Theatre for children is Theatre!

Peter Brook, famous British theatre director and one of the artists that highly influenced genera-
tions of theatre makers in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, started his seminal book The Empty Space
(1968) with the following statement:

“I can take any empty space and call it bare stage. A

man walks across this empty space whilst someone
else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for
an act of theatre to be engaged.”

All the most important insights and phenomenons can be expressed with a simple wording. In-
deed, this simple statement is the most accurate definition of theatrical performance — it is an
action done by at least one person, watched by at least one another person in a certain (shared)
space. Obviously, theatre performance is the unity of doers/actors and observers/audience that
meet in the same space. This trinity is non separable. Without one of those three elements there is
no theatrical performance. Hence, all those three parts are equally important. When we talk about
a theatrical performance, when we evaluate the quality, we need to talk about the stage, the per-
formers and the audience on equal premisses. Yes, we need to talk about the quality of the audi-
ence too, however it might seam strange.

In theatre for children too! A Theatrical performance for children is a meeting of performers with
the children in a certain space. Nothing more and nothing less.

A theatre performance is (or better, it should be) an art form. It is the unity of all artistic disciplines
—literature, visual arts, music, speech, movement, dance… and when we appreciate a theatre
performance, we appreciate all those elements as a whole and we say:—“It was a very nice per-
formance.” However, sometimes we say:—“It was a good performance, although I didn’t like the
costumes. The set was too colorful, but the music was fantastic. To me, the main actor was not
very beautiful, but it seams that the audience liked him…” etc. We are “giving marks” to every part
of the performance and we are doing it in our own name, not in the name of the whole audience.

In theatre for children too! Theatre performance for children is (or better, it should be) an art
form. Therefore, every and any performance for children should be watched and evaluated with
the same criteria as a performance for the adults. Even more, the quality assessment of the per-
formances for children should be based on the artistic criteria, the criteria that are on even higher
level then those when assessing theatre for the adults.

Why am I writing about such an obvious statements?

In Chinese theatrical practice, in most cases, theatre for children is considered particular and dif-
ferent from that for the adults. Special, mostly commercial expectations of the producers and dif-
ferent, mostly educational objectives from the educators (parents and teachers) are ghettoizing
Theatre For Children into a non artistic subcategory, depriving children from the possibility of the
genuine artistic experience.

The famous sentence by Stanislavsky: — “Theatre performance for children should be the same
as a performance for the adults, only better!”, written more then hundred years ago, still rings in
our ears as a warning and a reminder on what we are doing and what we are offering to children
now, in the 21st century.

Children are vulnerable, they still don’t have developed artistic criteria, they are still in a search of
the criteria of beauty, they still know very little about themselves and the world around and they
can accept (and appreciate) anything what we offer them, because they trust us. We, adults that
are producing theatre for children, and we, that are buying tickets in the name of our children,
should be very sensitive and very aware of those facts. We should take the children seriously and
communicate with them on equal basis, without pampering or educating them, but guiding them
through the process of growing up and developing their artistic criteria and the sense of beauty.
What is the most important, we shouldn’t abuse their innocence for our material needs. Our need
to produce commercially successful performances or to educate our children through theatrical
experiences (Theatre In Education for example) is understandable, but it shouldn’t be bigger then
our need to produce art and to communicate with children through artistic creations. We should
be aware of our responsibility and share with them our experiences thus helping them to under-
stand better themselves and the world that is waiting for them.

Theatre is an art form, also for children!