”Small size days” är alltså inte en rea för småväxta, utan en europeisk satsning på scenkonst för de minsta. Denna gång talas det om 0-6 år, men man får vara glad för att, yes!, nu är 0-åringarna med på teatertåget. Det har varit litet trögt, och det har funnits pedagoger som stretat emot, men här i Sverige har vi ju sett strålande exempel sedan länge.
Alls inte bara Suzanne Ostens Babydrama, utan – för att ta ett exempel- Ah hello bebis av Minna Krook – dans av finaste slag. Eller Teater Tre och deras Klä på- Klä av. Här är det Italien som talar, och då tänker man ju på tvåårs-teater hos Dockteatern Tittut med input från italienska skuggspelsmästaren Fabrizio Montecchi. Bara läs och njut: ”Konst handlar inte om ålder, utan om nyfikenhet!” EU stöttar, toppen!
(Internationella Assitej skickade ut detta, och gärna skickar jag vidare!)
Roberto -Frabetti
The arts are not a matter of age but of curiosity.
Small size days bring the very youngest children and their families, carers and stakeholders together in recognising that the arts are significant and valued in our lives, from birth onwards.
At the end of January (January 30th – February 1st), the first edition of Small size days will take place – three days dedicated to shows, workshops and other activities for children from 1 to 6 years aimed at promoting performing arts for early years.
This event is promoted by Small size Network and supported by the European Commission through ”Small size, Performing Arts for Early Years” cooperation project.
To establish artistic relationships and connections with early years offers the opportunity to go deeper into research, allowing to open innumerable windows into the different emotional and communicative steps that children go through during their growth. It is a large set of observations and suggestions that proved extremely useful for interpreting the behaviours and reactions of older children – in particular, of teenagers – providing valuable instruments, in terms both of sensibility and rationality, for understanding the individual and social masks that kids create and wear.
Every time I meet very young children, I am astonished. And this astonishment makes me feel the strong desire to be in contact with them. Children react unpredictably, and, above all, they are uncatchable, and this happens mostly because we cannot use verbal communication with them. To be in contact with a little child means, for an actor, to find a balance between talking and listening, trying to privilege the latter.
We should look for the pleasure to listen inside of us, listen with all our senses and communicate this pleasure to the children. Listening is complex: it means to pay attention to what is not said, to the hidden, the evoked… It is the attention to the originality of every sign.
And very young ones talk with their eyes and silence. Sometimes the children’s silent eyes open doors to hidden worlds. Most of the times we are not able to see them, and we lose a good chance to get astonished.
From zero to six, children are on a ”spinning journey” acquiring, continuously and rapidly, new knowledge and perception abilities. This is the age when children form their personality.
This is the phase in which children absorb billions of pieces of information and the systems to process them. They begin to understand what language is, and to understand that it is necessary. I think there is nothing more interesting in a human being than the development in the use of language. From zero to three years of age, children explore the amazing gift of language, trying to understand how to use it. At the same time, they are trying to understand the surrounding world, to distinguish between right or wrong, to tell what is good and what is bad, true or false.
Maybe they do not understand, or maybe they do.
How, what and how much a baby can ”understand” is another amazing mystery.
If imagining, expressing and creating are ancient and deeply human needs, art is the highest and most complete instrument through which these needs can be responded to. That is why art has to be as close to young children as possible in a time when they are collecting and selecting all the elements that will form their personality. Because all children are citizens who, starting from their earliest years, have the right to fully experience and be involved in the physical and mental spaces that art and culture can offer them, and to share them with the adults: parents, teachers and artists.
Participation in the Small size days is not mandatory for the members of the Network and is open to theatres all over the world that might be willing to take part in it. We hope that over these three days, in many different cities (from Helsinki to Madrid, from London to Salzburg, from Bucharest to Mexico City…), many activities will be organised and held simultaneously, thus creating a big, shared and unique World Event.
Roberto Frabetti,
Director La Baracca-Testoni Ragazzi (Bologna)
Member of the Executive committee
For info: www.smallsize.org
info@smallsize.org