In indulge today! This is a monthly registration.More than 8 workshops a month!

In indulge today! This is a monthly registration.More than 8 workshops a month!

The first edition of Campfiretales was a huge success

The first edition of Campfiretales was a huge success
The next one is on June 4, 2010

Theatre for Toddlers!

The Little Theatre after 19 years of catering to the 5 to 14 year olds will start a new arm: Theatre for toddlers.

This is theatre specially for the two to three year olds.

A wonderful space is being created in Nungambakkam with clean wooden floors and a completely air conditioned atmosphere.

This is the beginning of an exciting period at The Little Theatre.

For more details on registrations, timings and when it will all begin, contact us at:

toddlertheatre@gmail.com

or Call 04428211115 (for immediate response)



In the Hindu Today. March 24, 2010

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 24, 2010



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Kids zone!

Of Cheria Aana, a play house with focus on theatre


Children's day out At the launch of Cheria Aana

First, they gleefully prance around acting all important, and then, like VIPs, occupy the front rows when the performances begin, often smugly offering a rejoinder to the performer's questions. All this at the launch of Cheria Aana, a play house.

Started by Aysha Rau of The Little Theatre, Cheria Aana is named after Aysha's father, Cherian, and means small elephant in Malayalam.

Done up in blue, this wooden-floored, 1000-sq ft play house will have three programmes dedicated to young ones.

The art of appreciation

The most unique being Toddler Theatre, a space allotted to theatre workshops for children aged two and three. “We take seven or eight toddlers at a time and perform to 25-30 of them,” says Aysha. She feels it will help provide children an opportunity to appreciate the arts.

Also, children will learn to be more expressive and forthcoming. “Research proves that the maximum learning in a child happens between one and five years,” she adds.

There are also programmes for children aged three to 15. ‘Strings', targeted at kids three years and above, will bring in puppet shows from across the world, and also create in-house shows.

A story-telling workshop, ‘Campfire Tales', will not only keep five- to 15-year-olds entertained but also enable them to write their own stories.

Says Aysha: “This is a long-cherished dream. I am still hoping to create that Centre for Performing Arts one day. Meanwhile, this will be a space for the arts.”

Entertaining show

The inauguration of the space saw performances that kept the tiny folks as well as the adults entertained. Hans Kaushik narrated the story of three little pigs and the wolf, all the while pulling out people from the audience to enact the characters.

“Now we need somebody to be the straw house, and now somebody for the stone house...” the children went into peals of laughter as the wicked wolf was unglamorously hoisted up and then toppled into the boiling water.

And yes, somebody actually acted as ‘the boiling water!'

Next came Shakila reading out a passage, with a little song here and a little dance there. “I always wanted to be an actor…Once, I had to act like the sea. I was so good that I gave people sea sickness,” she read out.

The final act of the evening was ‘How to pass examinations'. Sounds boring, but not if you watched KK and Joel performing.

While KK read out “What to” and “What Not to”, Joel goofily followed his instructions, sending everybody into splits.

PRIYADARSHINI PAITANDY

In the DC Today, March 22, 2010! Hans Kaushik performing for the inauguration.

Now children toddle into theatre


A Chennai-based theatre entre preneur has launched an inno vative concept called toddler theatre to help children develop artistic skills early.

Aysha Rau of The Little Theatre has targeted children in the age group of two to three years. The idea is to develop performances to help a child better understand theatre.

Short theatrical performances by the city's professional actors will be designed especially for toddlers to help them understand and relate to the subject. Aysha says the concept is popular in the West, but this is a first for the city. "I was introduced to this sometime ago and felt the need to have this here as well. Several par ents have shown enthusiasm to enrol their children for this."

It will also be a opportunity for children to learn special skills linked to drama and theatre such as appreci ation of the arts. Children will learn to be more expressive and forthcoming from a young age, says Aysha.

“We are planning to conduct weekly workshops for children. Also in the near future we plan to tie up with German theatre groups, as it is quite popular in that country. They can help us understand the whole concept better and produce better results,” she says.

Mother of a two-year-old girl, Chitra B says this is a very innovative concept. “Today children are very bright at a young age and are able to grasp things much faster than those from the previous generations.

When they see light or colours, they immediately react. This kind of theatre will be definitely beneficial as children will be able to understand various subjects better,” she says.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Registrations now OPEN for "Toddler Theatre"

The toddler Theatre workshops will begin in August.

We have just opened registrations. You will need to bring 2 stamp sized photographs of your child.

Workshops will be scheduled Mondays to Fridays 11:30 to 1pm AND 3:00 to 4:30pm.

The numbers are restricted to 8 toddlers to a workshop in our fully air-conditioned toddler theatre space - "The Playhouse - cheria aana"

It will cost Rs 2,500/- per month. You can choose any 2 workshops a week.


Note:

Registrations to all our programmes are now happening at our new space:

"The Playhouse - cheria aana"

39/46 Ram's Square
2 Village Road
Nungambakkam

Opposite Harrison's Hotel
Next to IndusInd Bank

Saturday, March 20, 2010

"The Playhouse - cheria aana" was inaugurated this evening!

I still can't believe that the space was inaugurated. My daughter Rohini arrived early this morning from Perth one week ahead of her scheduled date of arrival. Along with her friend Pallavi who arrived around the same time from Goa! I still can't believe it! What a pleasant shock! Only Ajay was missing as he is leaving for China on the 21st from Sydney where he is at University to represent India at the Asian Sailing Championships.

My mother who was the Chief Guest spoke really well and was as beautiful and charming as ever. The space was dedicated to her and my father who passed on five years ago. I had their "pictures" done as caricatures as this lends beautifully to the space as it is a fun space for children's theatre. Shiva the artist did a terrific job.

A big thank you to Jayraj for developing the various brands for our three new programmes.The logos and posters are truly beautiful.

Hans, Shakila, KK and Joel put up very entertaining and hilarious performances which had the audience of adults and children in splits. It was a super way to celebrate children's theatre day and the start of a new beginning for the little theatre. Will put up a slide show of all the photographs soon!

Note: None of the performances at the inuguration were toddler theatre productions.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The final countdown to March 20, 2010....

The space is looking fabulous! The flooring is in place, the air conditioning works efficiently and silently, the window blinds look great and the lights and dimmer board and the sound system will arrive today morning...the last bit of painting and varnishing is happening...my new computer and the phone line arrived late afternoon yesterday...the space looks beautiful.

I know it will be a very happy space for kids! I am glad I began this journey! :)

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Registrations are now OPEN!

Registrations to "Campfire Tales" and "Strings" are now open. You will need to bring 2 recent stamp sized photographs of the participant at the time of registration.

All registrations will happen at The Little Theatre Office in Fountain Plaza.

The Little Theatre
330, Sixth Floor
Fountain Plaza
Pantheon Road
Egmore

The Toddler Theatre programme is slated to begin in August 2010. Registrations to this programme will start soon.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Sudhin came in today to give sound advice!

Sudhin came over today and came up with a super solution for a sound system in our theatre space.

So, sound, lights, air conditioning and wooden floors!

It is all there for small productions! :)

We'll have some basic lights for theatre in this space

We are looking at the possibilities of putting in permanent theatre lights with a dimmer board for use during small productions in this space.

Bhaskar came in and gave some pretty good advice. I think we will be able to get a small light grid and dimmer board and for starters a few theatre lights.

The wooden floor has been selected! The air conditioning work is going on and also the rewiring of the whole space to make sure that the wires are strong and new enough to take the heavy loads of lighting and air conditioning.

Work is progressing very nicely. :)

Fire extinguishers are being fixed.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Nippon Paints are sponsoring the paints for the Centre. :)

Work is progressing nicely. Nippon Paints are generously sponsoring the paints for the centre. It will look beautiful. Their paints are of a very high quality and they have a wonderful range of colours.

And now, babies, a Jungian drama

Theatre for toddlers is booming. Is it just glorified babysitting - or a powerful cultural experience? Mark Fisher finds out


Gathering in small numbers, the audience enters a mysterious, sculptural box. Inside, they go on a multi-sensory trip, through fabric, wool and towelling, making fresh discoveries in hidden compartments, calling the shots in a performance that is never the same twice.

It's the sort of thing the fashionable theatre group Punchdrunk might get up to in a secret London warehouse, with one big difference: the audience for this show, The Gift, starts at 18 months old. If you're three, you're past it.

Symon Macintyre, of the Edinburgh-based Puppet Lab, is one of a number of artists who, over the past decade, have turned their attentions to an audience still in nappies. With companies such as London's Oily Cart leading the way ("Baby Balloon roams into experimental-theatre territory that owes more to live art than to the West End," Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner wrote in January), they are in an altogether different league from the clowns, magicians and party entertainers who have traditionally cornered the preschool market.

"It's my pet hate when people ask if I do children's parties," says Patrick Lynch, an Oily Cart graduate whose Lyngo theatre produces Egg and Spoon, "a multi-sensory interactive experience" for the under-threes, and Circus Minimus, for "toddling clowns" aged two to four. "Do they think we've just been playing pin the tail on the donkey? No, we give them a high-quality, other-worldly experience, something that they wouldn't get with balloon-folding by Mr Smiley. Our director, Marcello Chiarenza, is a Jungian and works on a deep, symbolic level. A student of Jung would say that the images we're presenting to people in Egg and Spoon resonate with the collective unconscious."

Is there any point in performing to children who are still mastering the art of sitting up, let alone walking and talking? Isn't it vain to imagine that babies need any more stimulation than they already get from real life? Jo Evans reckons not. She's the producer of Oogly Boogly, a 45-minute "event for babies and their grown-ups", created by the National Theatre's Tom Morris and Improbable collaborator Guy Dartnell. Taking place in an inflatable tent, it's an improvised performance in which four actors imitate the movements and noises of the eight-strong audience. "It's about putting the child in the driving seat, giving them control of the environment," Evans says. "In essence, the children are choreographing the show. Their movements are the artistic centrepiece. It's a unique experience that the child [would otherwise] never come across in their whole time growing up."

This is a sentiment echoed by Andy Manley, whose My House, pitched at the 2-3 age group, will be performed in Edinburgh in May. "There is a completely different energy and focus with performance, compared with playing," he says. "A parent playing with their child might be looking to see if the beans are burning. But when you're performing, you have a level of focus which they've never seen in an adult. The story in My House is slight, but the emotions are big: finding a friend, being rejected, being scared, discovering things. It reaffirms what they're going through emotionally."

None of this is any odder than pregnant women playing music to their bellies - but there is a lurking suspicion that theatre is an extravagance for those so young. As adults, we go to the theatre expecting to be entertained. Children, we feel, should go to be educated.

"I certainly hope when people bring their children they're not thinking, 'This will improve my little baby'," says Lynch. "There's no proof of that. We don't even begin to think about developing them. Poor things, they do so much anyway and they all get tested - let's have some fun."

Manley remembers working on a children's show he thought relied too heavily on language. When he asked if they needed to say so much, an actor replied: "Well, how do we develop their language skills?" "But we can't do everything," Manley says. "What we do in theatre is help people understand the world they live in, and that the emotions they feel are the same as we all feel. If that's what a child gets out of it, that's great."

What does distinguish pre-narrative work from adult theatre is that genre definitions tend to dissolve. Macintyre prefers to think of The Gift as a 20-minute art installation, albeit one that requires the presence of a puppeteer and actor, and imagines it taking up residency in libraries and galleries. Oogly Boogly is billed as a "game", while Belfast's Baby Rave event offers the chance to experiment with contemporary music in an ambient atmosphere ("the only drug is Calpol").

"Children learn and explore through touch," says Heather Fulton, creative artist with Starcatchers, a Scottish company specialising in early-years theatre. "Everything they hold will go in their mouth. So we've been using a lot of food in our work. Tomatoes have a big part."

Call it what you want, says Lynch, but early-years shows have to be led by the audience. "Try to tell a one-year-old to sit down and listen, and it's just not going to happen," he says. "In Egg and Spoon, we allow them to play and give them the freedom in such a way that when they're doing what they think they want, they're actually doing what we want."

The younger the audience gets, the more focused the shows have to be. Oogly Boogly's audience has a window of six months. If you're younger than a year or older than 18 months, you'll be either insufficiently mobile or too good at talking. "That age group has the most exciting thing in the world to do, which is to try walking," says Manley. "It's hard to sit them down when they want to do this thing. Oogly Boogly works specifically with that age group because of that."

Try to present the same group with a piece of slapstick, however, and they're more likely to be distressed than amused, having yet to see the funny side in falling down. Rearrange the furniture in the nursery's lunch room, as Starcatchers recently did, and you risk upsetting your audience. But show them a never-ending thread, as Manley does in My House, and they find it hilarious. "I suppose it's something to do with cause and effect, where something doesn't behave in the way they expect it to," he says, a tad bemused.

In the past five years, the number of companies specialising in baby theatre has multiplied. Macintyre reckons that audiences, like policemen, are getting younger, which suggests that demand is growing. Jo Belloli, an early-years theatre programmer who works for London's Polka and Unicorn theatres, has been advocating such work in England since seeing it in France, Belgium and Denmark in the early 1990s. "The more you see, the more you realise what can work," she says. "You wonder how you'd keep a one-year-old still for half an hour, but I've seen it happen on numerous occasions."

How Cold My Toes

How Cold My Toes

The changing seasons can be a baffling concept for little ones. Sometimes it’s light at bedtime, sometimes it’s dark, not to mention alternating supplies of snow, rain, sunshine, falling leaves and budding flowers. When you’ve only encountered spring, summer, autumn and winter on a few occasions, they’re still ripe for exploration – which is why Travelling Light Theatre Company’s new show sounds just perfect for early years audiences.

Barely a word is uttered during How Cold My Toes, with the Bristol-based company preferring to use physical theatre, dance and a lively set to communicate their story. ‘The performers wear a different colour for each season,’ explains artistic producer Jude Merrill. ‘And green shoots come up in spring, in summer they eat ice creams, the leaves come down in autumn and in winter it snows woolly clothes which they build a snowman out of.’

For this venture, Travelling Light has teamed up with streetdance company Champloo, to give the show an unusual edge. ‘They were interested in pushing the boundaries of street dance and seeing what else it can do,’ says Merrill. ‘And we found that it has a very clear theatrical language, and some of the dance moves are very expressive. We’ve also got other forms of dance in there such as ballet and tango.’

Some, but not all of which the children will have seen before. ‘I think it’s important that small children see things which are both familiar and unfamiliar,’ says Merrill. ‘And that we create a rich mix of things which intrigue them and hold their attention.’

Old Sheriff Court, Glasgow, Thu 4 Feb and touring

Take your toddler to the theatre

Encouraging pretend play and a child’s imagination is important to all parents. This month we have been exploring the theatrical, dramatic and storytelling activities on offer.

Take your toddler to the theatre

Image by Sister72

Encouraging pretend play and a child’s imagination is important to all parents. This month we have been exploring the theatrical, dramatic and storytelling activities on offer. As usual, we haven’t been disappointed by the choice, and with Christmas shows and other festive-themed activities there’s ample opportunity to do something new and different.

When I initially heard about theatre for toddlers it sounded like a crazy idea – particularly knowing my boisterous, ‘Jack in the Box’ son who just about sits still for our weekly music class. But as a newish Mum, keen to experience the different activities on offer, I decided I shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss. So, with my husband in tow (a reluctant participant at 09:30am on a Saturday morning), we set out to see Little Hippo and His Magic Pen at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. The production, aimed at over twos, took place in the Studio and children sit on the floor or on their parent’s knee around the stage area. With a limit of about fifty people per performance each child has a clear view.

For all the family
The story, characters and props were excellent but more importantly, as an introduction to how children’s theatre works it showed me how enjoyable it is for the entire family. Our little fidget sat still and smiled and laughed in all the right places. The forty minute performance time was perfect – just as events were wrapping up my son got a twinkle in his eye and said ‘Play now?’ so he was ready to move, but then so were we.

The Puppet Barge is exactly what is says on the tin – a fifty seat puppet theatre on a barge; it is described as “one of London’s more elusive treasures”. Moored at a number of different locations over the summer, the barge is now back at its usual home in Little Venice, W9. When I visited, I was immediately struck by how relaxed and comfortable the theatre is. The tiered seating, with children sitting in the middle and adults on the outside, allows everyone a good view. As the theatre lights dim, the puppet stage comes to life like the most expensive of flat screen televisions. The production I saw used a mixture of extremely life-like wooden puppets, and silhouettes and was a narrated story of about 50 minutes (split into two halves with a short interval). I didn’t take my two year old as it was aimed at over threes and the running time seemed a little long. I’m glad I didn’t because I expect he would have been more interested in climbing on the seats! The children there sat still but chatted quietly to their parents, “Look at the giraffe!” / “What’s that Mummy?” It was great to hear their observations and the relaxed atmosphere meant that no one minded a bit of chatter.

Regular activity
I hope to make theatre a regular family activity and find myself looking forward to the increasing number of shows we will be able to enjoy as the children get older. Of course, now that Christmas and the school holidays are upon us it’s a great excuse to book something special and enjoy the festive shows on offer. See the Out and About guide pages 10-15 for a pick of what’s on.
Frequent visits to the theatre may bring out the budding thespians in your little ones. Drama classes and workshops will stimulate them further and are a great way for them to make friends and build confidence. Introducing my son to drama at the tender age of two was easy to organise. We attended a trial session run by Drama Buds (dramabuds@gmail.com Tel: 020 8669 2355). Drama Buds offer storytelling and drama for under sevens and the class we attended was for two to four year olds and lasted forty minutes. The storyteller was enthusiastic, fun and very theatrical. In other circumstances her behaviour would have seemed over the top, but for keeping small children involved it was ideal. The session wasn’t dissimilar to a children’s music class but the music and movement tied in with a story and little ones were encouraged to act out parts of the tale. “Let’s scoop up the sand!” sang our teacher, as we shovelled scoops with our hands out of the yellow section of parachute material we were sat on. I left feeling that this type of activity could be great for giving my sometimes shy son more confidence.

Storytelling and entertainment
Having visited the theatre to watch the action, and participated in a workshop to do some acting ourselves, we sought the more traditional activity of storytelling. A visit to the local library is a great rainy day distraction and the majority of our local libraries have story times once a week for under and over fives. The sessions can get crowded but it’s a good way for you and your offspring to meet people and let’s be honest; free entertainment for 30 minutes on a rainy day is always welcome.

Hopefully all this theatrical talk has inspired you to try something new. If you are reading this whilst frantically making last minute plans for Christmas, perhaps you could get some theatre tokens as a gift for friends and their families? Tokens (www.theatretokens.com Tel: 0870 164 8800) can be used at most of the children’s theatres in our area. Let the show begin!

--Published by Families SW (London) Magazine--