Video
Polyglot Theatre’s Bees
Polyglot Theatre’s Paper Planet
Polyglot Theatre’s Artistic Overview
View “We Built This City“, “ANTS“, “Boats“, “Pram People“
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April 4 - 13, 2025 |
Lincoln Center When the World Turns - North American Premiere |
New York, NY |
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Tue & Wed, May 13 - 14, 2025 |
Walton Arts Center BEES |
Fayetteville, AR |
Please check back soon for newly announced tour dates!
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“For small children it’s the best playground ever… The playfulness and curiosity of the kids was palpable and irresistible.”
–Alison Croggon, Witness Performance (AUS), on Cerita Anak (Child’s Story)
full article
“It is a gentle, fun and brilliantly executed artwork. Fantastic to watch or participate, Tangle is a masterpiece in art making for young people.”
–Vernon Guest, Sydney Festival (AUS), on Tangle
“The veteran children’s troupe are masters of interactive play.”
–Paola Totaro, The Age, UK
full article
Bees is a joyful interactive work in which children are welcomed into a world of community, communication, wonder and imagination.
Explore a buzzing, humming hive of activity, as three human-sized Bees busy themselves in the creation of a community alongside children who transform into bees as they play. The bees are fascinating, strange and beautiful, traversing invisible pathways and mapping delicate patterns across the performance space.
Inspired by the mysterious life and work of bees, this re-imagining of public space involves the slow uncovering of an intricate unseen world. Children are immersed in the sounds, shapes and scents of the bee world, from their familiar buzz to honeycomb houses. Bees uses ritual, non-verbal communication and the secret world of bee movement to provide a range of access points for children to participate.
Ants is an interactive performance which brings children together to explore the landscape around them.
Ants as big as humans work together intently, collecting and placing hundreds of giant bread crumbs, and children are irresistibly drawn closer to find out how they can join in. Gradually a world of meaning unfolds, with children’s movement making lines and patterns, transforming public space and disrupting the everyday. Children choose how they interact with the big insects, becoming Ant-like creatures themselves and taking part in their world. This is an enchanting and unusual experience that everyone can enjoy at their own pace.
A wonderland of a construction site that brings whole communities together to think big and build the city shapes of their dreams.
Faced with thousands and thousands of cardboard boxes in a big, open space, children and families follow their impulses and create unique structures inspired by their relationship to their city. Polyglot artists roam the site as the Builders, engaging with kids constructing towering skyscrapers, winding tunnels and sprawling estates.
We Built This City sees children as the experts and adults enthusiastically following their lead. The whole experience is accompanied by a DJ spinning funky music, and at the very end of the season, the city is shaken and stomped to the ground, in a shared moment of glorious destruction.
Boats engages children and their families in accessible play that re-imagines familiar space into something wild, unpredictable and fun.
You will find Boats in the strangest of places – on dry land! Children and their families use their imaginations and small colourful boats to go on exciting, sea-faring adventures across the wide-open oceans of town squares and park lawns. There are islands to visit, stranded crew members to rescue, castaways and seagulls. There are times you might need to dodge sharks and steer through choppy water to safety.
Boats is an energetic experience that can absorb children from 10 minutes to hours and hours. Some may wish to rock in calm waters and tell adventure stories; others may wish to zoom around and explore. Children choose how they interact with the Harbourmaster, the crew and the landscape, making this a fun, shared family time that everyone can enjoy.
Pram People is a moment in time for children who ride in prams (known as strollers in North America), and the adults who push them. A celebration of community, Pram People rolls out the red carpet for every stroller, big or small.
Stroller users assemble en masse, following curious and wonderful prompts through headphones, secret messages and even other participants. Performers delight and intrigue, adding to the fun as families weave amongst and around each other.
Pram People offers a playful and welcoming approach to community participation through joyful movement and connection, using the most universal of vehicles – the stroller. Hilarious, serious and surprisingly moving, this immersive, colorful spectacle reclaims the stroller as an asset to public space and society as a whole.
Paper Planet is a universally accessible experience that families find utterly captivating.
Children and families are invited into a forest of tall cardboard trees and after exploring the space, they add to this strange and delicate planet using only paper, tape and their imaginations. Theatre and play merge in this magical place, as creatures, plants, costumes, characters, stories and adventures spring to life.
Paper Planet grows as more families visit, and every session is truly unique as imaginations go wild. Children choose how they interact with the performers and with other children; some children find themselves absorbed in quiet making, and others prefer to play and explore.
Paper Planet is child-led, deeply involving and highly sensory, and sure to delight the whole family.
A collaboration between Polyglot Theatre (AUS) and Oily Cart (UK)
When we are still we can feel the world turning.
You are invited to come on an adventure that will take you into the heart of a wondrous landscape, to become part of a wild place of the senses. Your family can see, hear, touch and smell this strange, rustling, breathing world as it reveals itself. Starting in your own home, this adventure will be one you remember, full of surprise and wonder.
In a landscape of living foliage, through sound, light, scents and shadows, When the World Turns playfully explores our connection with each other and with the world. In this place humans are equal parts of a new, inclusive ecology.
“We felt very special and looked after the whole time, felt comfortable and… like the experience was just for us.” Parent
Bios
At Polyglot the child is central. We seek a world where all children are powerful: artistically, socially and culturally.
Polyglot Theatre is a world-renowned contemporary theatre company based in Melbourne/Naarm, Australia, making exceptional arts experiences for children and families. Their unique brand of theatre encompasses a wide variety of forms and is shared with audiences everywhere, from the world’s most prestigious theatres to the football grounds of regional Australia.
Polyglot’s artistic and philosophical approach of child-centred practice has earned their strong reputation at home and abroad as a leader in the theatre for young audiences (TYA) sector, celebrated for creating distinctive, participatory and inclusive works that are playful and conceptually rigorous. Access is central to Polyglot’s work, driven by the right of all children to experience growth and resilience through creative play and to be captivated by the arts.
Downloads & Links
Website: Polyglot Theatre
