Periodical: Region’s week Date: 20.08.2010 Author(s): Irina Kabanova

Even though it sounds odd, children can watch theatre performances since childhood. And we are not talking about puppet theatre. A theatre for young audience proves to be quite an appropriate place for the smallest spectators. The theatre season in Saratov Kiselev Youth theatre opens with the show “The Sprout” for children from 3 to 7 years old. The premiere will take place on the 26th of August.

This almost unfilled niche in youth theatres gives freedom to those few directors who do not recon it disgraceful to work with the youngest audience. Saratov Kiselev Youth theatre invites a young director from St. Petersburg Ekaterina Gorokhovskaya for mutual creative collaboration for the third time already.

Gorokhovskaya, as a counter to present adult’s trend of early intellectualization of their children, imposing them with dryasdust logical schemes and inanimated characters and figures, stands for brining a child back to nature, and seeing a person in each child at the same time.

Addressing to such restricted targeted audience is atypical in our directing community. Nevertheless there is a vast movement of theatres for the smallest. There are many workshops, seminars, and even festivals for spectators from 0 to 5 years old in the western countries. It seems as if this movement has skipped only Russia, but we are already on our way to joining it.

The concept of the performance “The Sprout” showed up after Ekaterina watched a show for children in Denmark. It was a small travelling company. There are lots of them in Denmark consisting of 3-5 people. Even mothers with baby carriages frequently appear among spectators.

The director wrote the stage contexture herself. As she herself said there is not much scenary material for small children, but she enjoys making it up on her own.
- I knew the main things that I wanted to happen on the stage, and as for all the rest – we discussed and created all the details together with the actors right on the stage during our work, - Ekaterina describes. – There is not a single word in our performance; still it’s not a pantomime. It is a kind of plastic, energetical drama performance. We used the music of the famous Mikhael Kheiphets.

It is a serious, complicated, real music. But I’m sure children will perceive and like it. There is a lot of laughing, smiling, breathing, glancing, and winking in our show. The scenery is quite simple. We had an objective to create a simple performance that will be easy to transport to kindergardens and to go on tours with. It is a classical example of a real theatre. An actor should have everything he needs to perform with him. Figuratively speaking, an actor should be content with just a rug on the floor for a successful performance. Though, there is not only a rug in our scenery. You know, because the sprout should be growing from something. Therefore, there should be a planter. In order to tell children about the four elements of nature we use huge canvases, representing the four elements: water, fire, earth, air. And that’s about all for the scenery. All the rest is up to the actors.

The director offers to escape stamps in children’s theatre. The brightness of colors and hypertrophied images should not be the main instruments of gaining children’s attention and credit.

- They usually treat children like idiots. Adults always try to cut them a take of every little thing, - Ekaterina says. – But children understand complicated things. We can talk to them on different subjects and in various languages. Sometimes they are able to perceive a serious acting production effect. I wanted to create a performance that would take a child back to basics and bring him or her to harmony. For the present world is aggressive. Parents often consider children a mess on their way to successful career, earning money, conducting their life on the whole. Toys and computer games that surround children and that their parents choose for them, usually disfigure a child. Our performance is bright, but we also preserved tenderness and sense of taste. Small spectators are going to sit on multicolored pillows right on the floor and they’ll be almost taking part in the performance. Of course, it will not be a fair interaction, because children are too hard to predict. For example, during one of our general rehearsals we invited the children of the theatre company actors, to see their reaction to some moments. An when two characters started to fight with each other over an apple, a little boy run out on the stage and tried to stop them. So actors will have to correct the situation in case if needed.

There is also a representative of the targeted audience in Ekaterina’s family. Still her son will not be present on the premiere show: “It is a colossal psychological strain to be a mother and a director at the same time, - says Gorokhovskaya. – So I’ve sent my boy to his Granny for a vacation near the ocean”.
Ekaterina Gorokhovskaya is a graduate of St. Petersburg Theatre Academy. She took part in creative laboratories “4th Height” in 2006 and 2007, which are annually organized in Saratov Kiselev Youth theatre. As a result of the work the theatre’s repertoire was supplemented with the show “There Will Be No Winter” (based on a play written by V. Olshansky). It took part in the IX International theatre festival “Rainbow” in St. Petersburg and took a special jury’s prize.

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