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Theatre for Early Years


Theatre for Early Years or TEY is a blanket term for theatrical events designed for audiences of pre-school children (aged under five or six years of age). TEY is considered to be a sub-category of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA). TEY is known in the USA as Theatre for the Very Young, or TVY.

It has been defined as “professional theatre led by adults performing for an audience of babies from months old to toddlers approximately one and a half to two years old accompanied by a parent or adult companion. Babies usually sit on their caregiver's lap or in a stroller, and watch a play - usually between 30 to 45 minutes long - designed especially for them”. In addition, performances for newborns, centring on bonding and attachment, and more participatory productions which invite children to enter the performance area for a time have become common. Even productions aimed at foetuses and expectant mothers have been created.

TEY arguably emerged in 1978 with the work of two London-based companies, Theatre Kit and Oily Cart. Chris Speyer, founder of radical children’s theatre company Theatre Kit, described the epiphany which led to the earliest experiments in TEY:

The move into under fives theatre was prompted by an occasion when we took [Speyer’s wife] Katherine [Ukleja]'s niece Annie, then aged three, to see a performance of one of our shows for children. Finding that various aspects of the show frightened Annie, Katherine decided that we should develop a form of theatre tailored to the needs, interests and concentration spans of under fives.

Several members of Theatre Kit went on to make Oily Cart's Exploding Punch & Judy in 1981, and Oily Cart have gone on to produce at least one show a year for under-fives, although it was not until 2002 that they began making work for the youngest audiences (six months to two years), with Jumpin' Beans. In 1987, the first performance for newborns, Joëlle Rouland’s L'oiseau serein [The Serene Bird], was presented in France, at the same time as Italy’s began their career with Acqua [Water]. La Baracca's founders, Roberto and Valeria Frabetti, were invited by staff at a Bologna nido [creche] to develop a workshop, and later a performance, for their children aged from 3 months to 5 years. This project, which became Acqua, has a claim to be the first non-English production staged for this age group (specifically, a target age of two to four years). Over the following 25 years, La Baracca has been at the forefront of research and creation of theatre experiences for ever younger audiences, with almost thirty different plays now produced for the under-fives. Notable theatre companies now producing TEY performances include Windmill Theatre and Polyglot Theatre (Australia), Toihaus Theater (Austria), Théâtre de la Guimbarde (Belgium), Teater My (Denmark), Polka Theatre and Theatre-Rites (England), Athénor and Compagnie ACTA (France), HELIOS Theater and Theater o.N. (Germany), Replay Theatre (Northern Ireland), Teater Fot (Norway), Teatr Atofri (Poland), Companhia de Música Teatral (Portugal), Ion Creangă (Romania), Starcatchers and Catherine Wheels Theatre Company (Scotland), Magnet Theatre (South Africa), La Casa Incierta (Spain), Ögonblicksteatern and Unga Klara (Sweden), Imagination Stage, Stages Theatre Company and Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis and Alliance Theatre for the Very Young (United States) and Theatr Iolo (Wales). There are also several organisations and campaigning groups whose influence has been key to the growth of TEY, especially ASSITEJ (the international organisation for the promotion and research of theatre for children and young people), the EU Programme of Culture 2000 Glitterbird Project and the Small Size network.


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