A Ticket To Thrive from Above Bounds Theatre Company
Welcome to our #TicketToThrive campaign. We believe wholeheartedly that doing something creative with your child will benefit you both. We’ve asked some other people who believe in the power of creativity to talk a little about a benefit they have seen when families get creative, and to suggest a simple activity that you can do at home. Today, we hear from Helen Bovey, founder of Above Bounds Theatre Company.
Tell us about Above Bounds? Above Bounds is a collective of artists based in Devon, dedicated to creating theatre for families which is visual, playful and breaks down some of the barriers which can limit access to the arts including language, location and cost. The group was founded by Helen Bovey and George Boundy after graduating from East 15 Acting School on the BA World Performance course. Seeing a need for work which transcends languages and cultures, they began storytelling at festivals before creating shows. The group is now run by Helen Bovey and a collection of artists from across forms- illustrators, musicians, dancers and actors.
#TicketToThrive is all about encouraging families to do creative activities together. What do families and children gain from coming to your shows? Families often bring their very young children to see our work and we are often told it is the first piece of theatre they have seen. We think this is brilliant because we believe that the younger children engage in arts and culture, the more comfortable they’ll feel engaging throughout their life. Theatre has many benefits- we’ve seen families share laughs together, come together over a craft activity and speak about topics they haven’t found a medium through to before. Drama encourages empathy, which is a brilliant skill to encourage children to have growing up in our world today. In our early years work, children are still discovering themselves and the world around them. Theatre enables them to do that in a safe environment, in a playful way and they can socialise with other families, coming together as a community through entertainment.
How can families get the same benefits at home? We very rarely perform our shows without a workshop attached as we love to inspire families to continue the creativity at home. With a little bit of inspiration, it’s easy to play together and continue the fun. Why not take your favourite story and make a shadow puppet of the main character? This is a brilliant craft to do as a family, as it involves cutting out (which usually needs some supervision) and designing the puppet (you’ll be surprised at how creative your little one will be with this). Follow the simple steps below:
- Trace around a picture of the character on a piece of black card.
- Cut out the character- following the lines.
- Attach to a wooden lolly pop stick, and decorate with anything you have in the house- ribbon, feathers, sequins.
- Shine a light behind the puppet, facing a wall, or put a bedsheet over two chairs and shine the light behind the puppet, and get members of the family to watch from the front of the sheet.
- Re-tell the story together, moving the character when they appear in the story.
We hope you have hours of enjoyment together!
Above Bounds Theatre are based in Devon but perform all over the UK. Next up they are performing A-Tissue A-Tissue at intoBodmin on Tuesday 27th August 11am. They will also be running their Children’s Theatre Festival — Above & Beyond — during October half term in libraries across Plymouth. To be the first to find out about any upcoming shows in London, follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Let’s Play London shines a spotlight on the best theatre and live performance for Under 5s in London. Find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
