THE VERY IMPORTANT CHILD Comes to Vault Festival 2018

The Very Important Child is a chaotic, uplifting and lyrical theatre performance for grown-up babies of all ages using music, movement, psychology and personality tests to investigate just what makes us who we are.

This compelling performance is about why we throw our toys out of the pram and the lure of personality tests for all those curious about what makes them tick. The Very Important Child explores how we advance from innocent toddler to grumpy teenager and kind, hardened adult and those times in life when we regress down the scale stamping our feet as we go.

Using Loevinger's theory of human ego development as its influence, this entertaining lecture style performance tracks human development through the stages of life moving from angry to quiet with some prettiness, cleverness and shouting thrown in.

Jennifer Fletcher, co-director of The Mostly Everything People, said: "The Very Important Child was born out of a desire to investigate why we are the way we are, and illustrate beautiful and ridiculous parts of human nature. In our search for content on entitlement and injustice we stumbled across Loevinger's scale of ego development which soon became the focus of the show. The theme of narcissism and ego has been frequently used in relation to millennial adults, in a world full of personality tests and sharing the results on social media. We were fascinated and excited by the ego scale, and how the description of becoming an adult, which Loevinger did so accurately. And we had a lot of fun working out if it's possible to reach level 9.

"We enjoy being silly and try to be clever, but this show is designed to encourage us all to question our behaviour (whilst being thoroughly entertained!)."

The Mostly Everything People have been creating transformative work about human behaviour together since 2012. Directed by Jennifer Fletcher and Christopher Preece, they are generously theatrical with movement, sound design, technical trickery, and humour. Their mission is to make truly contemporary and entertaining work belong in the same category.

They've shown work in Sweden, Germany, the US and throughout the UK, and were Emerging Artists 2015 at Canada Water Culture Space. The company also make films, the latest of which is due to be released in early 2018.

The Very Important Child toured regionally supported by Arts council England, AMATA and Nescot College. The show was also at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, receiving five star reviews.

Company

Directed by Jennifer Fletcher and Christopher Preece

Choreographed by Jennifer Fletcher

Performed by Virginia Scudeletti and Christopher Preece

Composed by Christopher Preece

Co-devised by Virginia Scudeletti

Design and lighting by Ben Pacey

www.themostlyeverythingpeople.com

Tickets: https://vaultfestival.com/whats-on/the-very-important-child/

Photo Credit: John Freddy Jones

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