WELCOME TO SMALL BUT MIGHTY YOUNG PEOPLE'S THEATRE

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

"I took a walk in the woods, and came out taller than the trees'

Henry David Thoreau

he original concept for this show was that we would create a joyful, gentle, non-judgemental series of interviews that brought Nature to life on stage and give the audience a snapshot of the very special relationships that individuals in our community have with nature and how their engagement with it helps them come out, as Thoreau did, feeling ‘taller than the trees’. We wanted to stage the heartfelt connection that every human feels to Nature (only one person answered ‘inside’ to our ‘inside or outside’ question).

This play is theatre as research, a document of a place in the world at a particular time. As we talked amongst ourselves, with our families, and the wider community; we found bird poo and joy in equal measure as crowds of people assembled outside the Eynsham’s Spar every day through January and February to watch the murmuration of starlings whirl and dance over their heads. Nature; special, magical, transformative, symbolic, wordless; became a thread of continuity for people in a troubled world. We found that, as in indigenous cultures, Nature gives us links to our ancestors and what has come before in the stories, the received wisdom, and the medicines.

What we found were passionate, driven individuals trying to restore nature, trying to provide housing, trying to provide clean energy, trying to improve food systems. We also found division and overwhelm; dismay regarding the dramatic scale of building work in our area, rage, and sadness about the pollution of our watercourses, and our community divided over the dilemma of solar power versus transformation of our own habitat. The press whip up scorn and division when people speak out. We found that by putting the consumer at the centre of narratives of advertising, governments can put the onus on us rather than prioritising muscular legislation. We had found that talking about nature meant that talking about the destruction of the planet was a sad inevitability.

Mainly, we discovered that our children, who have the ultimate stake in the future of their world, are literally voiceless. Education tacks on engagement with the earth as an extra, not a fundamental - your child will be drilled so that they know how a plant reproduces but will not be able to name the plants at their feet. When they protest it is considered a marginal activity. They are not consulted in local planning, their rights to the land around them are subject to the choices of adults. These children you see in front of you, the future of your communities, can only breather the air and drink the water we provide them with. When we deny nature, we deny stories, we deny connection, we divide and break. Assumptions are made around children’s needs and priorities; and fear and resignation render them voiceless.

In Britain, I think we still really want our children to be ‘seen and not heard’. Maybe it is uncomfortable to hear how frustrated they are!

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This performance is part of #SeizeTheDay a nationwide project to raise the profile of Drama in schools & Theatre for children & young people, something that has also been degraded over the last few years! Youth Theatre can process these challenging debates about Nature, Climate, and Society. They can explore it in multiple dimensions; discussion, listening to the narratives of others and voicing those narratives, focusing on ensemble and collaboration, playing, moving, mulling, inhabiting. Nature, the Arts, are essential spaces to expand outside the daily challenges of results, dismal global news, and daily stress and anxiety. As Sir Phillip Pullman says;

"Children need to go to the theatre as much as they need to run about in the fresh air. They need to hear real music played by real musicians on real instruments as much as they need food and drink. They need to read and listen to proper stories as much as they need to be loved and cared for.

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The difficulty with persuading grown-up people about this is that if you deprive children of shelter and kindness and food and drink and exercise, they die visibly; whereas if you deprive them of art and music and story and theatre, they perish on the inside, and it doesn't show.”

“You are never too small to make a difference.” Greta Thunberg

We hope that you enjoy the performance.

All our love, the cast of Taller Than the Trees