Last week an English friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to a stage version of an old British children's show called Bagpuss. She sent me YouTube links so I'd have some idea what it was about, and was so excited I agreed to go and bought the tickets as her Christmas present.
We went to the matinee showing on campus today, and were almost certainly the only (university) students in the room. The rest of the audience was made up of parents and very small children, and a few elderly folks (one of whom, we suspect, may have been the original illustrator on the TV series). The show is about a fat, floppy, stuffed 'cloth' pink-and-white-striped cat named (called) Bagpuss, owned by a little girl named Emily. Bagpuss lives in a shop where nothing is sold - instead, Emily brings in items she has found, and Bagpuss and the other toys tell stories about the items, clean them up, and leave them in the shop window so they can be claimed by their owners. The stage production starts with a modern-day grown-up young lady coming into the closed-up shop and carefully uncovering the toys, only to be surprised when the somewhat old-fashioned (and much younger) Emily enters and begins telling a story - acting as puppeteer with the toys and inviting the visitor to play along. They eventually tell stories for three 'found' objects, and the grown-ups in the audience realize that the visitor is actually the adult Emily, come back to visit the shop where she used to play out stories with her father (who has very recently died).*
It was very sweet, charming, with a simple set-up and easy-flowing structure - and honestly, I cried. One doesn't generally get to literally play with the child one once was! The show was just lovely, and I think my friend and I had the most fun of anyone there (even with me going teary every few minutes). We danced, we sang along, we waved and laughed and behaved like (very nice) children... I wish I'd done more of that when I was a child! (And a teenager. And mid-twenties. I've done pretty well for the last decade or so.)
For all that it's my field of study, I'm not usually moved to tears (or dancing) in the theatre. I think that what this means is I should be making children's theatre, and finding ways to get paid to get kids to sing and dance and clap and laugh. The most interesting, memorable (in the good way) pieces of theatre I've seen in the last couple of years have been for kids - and if I've cried, and remembered, that means they were for me, too.
I'd better get to the children's section in a bookstore pronto - looks like I have some research to do!
* It was even a little more heart-tugging for those in the know: the original Emily was played by the daughter of the show's creator.
