WHEN YOU WATCH a small child being exposed to the magic of theatre, you can believe in anything. Joyce Levinsohn, one of Johannesburg’s children’s theatre pioneers, understood this magic and this ability to believe, from the inside out. The founder of the city’s oldest traditional children’s theatre, she […]
THEATRE TEASER: THE ADVENTURES OF MANIE THE ANT. JOHAN ‘SWANNIE’ SWANEVELDER is an alchemist. He has the potent ability to change objects as idiosyncratic and evocative, but also as commonplace, as a pair of socks, into sensate beings that can tell beautiful stories of great wisdom, humour and […]
THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like an errant cat, in a hat, to stir up a little madcap naughtiness when mother is out on a rainy day and there’s nothing else to do. The National Children’s Theatre hosts Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat for little kids, from the […]
WHAT DO YOU do when you’re tasked with the staging of modern children’s classic that burst into popularity in 1964 and did not stint in saying things that were hilariously rude, flying in the face of all refined convention with some chewed chewing gum stuck behind its proverbial […]
IT TAKES A special blend of creative fierceness, respect for the original and gentleness toward traditions established by a theatre over many years, to reinvent a great old chestnut with enormous success. The creative team behind this year’s iteration of Charlotte’s Web are not names previously associated with […]
YOU MAY NOT think your three- or four-year-old is ready yet for lessons about the value of money, history and literature, but in the extremely able hands of director Daniel Geddes, your sproglet will be moved, taught and fascinated by the wiles of a silly bunny who cannot […]
IN EVERY GENERATION, real issues need to be taken seriously by the youth. Ours is no different. And these ‘real issues’ include struggle history. It’s a curious thing to be able to watch the focused attention awarded to a play about youngsters in 1980s South Africa, torn and […]
WOULD YOU VOTE for a simple duck to be your national leader? This bizarre little question comes under the eyeglass in the National Children’s Theatre’s first production of the year. And it’s apt to get many a giggle and a squeal of delight. Duck for President, directed by […]
YOU MAY THINK of them as the creepy crawlies that make you scream when you see them by chance, the six-legged insects that populate the underbelly of our world but Gillian Katz has given life and love to a bunch of ‘goggas’ with their hard carapaces, their noisy […]
REAL FRIENDSHIP DOESN’T always come in just any neat package, mostly. And the message of this lovely children’s musical, with honky tonk vibes and a cuddly spider who has painted nails will warm the cockles of your heart – and that of your child. Daniel Geddes does a […]
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