The annual Take-Off Festival of children’s theatre, organised by Darlington-based Theatre Hullabaloo and now in its 28th year, returns to the north east from 19 to 25 October with over 100 performances at 19 venues.
There will be performances in venues in Barnard Castle, Blackhall, Carlisle, Castle Eden, Crook, Darlington, Durham, Ferryhill, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Washington and Wingate.
In 2014, the Festival engaged with over 6,500 children, parents and educators. This year, Theatre Hullabaloo hopes to reach even more children and young people.
Lucy Ridley, TakeOff Festival Manager, said, "TakeOff Festival has even more opportunities for families and schools to get involved. With over 100 performances during the week, we hope to engage with more children than ever before, helping to create some really special first memories of going to the theatre."
The shows are:
- Under Foot from Aboutnowish (England), for age 1 – 5: an interactive sound and movement performance where the audience is invited to explore three different floor surfaces, interacting with the performers and responding to the textures and sensations through movement, dance and play.
- Bear and Butterfly by Theatre Hullabaloo and Theatre By the Lake (for age 4+): puppetry, live music and storytelling combine in a tale of love, loss and friendship.
- Tree by Magnet Theatre (South Africa) for age 3 – 7: using very simple poetic language, Tree tells the story of a man who is hungry and wants to eat a peach. To satisfy his hunger, he plants a tree. The tree grows through spring into summer and the man must learn to wait with patience for the peach to ripen.
- Welcome to Octoville by Fly in a Pie Puppet Theatre (for age 0 – 16): Octoville is festooned with unusual characters, surreal structures and eccentric machinery. Have a conversation with the deeply unpopular puppet Mayor Harold Gobsworth. Consider why Granny Fitch lives in a tree and won't come down, and try to figure out why there are Pterodactyls everywhere.
- 16 Singers by The Egg and Dance Umbrella (age 0 – 2): celebrate the joy of music in this new production as the sounds and movements of 16 singers are woven into a mesmerising performance, allowing the audience to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ sounds within a eye-catching design.
- Snow White by balletLORENT (for age 7+): reimagining the well-loved story of a mother’s poisonous jealousy, Snow White explores thwarted desire, deception, compassion and redemption, with magical mirrors, mysterious miners and a young woman with beauty as pure as feathered snow.
- Pocket Merchant by Propeller (for age 11+): an all-male cast in a condensed version of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
- The Last Post by Kilter Theatre (for age 7+ - a performance for Festival delegates): step on board the pillar-box red van-atorium known as Mobile Sorting Office 451 and be transported to a world where snail mail reigns supreme.
- A Mano by El Patio Teatro (Spain) (for age 6+): a non-verbal performance told with clay. We meet a very special hero: a small person with a great desire to escape from the shop window of a tiny pottery shop and from those who live there too.
- Our Teacher’s a Troll by Paines Plough and Half Moon (for age 7+): two terrible twins with a talent for turmoil rule their school with terror and tyranny. That is, until the arrival of a new head teacher with green scaly skin, sharp gnarly fangs, and a long spiky tail…
- The Falcon’s Malteser by New Old Friends (for age 8+): a family film noir pastiche following the adventures of the hopelessly inept private detective Tim Diamond and his sharp-witted brother Nick. The plot sees the Diamond Brothers Detective agency on a thrilling case to discover just what is so important about those titular Maltesers, featuring slapstick, comedy songs and a cast of four playing 20 brilliant characters like: The Fat Man (who has lost a lot of weight), Gott & Himmell, Lauren Barcardi, Beatrice von Falkenberg and Betty Cleaner.
Full details of all shows, venues, dates and times can be found on the TakeOff web site.