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Polyglot Theatre is Australia’s leading creator of experiential, interactive and installation theatre for children aged up to 12 years. Our artists view children as genuine collaborators, facilitating a professionally-led artistic process to create imagined worlds where audiences actively participate in performance through touch, play and encounter. At Polyglot, theatre is child’s play.

Polyglot is a touring company, playing locally, nationally and internationally, creating challenging work which actively fosters audience connection. Our work has remarkable longevity and popularity, reaching over 60,000 children annually through extensive touring.

In 1978 Polyglot Puppet Theatre was formed to promote understanding between cultures, bringing multi-language puppetry performance to theatres and schools for the children of Victoria, Australia. Since the year 2000 the company has greatly expanded its focus. Driven by a desire to reach a broader audience, Polyglot now creates performance and events for the street and festivals, interactive events for families, large scale theatre performances and community participation performance, as well as remaining loyal to schools through shows and workshops.

Polyglot is one of the most respected puppetry theatre companies in Australia, reaching thousands of children and making shows that resonate in the memories of our audiences. Through experimentation, innovation and consistent quality, Polyglot keeps our growing audience excited about what may lie ahead.

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Sue Giles Biography

Since Sue Giles was appointed Artistic Director of Polyglot in 2000, she has directed, written or devised ten works which have toured nationally and internationally. Her conceptual work We Built This City has toured continually for ten years including to the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Kennedy Center Washington, Act3 Festival Singapore and through England, Ireland and Scotland. Other productions under Giles' direction include, The Big Game (Melbourne International Arts Festival, Singapore Arts Festival), Check Out! (Melbourne International Comedy Festival, National Theatre of Korea, Hong Kong International Arts Carnival, winner Excellent Production Award at Shanghai International Children's Theatre Festival) Headhunter (UNIMA international puppetry festival, ASSITEJ international festival for young people, Drama Victoria Award winner), Muckheap (Esplanade Theatres, Singapore) Baggy Pants and the community spectacular High Rise.

Prior to working at Polyglot, Sue was a freelance director, writer and performer, working with her own company Shaken and Suspicious and other companies including Black Hole, Back To Back Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, Arena Theatre and Terrapin Puppet Theatre. She has written for ABC radio and episodes of Lift Off for the Children’s Television Foundation. Sue has directed over 30 productions and written 21 produced plays.

In 2003, she was the Australian representative at the International Director’s Forum hosted by ASSITEJ Germany. In 2004 she was the Victorian Representative on the National Board of YPAA (Young People and the Arts, Australia) and from 2008-9 she was on the steering committee of the national puppetry organization UNIMA. In 2009, Sue was the Puppetry Director of the Australian production of the Broadway musical, Avenue Q.

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Repertory

We Built This City

We Built This City is an interactive play space for families which celebrates absolute simplicity and the power of children’s imaginations. A giant public construction site, We Built This City uses thousands and thousands of cardboard boxes and the energy and ingenuity of kids and families to build a magnificent imagined city in one day. Buildings go up, are pulled down, redesigned, extended, walked through and reconstructed and the participants make tunnels, archways, towers and labyrinths. At the end of the event, Polyglot Theatre and the participants ritualistically build a final cityscape, using every box in the space. Then all involved join in trampling the city down into a gloriously chaotic heap of cardboard rubble.

Live music or a DJ underscores the action as participants are guided by performers in the roles of construction workers who facilitate free play, perform as hilarious characters and sometimes set tasks that bring people together to build in unity. We Built This City simultaneously places children in the role of performer, creator, audience and architect. It is not a play… it is play.

We Built This City is Polyglot’s most enduring work, touring continuously since its 2001 premiere. Over 30,000 children have participated in its many seasons, which include the Kennedy Center in Washington, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Awesome Festival Perth, Sydney Opera House, Esplanade Theatre Singapore, and Act3 Children’s Festival, always with critical and popular acclaim.

Tangle

Tangle is a huge, messy, fun, interactive elastic weaving event created live by children and their families. Imagine 25 poles of various heights and that each child is given a colored ball of elastic. Like a giant peg board, children and families create a landscape together, tangling and weaving colored elastic through giant poles. Imagine a shared squiggly line drawing in three dimensions, creating a stretchy bouncy playground, fuelled by live music and culminating in a big dance party. Tangle is a giant experiment where children take control and create a giant abstract tangled artwork which everyone owns. It’s part mass visual arts installation, part performance, part play ground, part dance party and all chaos.

Muckheap

Funny, physical and fantastically messy, Muckheap is a tale of two people trying to clean out their house for their big move. In the process of packing and sorting they find all their hoarded junk too interesting, useful or too full of memories to throw away.

As a way of coping, the characters throw themselves into a story, made up on the spot and Illustrated with whatever comes to hand. What emerges is Jacky and the Beanstalk - with a twist that parallels their own situation.

Slipping from throwing out junk to creating characters with consummate ease, this show displays the awesome power of the puppeteer. It invites children to become their own story makers and encourages imaginative play through whatever you have at hand.

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