Kids roundup

There are almost a hundred kids shows to choose from at the Fringe this year, from small amateur productions to ambitious, boundary-pushing shows from top-flight companies. But taking kids to the theatre can be a risky business. At worst, it's a nightmare of shuffly bottoms, tugs on sleeves and "can we get an ice cream now?" At best, shows at the Fringe can entrhall, inspire and entertain kids and their parents in equal measure.

Launching our new Kids section, here Fest talks to the creators of three of the most promising family shows about how they work their magic. We'll have plenty more recommendations and reviews throughout August, but you can't go far wrong with these:

More fun than a Wii
Perhaps the best option for pure belly laughs comes courtesy of Australian duo The List Operators, whose brilliantly silly and funny sketch show for adults was one of the unexpected highlights of last year's Fringe. This year they've adapted their shtick for the kiddy market and the results have impressed the critics back home: theirs was the first children's show ever to be nominated for the prestigious Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

"That was a big deal for us, we totally didn't expect it," says Richard Higgins—'Rich'—over a videocall to Fest a couple of months after their victory. Co-star Matthew Kelly—'Matt'—and no, not that one—agrees, stressing "we were up against a bunch of all sorts of other acts from all over the world, entertaining adults, and our show was chosen as one of the best." But an even more important endorsement came from a child at a festival for under-8s in Brisbane. "One kid got so excited, they pooed their pants," laughs Matt.

It's easy to see where the excitement comes from. The List Operator's conceit is that they have to write various lists on stage, on subjects ranging from "rude words" to "things that don't go on a sandwich." As with their adult show, Rich plays the straight man, determined to keep the show educational, whilst Matt is the naive, anarchic presence who constantly derails the proceedings. It's a premise with immense appeal to kids and Rich says that at the Brisbane show, "Matt just became this superhero to them. Whenever he left the stage they were like, 'Where is he going?! Come back, Matt! You're the best! Rich, you're boring!'"

For all its silliness, the show comes from a sincere conviction – that children deserve to have fun in the theatre. "A lot of what we get here in Australia in kids' shows is moralistic and saccharine," Matt says. Interrupting, Rich agrees: "it tries to be educational. There's this idea with children's entertainment that you always have to educate children, whereas we think it's a little unfair that you can't just entertain them."

The pair say that the techniques behind their kids' and adults' shows is more-or-less the same. "I think we kind of ask the same questions," says Matt, "in what we do for adults we kind of play along the line of good taste and what you can get away with doing, and with our kids' shows we do that as well. Because both kids and adults find it really funny to play with that line."

Consequently, things can get a little rude, but never out of control. "We know what we're doing," says Matt. But Rich says that they feel obliged to address "what children really want to talk about." "Like butts," says Matt. "And poo," Rich concurs.

Giant ambitions
On the more serious theatre side, it's worth checking out the work of experimental company Indefinite Objects. Praised by the Guardian for "celebrat[ing] the possibilities of theatre", the company was created partly on the basis that children want theatre to challenge them as well as to entertain. "Children's theatre has always been a lot freer, in a sense," says founding member Steve Tiplady. "It's always been a lot more physical and can be more prepared to take risks. Children are a lot more accepting of breaking conventions, whereas adults can be very staid in their outlook."

Taking advantage of children's natural spirit of adventure, the company's unusual technique is to start from a specific material, and to build a show from there. Indefinite Articles' first ever piece was a version of Carlo Collodi's classic tale Pinocchio, in which the child is built and animated on stage from a block of wood and some chairs. "And then all of the other characters are objects within the carpenter's workshop," says Tiplady, "so the environment dictates the story."

In the company's latest venture The Chalk Giants, the story emerges from the environment even more dramatically. "We live on a chalk escarpment," explains co-founder Sally Brown, "so we devised the show with that material, using it for drawing to tell the legendary Jack and the Giant stories, telling them on a really epic scale." Some of the show's visual cues are taken from the famous giant chalk figures in England, from the Cern Abbas Giant to the Uffingham Horse.

This playful approach allows the company to play with people's preconceptions of the familiar stories, from perennial favourite Jack and the Beanstalk to the less well-known legend of Jack the Giant-Killer. "We see the giants in a much more sympathetic light," says Brown, "seeing them as sort of protectors of the landscape, and almost like graffiti artists, carving these huge chalk drawings from the hills."

The show is given its "backbone" by the poet John Agard, who has written a narrative and a series of poems that will "weave a thread through the whole story," says Brown. "It's very rich, beautiful, poetic language and it's also very funny, very animalistic," she continues. "There's a lot of debate about whether the chalk giants were jokes, cartoons, satirical comments on the leaders of their day. The Cern Abbas giant is definitely a fertility thing, with his willy. Agard's addressed that in his text, and I think we will too – so we're going to be quite light in places!"

Taking the Spotlite
As if the above shows weren't engaging and inventive enough, another company operating at the Fringe actually lets children help to make the show themselves. Spotlites Theatre specialises in what it calls "interactive children's theatre," and founder Rachel King explains that they "let the kids call the shots, right from the word go."

Fast becoming a Fringe institution, Spotlites' productions at the Merchants' Hall are built around popular child-friendly stories: anything from Treasure Island to Doctor Who, often mixed up in unexpected ways – last year's outing was called Sleeping Beauty and the Timelords. But their key feature is that children are invited to come up on stage throughout the show, interacting with the actors and helping to determine the path of the story. In previous years, children have been challenged to master the art of shooting foam bow and arrows, designed and built a timelock, and battled a knight with an enormous jousting pole.

"We try to work with the whole concept that children do believe it's real," explains King, "and for them it does change from being a bit of paper, to a bird or a treasure map, or whatever." By indulging their natural suspension of disbelief, she believes the shows can be very empowering for kids. "Children tend to have a lot of things prescribed for them—they're told when to go to bed and when to eat and when to go to the loo—and I think when it comes to theatre what we really love for them is for them to call the shots."

In the latest production, Robinson Crusoe the Lost Jedi Knight, the worlds of classic and contemporary fiction collide to form a narrative that sees the iconic castaway transformed into a star-faring warrior, lost on an ice planet with a droid named FR1D. Audience members get to learn how to wield lightsabers and have to crack codes to help the hero progress.

The interactive approach isn't always predictable, of course, and "the great thing about kids is that they come up with something better than you thought of," laughs King. "They'll come up with genius ideas and you've got to be prepared immediately to come straight back with something. And if they decide they're going to storm the stage, it will happen! We just have to go with it."