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Town Mouse & Country Mouse

Only drunks and children tell the truth, as the saying goes. And while you'll probably be put off performing in front of the former group, staging a play for the latter can be equally as catastrophic.

"The children are a more critical audience," says Yvie Magee of Reading theatre company FalconGrange Productions.

"Adults will remark in the car on the way home 'so-and-so wasn't that good', but children will tell it how it is, and if you don't capture their attention - you know about it.

"They're either wondering off, playing with their shoes or chatting to the person next to them."

Yvie Magee

And for the actors on stage, an disinterested audience this spells stomach-wrenching failure.

So what is the right way to stage a performance for our young 'uns?

"You need to treat them as if they're adults," says Yvie, who's putting on Aesop's famous fable of The Town Mouse & The Country Mouse during the Henley Fringe Festival.

"You need to put in a lot of energy into the performance and you need to treat them with respect and take it seriously yourself.

"Don't patronise them, don't take for granted that they'll just love anything."

With this wisdom in mind, Yvie is hoping to ensure an enthralled audience of three to seven-year-olds when The Town Mouse & The Country Mouse opens at the Kenton Theatre in Henley on Monday 20 to Saturday 25 July 2009.

"A lot of effort has been put into the set," she says, "we've got a great big yoghurt pot which has been made out of a bin and a massive Oxo cube.

Daniel Creasey

"Everything's giant because they're tiny mice, so it's an exciting visual set for the children when they come in and see it.

"Right up to seven-years-old the children totally believe that we're mice."

The story goes that when Town Mouse visits his cousin Country Mouse he soon realises that life in the country is very different.

Can he cope with the healthy food, fresh air and farm animals? When Country Mouse pays her cousin a return visit how will she cope with busy traffic, pollution and the dangers of the town?

Can the two mice overcome their prejudices and become friends?

These are thoughts and messages that Yvie says is also important to convey in a children's production.

"They're a very hard audience to capture and it's hard to find the right level of excitement and morals," says Yvie, who studied acting at Reading's听Rep College.

"You still want there to be entertainment but you also want to put a message across in the same way as adult theatre does.

"I've been in other children's theatre productions where the children go 'oh that wasn't very good', or 'I could've done that'. So you've got to find something that really transports them."

The theatre performance needn't shy away from wordy scripts, as long as they're backed up by actions on stage.

"Children have heard a lot of language and if they don't understand something they'll ask about it later, you can be sure of that," says Yvie.

"'Piece de resistance is one' - it's something to learn if they pick up on it."

Plays for children should also be fairly fast-paced to give them something new to watch, and should not exceed an hour, based on research that shows a child's attention span to be around 45 minutes.

It's important to bear in mind that the world of theatre can be new and a little intimidating to children, so it's a good idea to choose a play or a story that they're familiar with.

"It's like going to a music concert, I personally like to have heard all the songs already".

The Town Mouse & The Country Mouse is on at the Kenton Theatre in Henley-on-Thames for the Henley Fringe Festival 2009.

Dates are Monday 20 July to Saturday 25 July 2009. Show times are 2pm and 4pm.

Find out more about FalconGrange Productions here:

Find out more about the Henley Fringe Festival here: