An Irishwoman's Diary

They don't clap when they should, they don't demand encores, they'll never let you think you might have brought the house down. With audiences like these, humour, flair and creativity are essential, while unconditional self-belief has to be a prerequisite for a 21st-century clown.

If the younger ticket-holders can be challenging, their parents can be no better. There's that perfectly formed, immaculately dressed young group in the second row. Two older siblings seem attentive, but their mother is wrestling with a restless four-year old, while her toddler picks chewing gum off the floor. Her husband lolls uncontrollably close to the aisle. He's not laughing. Snoring at decibels, he might be mistaken for one of the cast.

"It's very difficult to have a big ego when you work in children's theatre - as soon as you puff yourself up, the next show you have will have a kid in the audience who brings you right back down to earth," says Scottish puppeteer Shona Reppe, who returned to Galway last month for this year's Baboró International Children's Festival. In her packing case was her "tartan world where bagpipe music whistles through the trees" - her new interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, to mark the writer's bicentenary.

Reppe, a former set, prop and costume designer, has redefined the concept of "glove" puppetry since she took to the stage herself. As she explained in a recent interview with a Canadian publication, she doesn't like to spoonfeed her charges. She prefers to make her young audiences work as she creates "digital" images (literally), stretching seams as she roots around in drawers and boxes for fantastical tiny beings. Together with Tom Chapin, several Danish productions and the German Theatre Handgemenge's Lords of the Railway, Reppe was among the star turns at this year's Baboró - lovingly assembled by Lali Morris. Careful programming or pure happenstance ensured that eyebrow acrobatics by Graffitti Classics double bassist Cathal Ó Dúill at the festival opening should be matched towards the end of the week by Mary Curran's garden hose.

Curran rolled out a section of her garden implement to give young participants some idea of the length of a French horn. She also played on the same rubber tubing, accompanied by harpist Ann Jones, with some aplomb, while leading games and eliciting giggles as part of the Adventures in Music programme.

Initiated last year by a group of Galway parents, Adventures in Music is devoted to bringing affordable live music to young audiences.

Its next gig, with traditional musicians Ritchie Byrne, Joe Skelton and friends, takes place in St Patrick's Hall, Galway, on November 13th at 2pm.

Out the road west, Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin has been busy with his own music in Spiddal, Co Galway. The Mayo-born broadcaster and composer has been writing songs in Irish and English since he was 16 years old, and has no intention of stopping now.

Last year, an album he brought out on his Futa Fata label, Ceol na Mara (Songs of the Sea), proved to be so popular that he has produced another.

This time it comes with a book, however, by Mac Dhonnagáin and John Ryan, with wonderful illustrations of the rhymes and songs by award-winning company Cartoon Saloon. Artists Roxanne Burchartz, Tomm Moore, Barry Reynolds, Ross Stewart, Nora Twomey and Paul Young "unleashed" their creative best to animate the series of 30 rhymes, games and stories for "children and former children" - if such beings do exist.

Entitled Gugalaí Gug, the album comprises 30 tracks about weird and wonderful characters such as Máirtín, who has a wont for walking out in the dead of night, especially, if it's raining; a nervous hen who frets about location, location, location for her nest; and "slubar, slabar, slubar", an Irish version of pussy in the well.

There's a "give me five" equivalent, entitled Láimhín Marbh, about a man with clean socks who tries to hit you in the face; a dream about living on a small boat and harvesting carrageen moss; the story of a céilí dancer who has his feathered cap stolen by the fairies of Bó Bhrocháin; and a testing tongue twister, which has to be said all of nine times without once drawing a breath.

For Mac Dhonnagáin, it represents a very special collaboration, drawing on voices from two primary schools - Scoil an Chnoic in Leitir Meallain, which had nine pupils on its rollbook at the time of recording, and Conamara's largest primary, Scoil Sailearna, in Inverin. Among the 40 other singers, rhymers and lilters involved were actor Tom Sáilí Ó Flaithearta, who is better known as elderly bachelor Coilín in TG4's soap, Ros na Rún; singer and Raidío na Gaeltachta broadcaster Caitlín Ní Chualáin; and three generations of one community, ranging from four years of age to 70 "agus a something".

Gugalaí Gug is suitable for four to 10-year-olds (officially) and was supported by Bord na Leabhar Gaeilge and Ealáin na Gaeltachta. It is available in all good music and bookshops, or direct from website www.futafata.com, at €19.99 agus postage.