Follow the crickets, collect the acorns, chat around the fire,
Find your own shooting star
What happens if we let children do what they want to do?
Following on from the success of the 5 star show GLOW for children aged 3 months to 4 years, Flying Eye Performance Company are developing a new piece, Sensible Nonsense. This is an experiential show for children aged 3 to 5 years old and their carers. We are interested in exploring the idea of ‘What if things we as adults think are meaningless (nonsense) is in fact sensible to humans?’
For children of this age, banging on the table during meals, painting on walls and furniture, and blowing bubbles in their drinks seem to excite them.
We, as the artistic directors of Flying Eye, parents and keen observers of the environment in which we bring up our children, often find ourselves questioning:
Is there any link between their experiments and important activity for human growth?
Is there a way adults could embrace these activities and recall the joy they themselves got from doing it as children?
Through performance, music and stories, we aim to create an experiential show that parents and children can enjoy together. As a starting point we will investigate the instant sensation children get through their experiments as well as its psychological effect, such as physical actions – jumping, throwing, rocking, screaming – and how they have a completely different understanding of time passing, compared to adults.
The journey so far:
In August 2017 we carried out 4 weeks of research and development on Sensible Nonsense, funded by a Grant for Arts by Arts Council England. During this period we engaged with 61 test audience members and culminated in two sharings at Brighton Dome of a 40 minute scratch performance. We collated audience and professional feedbacks to reflect to the future.
Please email info@flyingeye.org for more information on this project and to view a short trailer of the R&D.