It’s less than one month to go until Just So Festival is under way and this year, the annual family event is celebrating its 10th birthday! With childhood escapades and a love of stories at the festival’s heart, it’s unsurprising that children’s theatre plays such a huge and exciting role across the three days. It’s also little wonder we’re kept on our toes at Just So; the sheer amount of outdoor theatre and performance is utterly breathtaking!
The theatrical birthday presents this year include Sirin (Hope is the Thing with Feathers). Drawn from ancient myths, this is an evocative story of love and sacrifice, risk and hope, chroreographed by Ballet Lorent’s award-winning Artistic Director Liv Lorent. In Adrift by Kapow Dance Circus, two women cling to a raft in the middle of the ocean. We witness their epic challenges as they battle the odds and learn to exist together in an unforgiving landscape. There’ll also be light and bright acrobatic fun in the form of My House by Apocalyptic Circus.
Adrift. Photo by Youssef Elmachkouri
There’s a clown on the run trying to prove her innocence in Hocus Pocus show Clown About Town, while it’s the Romans who’ll be on the run when Boudicca by The Wheelabouts arrives in the fields of Cheshire’s Rode Hall.
The wonderful performance poet John Hegley will be joining the birthday celebrations this year, which will also see the return of sublime kids stand-up, James Campbell. We’re very excited for dusk to fall as Thingumajig Theatre’s all new night-time act Ghost Caribou will be released: using music and shadow puppets they’ll perform and otherworldly ceremony.
My House.
Winner of the International Festival of Fools, Dizzy O’Dare’s Giant Balloon Show sounds fabulously entertaining and promises a high energy comic performance. Bringing something very different to the proceedings and based on the much loved TV show, Mufti Games’s One Kid and their Dog will give us an interactive theatrical game – very intriguing!
Sirin (Hope is the Thing with Feathers). Photo by Keith Talbot.
The fantastically fitting Fabularium are back too with new show The Hare and the Moon featuring outstanding puppetry, music and now illuminations. There’s opera for kids from Hurly Burly Co., a theatrical wellness experience from Swoolish Garage, and – unbelievably – much, much more… and that’s just the theatre and performance. We’d better get packing! So let the celebrations begin as Just So Festival’s 10th year is shaping up to be the best yet.
Just So Festival is the internationally renowned arts festival dedicated solely to families. With a love of stories and childhood escapades at its heart, it is a wonderland of literature, arts, theatre, dance, music, comedy and creative pursuits underpinned by the Tribal Tournament, the most bonkers competition in the land. 16 – 18 August, Rode Hall Estate, Cheshire www.justsofestival.org.uk
Simone is a trained actress and has worked in the theatre and television. She has also run drama workshops for children. She now teaches in a primary school in East London and regularly enjoys trips to the theatre with her six year old daughter.
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