Space to Imagine: The Use of Unconventional Theatre Space in the Engagement of 4-9 Year Olds

Abstract

Studies into Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) have been ongoing since the rise in the form in the 1960s. Research into this area has highlighted the developmental benefits of a young person engaging their imagination through theatre. Imaginative engagement can generate key developments in collaboration, empathy, problem solving skills and social competence. Theatre has been proven as a tool that helps a young person access their imagination. However, theatre institutions, and the buildings they are housed in, can be economically or socially excluding to many members of the communities they are there to serve. Partly due to issues of exclusion, practitioners have moved performances to site-specific, immersive and unconventional spaces to reach new audiences. Although this trend has included TYA practice, there has been very limited research into the effects of engaging a young spectator’s imagination within unconventional theatre spaces. As Arts Council England in the 2020-2030 strategy Let’s Create looks to increase engagement with all communities, and the Covid-19 pandemic has been shutting down theatre venues, producing work for unconventional space beyond theatre buildings has become vital for artists to reach the communities they serve (Sherman 2020; Micklem et al. 2021). This research-practice thesis looks to analyse the impact of using unconventional space in the imaginative engagement of young audiences aged 4-9 years old. This practice-as-research thesis will analyse three different production sites: mobile theatre, digital space and back-alleys. It will analyse the full creative process, including understanding how practitioner decisions into use of space affect imaginative engagement. It will argue that these unconventional spaces could become important sites for young people to access theatre, and sites for enabling their imaginative engagement. The performance spaces explored here have the potential to become a potent part of the TYA ecosystem as long as the practitioners who are generating work understand how these spaces operate to engage young people’s imagination.