To the theater with a child: how to choose a suitable performance

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

What to look for when choosing a children's play, especially if it will be the first trip to the theater for the child? Experts of the ticket operator Ticketland.ru told us about this.

All our habits, preferences and attitudes are formed during childhood. What we learn at an early age determines how we will be in adulthood. This rule applies to both emotionality and our creative abilities: empathizing with the heroes of favorite fairy tales and cartoons, the child learns the subtleties of perception, and fantasizing about travels to distant realms, develops imagination.

The easiest way to bring up a sense of beauty in children is through play, including theatrical. The colorful visualization of interesting scenes on the stage delights the child and a lot of questions and will surely be remembered for a long time. Before going to the theater, be sure to tell your child what it is and how to behave in the auditorium. Present attending a performance as an unusual adventure and ask the child to pay attention to all the details, and then discuss with him the actions of the characters and general impressions.

The number of performances for children today is not inferior to theatrical repertoire for an adult audience. In order not to get lost in the variety of offers and choose a performance that your child will definitely like, focus on two "starting points": age and temperament.

Baby theaters for those under three

At this age, children are just getting to know the colors and sounds of the world around them and they want to touch everything. It is precisely these features of the little man's thinking that are taken into account in specialized baby theaters: simple short performances are staged there, in which the emphasis is not on the plot, but on emotions and first discoveries. For example, in such performances, it is told how the drops, rain and wind sound, how the seasons differ, how a sunny and a real bunny jumps.

The performances are held in a chamber setting so that the kids are not afraid of a large number of people: most often these are theater lobbies or small rooms in children's development studios. During the performance, children can sit on the lap of their parents or move freely around the hall, communicate with the actors and touch the props they like - there are no hard and fast rules here, and curiosity is welcome.

Closer to the age of three, the child can be introduced to performances based on folk tales, for example, about the chicken Ryaba, Kolobok, as well as performances based on author's fairy tales. The works of Korney Chukovsky and Sergei Mikhalkov are perfect for this.

When choosing a performance, pay attention to where it is geographically held: it is hardly worth embarking with the baby on the road with three transfers for the sake of a half-hour performance, it is better to choose a production closer to home.

3-6 years old: performances for children

The child is already able to follow the plot and explain the actions of the heroes without being distracted. Very handy at this age will be performances based on simple parables, where they teach the rules of behavior and the characters find themselves in a situation where a choice is required. These can be completely new plots for the child or performances based on fairy tales already familiar to him, for example, "Puss in Boots", "Buratino", "The Little Humpbacked Horse" and "Little Red Riding Hood". If a child is attentive when you read poetry to him, then you can try to introduce him to performances in a poetic form.

Performances for children of this age are most often interactive and take place on a small stage or without it at all. Children can ask the actors questions and even perform some simple actions themselves. If your child likes to talk with toys, invite him to go to a puppet show or a puppet theater.

6-11 years old: full immersion in the plot

The very age when one can move from play performances to performances on more serious topics, and the characters of the heroes in them should also become more complex, without a clear division into positive and negative. True friendship, mutual assistance in difficult situations, deception and truth - whatever the plot is about, it should be rich, twisted and keep intrigue until the very end. Children will love stories about travel, pirate ships, magical transformations, beautiful princesses and brave heroes. Younger viewers will become even more sympathetic to the characters if they are about the same age as themselves. Performances about "Treasure Island", "Oliver Twist", "Alice Through the Looking Glass", the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - in a word, all those works that you yourself read in childhood will do.

11-15 years old: performances for future adults

As a rule, by this age, children are already quite familiar with the theater: even if you did not organize family trips to the performances, the child probably attended some performances with the class. You can invite him to experiment with theatrical formats and genres, such as buying tickets for a ballet, musical, or operetta. It is better not to offer classical opera: even not all adults can withstand a two-hour performance without preparation; this may even discourage a child from continuing to get acquainted with opera performance. The theme of the performances can be any, but it is recommended to give preference to performances based on literary works that the child goes through at school: the visualization of the plot is always remembered better than just the text read diagonally. It can be "The Cherry Orchard", "Pygmalion" or "The Inspector General".

Man with character

When choosing a performance, it is imperative to take into account the temperament of the child. It can be difficult for mobile, sociable, addicted sanguine and choleric people to sit through even an hour and a half performance if the plot does not seem dynamic enough to them. So that the trip to the performance does not end with whims, choose short, perhaps musical performances with cunning plot twists and turns and many characters (The Nutcracker, The Flying Ship, The Bremen Town Musicians). A win-win option would be performances based on your favorite works, especially if they include some kind of interactive elements. Children with this type of temperament like puppet and puppet performances much less, which cannot be said about calm phlegmatic people and shy melancholic people. Interactive may turn out to be superfluous for them - they prefer to follow what is happening on the stage without taking part in person. They may love shadow theater and animal performances.

Today theaters offer performances for children of all ages and tastes. When choosing a production, take into account the individual characteristics of your child and his preferences, as well as pay attention to the format and duration of the action. Be sure to discuss with your child the impressions of what you saw, decide together which performance you will go to next time, and let every family trip to the theater turn into an unforgettable holiday!