Education and entertainment join forces at this Springer Theatre show for young children
As a mother, Sally Baker didn’t see enough opportunities for preschool children in Columbus to explore the arts with their families. As the education director at the Springer Opera House, she saw a way to help fill that need.
So, in 2017, the Springer Theatre for the Very Young was launched, producing interactive shows for children ages 5 and younger.
“The Springer’s mission is to become more essential to the community,” Baker told the Ledger-Enquirer, “and playing a part in the developmental imagination of children certainly serves our community in a new way.”
In addition to a younger target audience, these shows differ from the Springer Children’s Theatre in the following ways:
- They are shorter in length, typically around 30 minutes.
- They are more interactive with the audience, focusing on sensory experiences.
- All the actors are local teenagers from the Springer Theatre Academy, who also help create the original shows.
- “And the goals are slightly different,” Baker said. “My goal for Children’s Theatre is to create a world or stories where students can imagine a world different than their own. In Theatre for the Very Young, to me, it’s about interacting with the world that is in front of them.”
By the end of this season, the Springer Theatre for the Very Young will have produced seven shows in three years.
“We continue to sell out just about every performance,” Baker said.
What they learned
They learned how to better reach this age group, decreasing the capacity for each performance from 120 to 85 or 90 in the audience.
“Keeping the audience smaller creates a more intimate theatrical experience and allows more individual interaction with the actors,” Baker said.
They learned to target the shows to an even narrower age range. For example, they researched the physical and cognitive development of 2-3-year-olds to tailor their “Going on a Bear Hunt” performance last fall.
“We incorporated some of those elements such as sorting, counting, fine motor skills and perseverance into that play,” Baker said.
They learned to include some kind of interactive element every 3-5 minutes in each production to keep preschoolers engaged. That could be a sensory experience, talking back to the actors or allowing the audience to get up and participate in the show, Baker said.
“At the beginning of this series, we had not worked out the formula, and it felt a bit haphazard,” she said. “But now, it’s more regular because it works.”
Theatre for the Very Young started during the late 1970s in Europe and has been in the United States for about 15-20 years, said Baker, a theater director since 2002 and at the Springer since 2015. Major metro areas such as Atlanta, Chicago and New York offer Theatre for the Very Young, she said, “but the Springer is the only company that I know of that roots the productions in its education department.”
First-of-its-kind show
All of this learning has enabled the Springer Theatre for the Very Young to produce the first drama performance in a Columbus planetarium — and Baker doesn’t know of another one in the nation.
It’s called “Twinkle Twinkle Little-est Star” and brings the arts and sciences together at the Columbus State University Coca-Cola Space Science Center for a dream of a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) project.
“It has been a very easy, fruitful and creative partnership,” she said. “We will be sad when this process is over.”
This will be the last weekend for the “Twinkle” performances.
“We have drawn from Georgia Standards of Excellence from first and second grade to inform the content introduced in the show,” Baker said. “… It has been so rewarding to watch families explore the gallery at the Space Science Center — some of them for the first time — and apply what they learned in the show to their conversations afterward.
“That’s what theater should do: spawn conversation about content and character, empathy and exploration. Life doesn’t happen in silos, and education should not either. By involving audiences in this simple crossover of science, math, theater, music and movement, not only will they enjoy the information more, but they will remember it more fully. I am so happy the community of Columbus supports work like this.”
Before the 9:30 show Thursday morning, children traced constellations and made paper telescopes in the center’s gallery to use in the show. Wanja Ngugi, the center’s assistant director, beamed about the buzz of activity.
“This is a new demographic for us to engage, which we’re very happy about,” Ngugi said. “… We’re hopeful too that introducing science to these young kids and seeing real artifacts from space sort of reveals a different excitement for science. The whole point of the center it to do that, and this collaboration really helps the creative but also has the science elements in it as well, which is awesome.”
Samantha McCalla, 18, is among the dozen actors in this show. She has been in the Springer Theatre Academy for six years.
“These shows are some of the most fun to do because we get to build the show at the start of rehearsal,” said Samantha, a senior at Harris County High School. “When we get cast, we don’t really know the story yet because part of what we do is help create the story with our director and stage manager.”
Beyond teaching some science concepts about astronomy, the show has a message about humanity, Samantha said: “No matter who you are, if you’re new to an environment or if you’re different from other people, you’re still just as important as anyone else.”
IF YOU GO
What: Springer Theatre for the Very Young’s original production “Twinkle Twinkle Little-est Star”
Where: Columbus State University Coca-Cola Space Science Center, 701 Front Ave.
When: Remaining shows are:
- Jan. 24: 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m.
- Jan. 25: 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m.
- Jan. 26: 2 p.m.
Tickets: $15 for adults, $12 for children, $9 for Springer Theatre Academy students, at springeroperahouse.org
More info: 706-649-1470
