Young People and Live Theatre - Andy Reeves

Young people aren't interested in live theatre. Indeed, what's the point of it these days? With TV, iPods, iPhones, Playstations, computers, DVDs and downloads, there's simply no need for it. The theatre used to be a place where people went to be told stories but there's more intensity, plot twists, madness and intrigue in a couple of  episodes of Eastenders than in all of Shakespeare's tragedies put together. Isn't there? Why bother looking elsewhere when instant thrills are at your fingertips? No, theatre's finished. Young people tell stories virtually now, and if not then they prefer different mediums to communicate- MCing, DJing, anything urban... right?

Except...

The more virtual everything becomes, the more powerful, the more surprising the live nature of theatre becomes. We know, from our work with children and young people of all ages, that the vast majority of them have never been near a theatre. But when we bring our theatre- Inclusive, participatory, unexpected - to them, we see how they react. We see excitement, engagement, amusement, intrigue, even wonder. Old, old, simple ideas - characters that the audience can actually talk to, or who appear out of the audience, or even out of an unlikely door, or one actor playing two roles, or hotseating - retain their power and enchantment simply because the children do not expect them. They have no frame of reference - the telly is the telly, the computer screen is a screen, and interactivity must be limited. Theatre is live. It’s about people. And people talk to each other. Interest in that will only die when our tongues and ears wither away.

It might be that building based theatre, where you sit in rows to watch silently and pay astronomical prices for the pleasure, is indeed on the way out. I desperately hope not, not least because the (traditional) theatre remains one of the few places where you have to follow a story right through to the end, where it can start as one thing and evolve into another, keep you guessing, without you switching off when you decide after 12 seconds it’s not what you thought it was. But if we can find ways to continue to bring stories to people, stories they can interact with and take part in and decide the ending of, then there will always be a place for that theatre. The responses that children have to vibrant, original, involving live work make this clear. The very fact that the live experience is rare to them makes it their own discovery. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the very thing that threatens theatre, the technology that puts worlds at your fingertips, could in fact help ensure its survival?