Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
34 years later, Magnet Theatre remains an attraction
IMAGINE a world where you can escape to, a world of music, wonder and magic?
The Magnet Theatre in Observatory has been doing these wonders for children for 34 years.
Artistic director of the Magnet Theatre, Jennie Reznek said she has thoroughly enjoyed creating and displaying various stories for children as little as 12 months.
“Since 2014, Magnet Theatre has engaged in developing new exciting age-appropriate African theatre for under seven-year-olds.
“Developing these plays forms part of our two-year training and job creation programme, where we offer a full time training programme for talented youth who are wanting to make theatre their career, or who want to go into tertiary education at university.
“We are the only theatre ‘trade school' in the Western Cape. When we make new plays for the under-sevens, we either have a festival at our theatre where we bring in children from the least resourced areas in the city to watch, or we tour to crèches and play schools in the surrounding townships.
“Recently we created a climate change puppetry piece of theatre called Surge which was created for the older primary school and high school age group.”
The main focus of the theatre is using easily accessible and fun natural materials like wood, paper, water and sand to explores themes that are relevant to the age-group.
Children, don't you just love it when you can sing and dance?
The magnet theatre does this, by putting together plays that deal with mom and dad, family, feeling included and can be understood in any language.
“We are a physical theatre company, so most of our plays are based on movement, sound, and song, and
can be understood by any age group and are not dependent on language.
“Where we do include language, we generally use a mix of English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa.”
The plays are between 20-30 minutes, and has initiatives that not only goes to schools, but places where children need hope
“In 2016 we created Scoop: Kitchen Play for Carers and Babes was the first ever South African work for children under the age of 12 months and performed in hospitals and clinics in and around Cape Town. But mostly our early Years programme focuses on the 2-7 age-group”.
“Drama has the capacity to engage children in these different methods of learning, while most importantly foregrounding and stimulating creativity and imagination.
“Once we engage the imagination of children, we can inspire their own desire for learning.”
The Magnet Theatre hosts a festival once a year, but has nothing planned for these holidays.
Moms and dads, keep your eye out on the exciting festival next year.