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Helen Matravers on Polka Theatre’s Festival for Early Years
It’s now 45 years since Polka Theatre first opened its doors, and it continues to present an ambitious range of events for children and families to enjoy. This year, Polka’s biennial Big Dreams Theatre Festival runs from 28-29 September, offering a huge variety of activities. We were delighted to chat with Artistic Director and Joint CEO, Helen Matravers to learn more about this exciting event.
Helen, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us in the midst of organising this amazing event. Firstly, can you tell us a bit about the Big Dreams Festival and why you run it?
Big Dreams is a festival which celebrates all things Early Years Theatre, and champions the creativity behind inspiring the youngest of audiences. For a whole weekend, we open up Polka’s doors for people to come and enjoy our lovely venue. There are free activities, an installation and nine performances from both UK and International artists, along with author events that people can book onto. The Festival highlights how important theatre and creative arts are for young people and showcases the incredible variety of ways in which this can be platformed.
What shows can we expect to see at the Festival?
There is so much to see and explore. All weekend our Clore studio is hosting a free installation by Scottish artist, Greg Sinclair named Seashells, which shows him in eight fabulous costumes, performing eight tongue twisters in eight different languages. Italian company, Teatro Koreja are coming over especially to present their wonderful show, LàQua, and pioneering dance company Second Hand Dance will be in our Nest Space with the interactive The Sticky Dance. Creative cardboard worlds are being built with Cardboard Adventures‘ Boxville, whilst the Adventure Theatre plays host to a wonderful exploration of colour for babies with Filskit Theatre’s Kaleidoscope. Finally there’s Wonder Gigs for little ones who want to get up and dance. Phew!
Can you tell us about some of the writers who will be doing sessions with the children, and Polka’s connections with them?
In addition to the theatre programme, we are delighted to be teaming up with Wimbledon BookFest, to host four amazing Early Years Picture Book authors for interactive live draw-along, read-along events. On Saturday we host The Storm Whale author, Benji Davies, and writer of the much-loved No matter What, Debi Gliori. On Sunday Tọlá Okogwu, author of Bekah and the Moon is here, and Gigantosaurus author Jonny Duddle is bringing pens and paper galore for a wonderful doodle-along. Each author will also be available for book signings and meet-and-greets.
What other kinds of workshops and activities are you offering this year?
There will be treasure hunts around the venue, face painting and glitter tattoos, and lots of activities to keep young audiences entertained for hours. There’s also be a Big Dreams ‘tree’ where children can add their own ‘Big Dream’, creating a lovely, positive representation of what young people want. We want our audiences to know that Polka is open and accessible to everyone, many of the Polka team will be on site to talk to audiences and families about our work. We can’t wait to meet everyone!
Polka is renowned for its work giving access to theatre to children who might not normally have the opportunity. How does the Festival feed into that?
There are so many free activities, moments and installations to explore throughout the weekend. The festival throws Polka’s doors wide, allowing families to spend hours here without needing to buy a ticket. The programme of work on offer also showcases a hugely diverse and exciting range of subjects and performance genre, so there is something for everyone to enjoy.
There’s also going to be an Artist Day on Friday, 27 September. Can you talk a bit about what that entails and why you wanted to stage it?
This is the first time Polka have run an event like this. The day celebrates artists who create work for young audiences. Over the past year, we’ve been supporting six artists through our Catapult Programme, and this day gives them a chance to showcase scratch performances and pitch their work to venues, producers and programmers from across the UK. It’s also a chance for us to take a deep-dive with industry leading figures on how Early Years Theatre is perceived, reviewed and programmed, and as part of the day we’re hosting two panel discussions to explore reviewing and commissioning new work. Polka’s support of artists is fundamental to how we run as an organisation. As an industry we have to invest in brand new work, new voices and champion the making of this work, and this day is a chance to bring together loads of artists and venues to be able to talk about the exciting future ahead for our sector.
Thanks so much to Helen for telling us all about this fantastic event.
The Big Dreams Festival runs from 28-29 September, with Artist Day taking place on 27 September.
Further details and booking information for the Festival can be found here and for Artist Day here.
