Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

‘There is only good theatre and bad theatre, it doesn’t matter whether the target audience is children or not,’ says actor Louis Lovett, the new resident Theatre Maker at The Ark

CHILDREN’S theatre is a serious business in Ireland these days, and since Ireland’s first dedicated children’s cultural centre opened in 1995, the Ark has been leading the way. Companies such as TEAM Theatre and Graffiti create theatre experiences with an expressly educational remit. Various regional youth theatres that sprang up across the country since the mid-1970s fostered youth participation in the theatre. The annual pantomime season, which now extends from November to February, provides ample commercial children’s entertainment. There are now several dedicated theatre festivals for children in Ireland (Galway’s Barboró and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown’s Flip Flop among others), while the Dublin Theatre Festival has absorbed visiting international children’s shows into their programming strand.