10 Incite / Insight Network Spotlight Summer / Early Fall 2018
new words or concepts so the children can absorb them better. With increasing frequency, these ECEAP centers are located at either low-income housing apartment complexes or incorporated into elementary schools which enable us to reach the parents and older siblings as well. Larger touring companies often ignore this type of facility because audiences aren’ t very big, but because of our microscopic overhead and some targeted grants, we can perform there without taking a painful hit on our budget.
We intentionally add interactive elements to each of our scripts. The children love to feel as if they have some effect on the outcome or action in the play. At the end of each of our performances, we make sure that the actors have a positive interaction with the audience. When we perform to audiences of over one hundred, we normally do a question and answer session. When we perform for audiences under one hundred children, we encourage them to come up and meet the actors personally. Our intent is to have the children connect with the actors one-onone, allowing them to also see our cast members as real people, and theater as an attainable goal. Often, they want to know what it is like to be on stage and perform. It’ s especially fun meeting kids who express a desire to act, sing, and dance professionally someday. they feel safe to respond. Our audiences are usually more alert and eager to participate. One of our favorite experiences that supports this assertion happened several years ago during a performance of our adaptation of Puss‘ n Boots. We were performing at a Head Start Center for an audience of about forty children. At the end of the play, the hero begins to propose to the princess. Our actor feigned nervousness and hesitated. One little girl in the front shouted out,“ Just say‘ marry me’ already!” The actor reacted beautifully and replied,“ Oh, yes,” and proceeded to finish the proposal. After the show, the teacher approached me and seemed excited. She related to me that the same little girl had not spoken one word in the three months she had been coming to school. They were contemplating recommending that she be tested for autism because of her inability to connect with others. Apparently, there was something about the freedom of this imaginary setting, the comfort of being in
Creating a touring theater, and the tight restrictions it requires, forced us to be resourceful and creative. By using our imaginations to come up with unusual ways to represent settings and telling stories, we’ ve found we helped our audiences use their imaginations along with us. In addition to giving these audiences more access to live theater, there is another real benefit to a touring theater company: by bringing theater to a child’ s familiar environment instead of having to transport the child to a strange and sometimes intimidating space,