully, Ferry Tale Theatre’s Little Red and the Sea Wolf now has a bigger boat, so extra tickets have been released.
The animals of Zoozoo, from hippos with insomnia to penguins playing musical chairs, are only sold out for their shows on Thursday and Friday, May 31 and June 1. And there are still tickets for the puppet theatre of Under the Stars from Quebec and The Happy Prince from Taiwan, dance troupes Journey Through Sound from B. C. and Medicine Bear from Ontario, and musicians Kutapira and Will Stroet & His Backyard Band, both from B. C.
Best of all, says artistic director Katharine Carol ( no relation to Elaine), this year’s festival is settling in nicely on Granville Island. Last year marked the event’s debut on the island after decades at Vanier Park.
“The biggest thing we learned,” says Carol, “is that a lot of people got lost because the island can be very confusing. So we have a lot more signage — and clearer signage — this year.”
Carol also notes that outdoor activities have been steered away from traffic, with all the fun now taking place in and around Sutcliffe Park on the south side of the island. And in the Imagination Zone between Arts Umbrella and the False Creek Community Centre, kids can build a paper house for a paper village, or learn stop- motion claymation animation in a workshop with The Directors’ Cut.
For more information, go to childrensfestival. ca.