THE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT with Shane Cortese
Loving the kids stuff
Hi again, Now like many of you reading this, I have the absolute pleasure of being a parent to a toddler with a vivid imagination, opinions, interesting dress sense and a power of energy!
Kees loves role-playing, the Wiggles, Thomas, Mickey Mouse Club house and, thankfully a by-product of DNA, live theatre.
We are incredibly lucky on the Shore to have one of the countries best children’s Theatre Companies producing directly out of the Bruce mason Centre.
I met up with Sarah Somerville, founder and director of Phineas Frog Productions for a chat and a catch up. Now Sarah and I actually go back quite a while, as in a previous incarnation, I married her, slowly poisoned her, convinced her she was mentally unstable and had her committed to a mental asylum. Not in real life of course, Sarah drew the short straw and as Emily Bredican had the unfortunate job of marrying the mad and psychotic Dominic (played by yours truly on Shortland Street – where they get these storylines from is another article all together!). However, despite the on screen relationship, Sarah and I got on incredibly well off-screen and I’ve seen many of her children’s shows over the years
Sarah created Phineas Phrog productions back in 2002 and debuted at the Bruce Mason Centre with the Frog Prince. Now it was obvious then about her artistic and business acumen as The Frog Prince immediately broke the Bruce’s box office record for most sales in a day. In fact, the relationship between Sarah’s company and the Bruce mason centre is now into its 8th year where she has created and presented over 26 productions. Over a school holiday period the company will perform 10-12 shows with an average audience attendance of 3500-4000 excited theatre-goers.
Explaining the concept of the productions, she said they turn traditional fairy tales upside down in highly original re-telling. The shows guarantee to get young toes tapping, and spines tingling. Her productions combine all the wonderful elements of live story telling with the comic high jinks of traditional pantomime. I have had personal experience of traditional panto in the UK where it is many children’s first taste of live theatre and a fantastic introduction to the arts.
Now what makes Phineas Phrog different to many other producers of Children’s theatre is their commitment to audience participation.
Sarah firmly believes children should be an intricate part of the performance. She always does meets and greets after the performance so children can ask questions, get high fives, character autographs or just have a chat.
I’ve been a very interested observer of Sarah’s company at work, encouraging our children’s imagination, empowering them but most importantly investing in our future theatre-goers. Next school holidays make sure you get a ticket to one of their shows and get a taste first hand of the magical effect live theatre has on our kids.
See you at the Show!
Shane Cortese
shane@channelmag.co.nz
Fisherman or Gardener?
