BABY DRAMA

The ethical importance of such projects can hardly be sufficiently emphasized in a country in which neither public petitions nor church initiative have made the rulers abolish the taxes on the products for children. The performance is so priceless that it could be thought a compulsory experience both for parents and for children, but every obligation brings us to the problem of imposing and, eventually, to issuing a license to have and bring up children. The performance does not contain any of that but it does include a strong, deeply intimate invitation for elevated alertness and responsibility towards children. What does the performance for children aged 6-12 months deal with?
Since we have specialized TV programmes, commercials and TV channels for that age why wouldn’t we have theatre performances as well?
The authors were meticulous in their research into pedagogy, developmental psychology, neurolinguistics and other possible things related to that age group but they haven’t ignored their parental experience either. Nor have they neglected bringing children to the rehearsals!
Actually, the whole performance is based on giving experience both to parents and to children.
The most important method – equally necessary element of spectacles for other age groups – is individualizing the audience! Gradual testing and permanent following every reaction of the visitors. Socialization which is built in the atmosphere of individuality especially when, in the presence of children, we have to pay more attention to their fun than to our social histrionics – that socialization shows precious frankness, peace and contentment that was thoroughly kept on our faces. Choosing a proper narrative for such an applicative performance is both difficult and not. From your wish/need/choice to be born, all the way to the first birthday candle, through the spectacle in which all is clear – from the redness of placenta through the whiteness of the maternity ward to all the situations children go through. The performance does not use up the pompously announced new genre as much as it invites us to discover new ways of communication by theatrical means. And to wonder why were we born at all?

Ivan Pravdić