Actors generally can depend on basic politeness from their audiences. Not so in children's theatre, says Toby Mitchell of London-based Tall Stories.
'When children are with you, they are 100 per cent with you. When they're against you, it's a different story,' he says. 'If adults don't like a show, they might say "that was interesting" at the end. But a child will say, probably during the performance, that he wants to go home.'
Tall Stories and other enduring theatre companies rarely have such problems, but it does demonstrate the difficulties of staging compelling theatre for the youngest age groups.
Imagination
Writers, performers and educators all agree that good theatre can still be a magical, life-enhancing experience for today's sophisticated, computer-literate generation.
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