I’ve been reading the programme for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival which runs from May 6-21. They have some really good educative/developmental stuff planned for children as well as plenty of high quality theatre, dance, music and film.
Graeae, for example, are there with their version of Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man. So is Professor Bumm’s Story Machine which I have seen in action and warmly recommend for intelligent silliness - and entertaining theatre. Theatre Tineola is at Norwich Puppet Theatre with Round the World in a Tea Kettle and Scottish Opera is offering BabyO, a thirty minute show for audiences aged 6-18 months (and their carers, of course).
But what really caught my eye was something rather different: The Children’s Choice Awards. This is a show, as it were, produced by Mammalian Diving Reflex (MDR), a “research-art atelier” founded in 1993. Last year it was at NNF with its Haircuts by Children project.
Toronto-based MDR certainly seems to be nudging at the boundaries of what we mean by theatre and entertainment. One of its stated practices is to “smash ideas together and see what comes out” often thereby producing what it claims is “entertainment for the end of the world.” The company specialises in investigating the social sphere, finding contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences, producing one-off events, theatre-based performance, theoretical texts and community happenings.
The Children’s Choice Awards will involve giving a group of Year 7 pupils (11 and 12 year olds) from Norwich’s City Academy the chance to be chauffeured around the Norfolk and Norwich festival from event to event. The idea is that they assess each project and are then invited to express their views - as brash, incisive and audacious as possible.
On 21 May an audience will gather at the end of the festival in Norwich Playhouse for an Awards Ceremony to hear the young jury’s pronouncements. Award categories include: Best Overall, Scariest, Most fun, Most Relaxing etc.
It’s an innovative idea and I very much like the fact that these young people will see so much varied performing arts work and be encouraged to be critical. This is the first time MDR have done this in the UK. If it works I foresee scope to repeat it at almost every arts festival.
