Going beyond puppets on a string

Foreign productions are introduced by the Shanghai Children's Art Theater to entertain the country's young audiences. The popular plays include Puzzle created by Dansema Dance Theatre of Lithuania and The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Tiger's Tea (above) Productions from the United Kingdom.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Unhappy with local children's theater groups, a young mother decided to take matters into her own hands and established a theater company, the Art Space for Kids, in 2015.

Forrina Chen, who helped organize the Shanghai International Arts Festival for a decade, recalls how she once took her then 18-month-old daughter to a theater in the city only to find "the lighting too bright and dazzling and the show simply too noisy". Her daughter wanted to leave halfway through the show, and at the time Chen thought the child was tired.

But later during their travels in Denmark, Japan and Hong Kong, she discovered her daughter actually enjoyed plays.

Two years ago, Chen brought Cloudman, a British puppet show in which audiences are seated just a few meters away from the performers, to Shanghai and Wuzhen in East China's Zhejiang province. The outstanding reception for the show, Chen says, led her to set up her own company.

Since its opening last year, Chen's company has staged 240 performances at Life Hub Daning, a mall in downtown Shanghai, drawing a crowd of 36,000 people.

The space can host up to 150 people－about the standard size for a children's theater venue in Europe－but it is still smaller than most other such facilities in the city.

Tony Reekie, 60, a veteran of children's theater in Scotland, has been roped in by Chen's company to scout for foreign productions.

"Productions for children have to have the same quality as those made for adults. You have to make it as good as you possibly can. If you don't, the children will know and they will get bored," he says.

Reekie hopes that by bringing good children's theater to Shanghai, local talents will also be inspired to create original works.

"This is not about copying things from different parts of the world, but rather, we want local artists to find their own language, bring out China's own culture and history, find something interesting and make it work."

Buying copyrights

Liang believes it is important to increase the number of original productions from China at the Shanghai Children's Art Theater in order to improve the domestic theater scene. A first step in that direction is more international collaboration, she says.

Liang's company has acquired the copyrights from the BBC for the Frozen Planet concert series that depicts the beauty of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

In this production, the Shanghai Opera House Orchestra will perform a George Fenton composition, while a documentary film on the world's coldest regions is presented on a giant LED screen. Tickets to four such concerts, which will take place over Feb 27-28, were sold out weeks in advance.