Not just child's play

Despite the financial challenges of children's theatre, grown-ups continue to make smart entertainment for youngsters.

- SARAH CATHERALL

When Emma Rattenbury was emerging from the intensity of Covid and its lockdowns, the children's librarian struggled to reconnect with the world. “I was feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from people and nature,” says Wellington-based Rattenbury, also a playwright and performer. “I thought, 'Jeez, if I'm feeling this way as an adult, imagine how difficult this period and the following reintegration back into the world must have been for kids – and maybe it still is.”

She takes these ideas into her character, Winnie, in The Home Inside, a solo show that premieres at Wellington's Bats Theatre next month. The play is pitched at children aged 4-8, and Rattenbury will perform the story of a young girl who is anxious about the outside world and compelled to explore big emotions.

A graduate of the Master of Fine Arts theatre programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, the 27-year-old hopes children seeing the play will ponder ways to deal with their own feelings. “We see Winnie struggle,” Rattenbury says. “She's not perfect, she is brave, and she grows through these difficult experiences when she realises these feelings can't hurt her but they're just a part of life.”

The Home Inside is being staged by Wonderlight Theatre, a grassroots children's theatre company that grew out of the masters' theatre programme. Lecturer Kerryn Palmer, a co-founder of the company, is producing it, and she has researched children's theatre extensively to find out what young people want to see, and what types of theatre move them. “A lot of theatre-makers often don't consider the audience. We think we're experts in making theatre, but we forget that we're not experts in being a child any more.”