I was sitting on the bus the other day eavesdropping on the conversations around me, as you do, when I heard the two women behind me start speaking about bringing their children to a show in the run up to Christmas. They had bought tickets to a stage version of a popular children’s TV show and were dreading it. They spoke in jaded tones about their previous experiences at a similar show, and it set me thinking about how we frame theatre for young audiences, and how we introduce our youngest audience members to the joy of the theatre.

I don’t want to berate the stage adaptations of popular TV shows – they can bring children into theatres in their droves and can introduce children to theatre with characters they already know and like. However, it shouldn’t have to be a chore for parents to take their children to the theatre – there are so many productions out there, there really is something for everyone and something that the entire family can enjoy together. It’s hard to pass on an enthusiasm for theatre if you are bored by what you are seeing!

The last few years, I have spent a week each August with the Network of Independent Critics at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe specialising in reviewing theatre for children and young audiences. I have seen dozens of children’s shows of all sorts over the past few festivals and reviewed plenty of others in between. Apart from a few notable one-star review exceptions, this has never felt like a chore. A good piece of children’s theatre should hold interest for its whole audience, should be a treat for the whole family. 

Children are smart. They absorb much more than we give them credit for, and they see so much that we adults have forgotten how to see. An imagination as vivid and boundless as that of a seven-year-old deserves to feast on spectacular theatrical stories.

From Orson Welles’ Christmas Carol at The New Theatre to Branar Téatar’s bilingual Oíche Ríomh an Nollaig/’Twas the Night Before Christmas, and from the timeless antics of Bosco to a haiku-inspired multi-sensory space adventure for under 5s at Moon Woke Me Up by Little Big Top at The Ark, Irish stages have a feast of family-friendly offerings to enjoy. Whether you are watching a balletic cygnet pas de chat across the stage, or a cartoon pig stomp in pretend puddles, make your next theatre trip a fond memory for all the family.

As Lyn Gardner wrote in an article for The Guardian “theatre, particularly theatre for children, fires the imagination, it gives our children the skills and the creativity necessary to face the world, to understand it and perhaps to change it too. We should value children's theatre and take it seriously.”