Chris Rowbury in 'A Child's Play' (1987)
A Child’s Play is a comic, sharp and imaginative look at the relationship between children and adults. Four bizarre and playful characters take us through a series of episodes…the parent and child are asked to leave the cinema…Mr Bottom and Miss Big Jobs discuss children….the ballet on wheels…and dogs.
These four child-adults are in control and allowed to communicate the vital information necessary for survival. Words, movement, sound and design mirror the constant exploration and inventiveness of children, while putting forward a sophisticated and sharp edged message about child oppression.
Touring programme notes
Devised and Directed by Jacky Lansley; sound and Music by Philip Jeck; design by Moggie Douglas; performed by Sally Cranfield, Steinvor Palsson, Chris Rowbury, Jacky Lansley.
“Another dance play that I made during this period was A Child Play which came out of my experience of becoming a mother and my anger and shock at the social invisibility of both children and their carers, of being told to change my daughter’s nappy somewhere else – or take her out of public places in case she made a noise. It felt like people in the UK (like others, I had very different experiences elsewhere) were not attuned to the needs of children and I realised that I too had been guilty of marginalising women with children prior to becoming a parent myself. The piece was performed by a quartet of adults, including myself, playing at being children in dressing-up clothes. It was funny, dark and poignant; its structure was episodic and worked through ideas about ritualised games of children, their private worlds and their neglect by adults.”
Description from Choreographies, Tracing the Materials of an Ephemeral Art Form by Jacky Lansley, published by Intellect Books, 2017.
“Restaurants, cinemas, offices, supermarkets, even Harrods auction rooms, are no places for children. In England restaurants mentioned in the Good Food guide boldly advise parents to leave ‘Under-fourteens and dogs at home’; the object in doing so is to increase their patronage by vaunting their child-free condition. The placing of children in the same category as dogs is risqué, but no-one will object.”
Germaine Greer – ‘Sex and Destiny: the politics of human fertility’.