Artworks Feature: Danish Children's Theatre

Sunday 10 July 2011 11:05AM (view full episode)

On this week's Artworks Feature, a trip to Denmark, the spiritual home of Children's Theatre.

This country of only 5 million people supports almost 150 theatre companies devoted to children. It has the World's largest Children's Theatre Festival. And in this land of princes and princesses, one actress is affectionately referred to as the Queen of Children's Theatre. Her name is Bodil Alling.

So Michael Shirrefs went to Copenhagen, in search of the Queen, and on the way he stopped off at a café to find out why the Danes have such a strong focus on children.

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Amanda Smith: This is Artworks, and a feature that takes you to Denmark, the land of Hans Christian Andersen, and the spiritual home of children's theatre.

This country of only around 5 million people supports 150 theatre companies for children. How about that! And Denmark has the world's largest Children's Theatre Festival. In this land of princes and princesses, one actress is known as the Queen of children's theatre. Her name is Bodil Alling.

When Michael Shirrefs was in Copenhagen, he went in search of the Queen, but on the way stopped off at a café, not for a coffee but to find out why the Danes have such a strong focus on children.

Anne Middelboe Christensen: A general Danish and Nordic way of looking upon kids is that children are a species of their own right, they are not just little grownups who are waiting to become big and real grownups, they are children, and that they should be able to meet the arts just because it could be challenging for them, not because they should learn something from it, not because it should teach them to behave in a certain way but simply because all kinds of aesthetic expressions are necessary for human beings, and kids do take in art in a different way than grownups. So I think that basic view upon children and their need for arts is very important.

Michael Shirrefs: This is the Danish writer and arts critic Anne Middelboe Christensen.

Anne Middelboe Christensen: And because the children's theatre in Denmark already started in the 1960s with groups of peace, love and harmony people, left-wing fanatics who drive in cars along the countryside and stop out at any school and play performances about peace, that was the fundament. But it means that today, 50 years after, we have artists with very big experience of how you can reach kids and how you can get into dialogue with kids on the kids' terms, not just on your own terms. And that experience is very important.

Michael Shirrefs: Actor and director Dirck Backer is a co-founder of one of these many small troupes travelling around the countryside and surviving on the smell of an oily rag.

Dirck Backer: The group is called Teatret Patrasket, which is a kind of funny name in Swedish for touring people, the kind of people that you have to take in your laundry when they come.

Michael Shirrefs: Sort of like gypsies.

Dirck Backer: Yes, something like this. There was an old man...when we were very young as a company there was an old man who was very angry with us, we had parked our van on his part of the yard, and he was shouting to us that we were 'damned patrask!', so we ended up with this being the name of our theatre.

Michael Shirrefs: I love it that you've taken a Swedish name.

Dirck Backer: Yes, but sometimes it's a problem because even in Denmark we have to translate our name, which can sometime be a little...but it's okay.

Michael Shirrefs: One of the things that in Australia we have, and it seems it's an Anglo tradition of tying children's theatre in with education as a way of almost giving it validity, legitimising it. That's not the case in Denmark, is it.

Dirck Backer: No, I think in Denmark...I mean, it's not that we have not had this link to the educational system as we play in the schools as well, and we also have to legitimise our art, as all artists have, but for some reason it has been quite a strong attitude that the art should be art for its own purpose. It's not only in Denmark though that there has been this but it's true that when we come to the English-speaking countries there's a stronger tradition of linking theatre and education together.

Michael Shirrefs: As if the children's theatre would fall apart by itself, would not be substantial enough by itself.

Dirck Backer: Yes, maybe it's also the whole concept that you have to raise children and you have to tell what to do and not to do, which is maybe not as strong also in Denmark.

Michael Shirrefs: So, a much more didactic or moralising form of theatre. However, you do have very strong support from the school system because a lot of children's theatre gets performed in schools, and schools derive official benefit from that, they get a subsidy for that, don't they.

Dirck Backer: That's true, and that has been like that for many years, it's been a central part of the cultural policy that we have been benefiting from from state, is that every time a school or an institution buys a children's theatre piece then they get 50% refunded from the state, which makes it possible for us to come to the school and which makes it possible for the school to pay for our theatre.

Michael Shirrefs: Even with the subsidies, you as a collective group of theatre companies survive on almost nothing really.

Dirck Backer: Yes, that's true. Actually I think when you are working with children's theatre you are doing it from the heart because you don't do it for the money, and you have to fight all the time to get the economical thing to work, and so you have to do it from the heart, absolutely.

Michael Shirrefs: The sort of ground that children's theatre has made up would surely have produced a very large generation of children who value it. I would imagine that would give you certain security, certain guarantee from those children that become parents who understand that this is an inseparable part of growing up.

Dirck Backer: Yes, I also think that our generation of parents are valuing our children's lives a lot. In Denmark it's like that. We speak about 'curling parents', that we are moving our brushes in front of our children. So I think very many parents are wanting their children to have good culture, I think so. But of course as it is children's theatre is in competition with all the other cultural products of our time, which is very much nowadays, and that's what we have to face all the time. So we have also to stick to the strength of the theatre which is that you see the live performing and you have the possibility of open dialogue with your audience, which is the strength of theatre compared to other art forms.

Michael Shirrefs: So, with Dirck Backer's words in my ears, I head off in search of the Danish Queen.

[Music: Danish anthem]

No, no, not that Queen, I mean the Queen of Danish children's theatre, Bodil Alling. Bodil has been with the same theatre company, Teatret Gruppe Tredive Otte, or Theatre Group 38, for the past 30 years. And while she does perform for adults, her passion is for children's theatre. But not all children are the same.

Bodil Alling: It's very difficult to talk about children as a certain group of people. They are very, very different. Even children six years old is not a group, they are very, very different. And that's the same when you talk about adults; you would never say that this is the same group of adults who understands and experience in the same way. And I think very often you see that when you talk about children it's like they are one group of certain people, and I think they are not. So I think it's the way of talking to and with your audience is to start by realising that you never know who they are, you can never guess who gets in. So you have to find a way of talking to the people who enter. So for me it is very important when I tell stories and when I do performances that you have the space where you can really watch and see and understand where are we now, who is there, who am I, who are you. And I hate when I leave the theatre and the audience leaves and I understand...I don't know what happened, we never met. They watch me and I watch them. It's very important to me.

Michael Shirrefs: You're really describing the same dynamics as a conversation, and this is a function of children's theatre, particularly in Denmark, that idea of eye level, that you are making contact with your audience.

Bodil Alling: Yes, and then there is a very important thing because I also want them to go into a magic room, and you see, that is where it is very difficult work to do because I want them to be in the same room or the same space, but my space is magical, strange things happen here, you never know. You never know when is it theatre and when is it just real. And I work very much on with trying to make that mix so that, oh, now it's just you and me and we talk, and then I change the room, and then I hope that you think, well, this is completely strange and magic but I'm still a part of it. I think it's always a little phoney to explain because when it comes to it, it's very, very simple, and I think it's very difficult to explain. When time is running in the theatre you have to have the idea that this is the most important story and time in the world right now. In 45 minutes we leave it and the whole world is going on and everything else is very important, but in this 45 minutes, this is the centre of the world.

Michael Shirrefs: You're listening to Artworks on ABC Radio National, I'm Michael Shirrefs, in Copenhagen with actor Bodil Alling, an institution in Danish children's theatre.

And in the tradition of another great Dane, Hans Christian Andersen, Bodil's not about to sugar-coat her stories (unless of course it's the tale of Hansel and Gretel). Because for Bodil Alling it's the storyteller's role to sometimes go down some dark roads, but, as she says, with children, you must have strong arms to catch your audience.

Bodil Alling: For example I'm doing The Little Matchgirl, you know, it's the saddest story in the world, and I like it to be. I don't want to make another end of that fairytale where it is not so sad as it is. It is such a sad story, but it's also if you take a very good extra look at that fairytale, it's so full of hope that the hope in the story is even bigger than the sadness. I don't know if you remember the fairytale but you know about the girl who is sent away from home, she is supposed to sell matches. How can you earn anything from selling matches? And it's so cold and there is no one there who sees her, who hears her, her parents...she can't go home if nobody buys her matches, and they don't, so she can't go home. This is the saddest, most cruel in the world.

And then, in the middle of all of that you could light a match and you can imagine; what if there was a wonderful goose to eat? What if there was warmth in here? What if my grandmother suddenly was here? And the world changed. And even though she dies in the end of this fairytale, her imagination has been so strong and beautiful that she is even warm when she dies from the cold. And for us who listen to the story, we know that even though we can imagine, we can find some way somewhere...I know that doesn't go...there is things in the world that are so cruel that it almost impossible to find a way out, but what if there is a way out? What if? Then there is something to look for, to search for, to go for. And then I think it's more easy to deal with all these difficult things in the world.

Michael Shirrefs: It sounds like you see a function of children's theatre, and particularly at a formative age, of being about teaching empathy.

Bodil Alling: Yes, but there is one thing that is very important to me; I never teach, I never teach anything. You are free to go being as stupid as you were when you entered, I will not teach anything. I am not more clever than the audience, I just want to make a common feeling of something that is wonderful.

Michael Shirrefs: While these are certainly difficult times for cultural bodies, especially in Europe, the Danish cultural model coming off an enviably high base because, being somewhat quarantined from acts of political whim, by virtue of an arms-length approach to funding. But in times of global recession and European meltdown, just how healthy is children's theatre in Denmark? Here's writer and critic Anne Middelboe Christensen again.

Anne Middelboe Christensen: Ah, it's healthy in the way that in Denmark annually there's about 500 premieres, 500 new stage works, which is a lot for a country of only 5 million people. It is healthy in the way that Denmark does have an arts policy and a theatre policy that supports performances, both in the form of support to the institutions with buildings, but also theatre projects for artists who don't have any stable base or any specific theatre, but people who tour and especially within the children's theatre, people who tour schools, day-care institutions, libraries, town halls, places where they can get in touch with the audience. So yes, it's both healthy and it's tricky because the ability of making money doing theatre in Denmark is very, very little.

Michael Shirrefs: Because it's such a tiny market.

Anne Middelboe Christensen: It's such a tiny market, we are not enough people who speak Danish in this world, we cannot tour unless we have a text machine, and still it would probably not really be the same. So making money on theatre in Denmark is not possible. Luckily since 1961 when we had our first cultural minister and cultural ministry and cultural policy it has been accepted widely that art does not have to be able to make money, that it is a civilised burden upon the Danish society that arts has to be supported. And that is basically important for all the performances right now. But the number of artists have gone up and the number of performances have gone not, and the support has not gone up. So therefore there is a big fight right now over the money that there actually is, and the question of course always is should you support the names that you know, the names that can produce on time, or should you rather risk and go for the unknown young names who might bring the theatre of the future? As with any other art form.

Michael Shirrefs: So does theatre then become more conservative just because it plays safe?

Anne Middelboe Christensen: Luckily I don't think it plays safe, but there might be quite a big gap between the very risky and very experimental people and then the conservative or more traditional performances like, for example, at the Royal Theatre and the theatres in the big towns, yes, there is a big division.

Michael Shirrefs: And if you expect people to call it a burden, sort of a tax to maintain a cultural life in a city, you've got a government now that is more right-wing that is in favour of lower taxes and has brought in policies that have reduced the amount of money available, does that cause a loss of institutions or performances? Where is that being felt in the arts scene?

Anne Middelboe Christensen: Our government has decided to stop to raise the taxes, and that has really resulted in problems for theatres on all levels, and it has made many big protests amongst the artists because nobody really wants the taxes to go down because it is obvious that the social welfare system and the arts system needs more money. But that's a political discussion on its own. Most radically I think right now the problem is within the children's theatre because the schools and day-care institutions are having such a big fight just to survive with the daily tasks of giving the kids sandwiches in the afternoon or whatever, and they can't afford theatre tickets as well and that's a big problem.

Michael Shirrefs: But that's just the real world and I think perhaps children have got bigger issues to deal with.

Are there places you won't go with children's theatre? Are there taboos, are there subjects that are not, for you anyway, appropriate for children's theatre?

Bodil Alling: I don't know if there are things that are not appropriate, but I think I would never do a story where there is no hope, that you have an end of a story where there is no way out of here, I would never do that. I don't know if it's because I think that it's kind of forbidden, but for me it would be...I couldn't do that. Maybe I wouldn't care so much about that if it was for adults because sometimes (and don't tell any children this) there is no way. But I would never do that for children, never.

Michael Shirrefs: Does that also include portraying a loss of innocence for a child? You know, loss of innocence to me is understanding that the world has limitations and that life can have intractable problems and that cruelty can be absolute.

Bodil Alling: I don't know, I just feel that it would make no sense to say that there is no way here, it would be cruel. Not just cruel, but it's like saying God is dead, I think that would be the same.

Michael Shirrefs: Because even to say God is dead, that is a form of dogma. So I assume that you are not trying to impose a particular interpretation of a story either, that it's up to them to actually arrive at a decision.

Bodil Alling: Yes, I think that's very, very important. It's something...again, back to this if I am a teacher or if I am a storyteller. I don't know any truth in this world, I don't know more than you do. I have more experiences, and when it comes to this story I have been thinking very carefully about what is it about what do I want to tell you with this story, why did I choose this story, but I'm not very much cleverer than you are, I don't know more, so I can't teach you anything.

Amanda Smith: And Bodil Alling is known in Denmark as the Queen of children's theatre. Her company, Theatre Group 38, has just been awarded a prize for artistic excellence from the international association for theatre for young people, ASSITEJ.

In Copenhagen, Michael Shirrefs was speaking with Bodill Alling, as well as with Anne Middelboe Christensen, she's one of Denmark's leading arts writers and theatre critics, and also the actor and director Dirck Backer, he's one of the founders of Teater Patrasket, just one of the many touring children's theatre companies in Denmark, who also do a considerable amount of international touring as well. On any day of the year there's at least two Danish children's theatre groups performing somewhere else in the world. Bodil Alling's company and another one called Teater Reflekstion have been performing in Australia over the past few months.

If you want to know more about any of these groups, there's info on the Artworks website, as well as some pictures.


Bodil Alling
Actor and co-founder of Danish children's theatre company Teatret Gruppe 38
Dirck Backer
Actor, director and co-founder of Teater Patrasket children's theatre
Anne Middelboe Christensen
Danish writer and theatre/dance critic


Michael Shirrefs

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  • Sarah :

    19 Jul 2011 10:58:27am

    I just wanted to thank you so much for the feature on Danish Children's Theatre. I was completely mesmerised and inspired by the interview. I work in the Children's Theatre industry myself, and found myself smiling and nodding along to the audio.