Theatre-Rites And 20 Stories High Reunite: Big Up!, A Hip Hop Puppetry Show

Theatre-Rites and 20 Stories High reunite following the success of their show for young people The Broke 'N' Beat Collective. Big Up! is a show for 3 to 6 year olds to share with everyone that looks after them, combining hip-hop, puppetry and live music.

No matter whether you are Big or Small, the world is full of rules. Sometimes we make our own rules, sometimes we don't know the rules and sometimes we want to play by different rules. A Beatboxer, a Singer and a Puppeteer arrive on stage but nothing is ready for them. No set, no instruments, no puppets. No rules. A world full of joy and chaos erupts, where objects come to life and everything is possible.

Big Up! will be accompanied by Residencies at each venue featuring extensive programmes of outreach and activities, both for children and for Young Adult Parents and Young Carers. These will include participatory workshops for children and (at selected venues) Mash Up gig events for their parents and carers, featuring performances from the Big Up! company, local artists and audiences in an open-mic live jam.

Sue Buckmaster (Artistic Director, Theatre-Rites): 'Big Up! is a universal story - we all know how full of rules the world when we are young. We wanted to explore the subtle and not so subtle differences in family dynamics - who sets the rules? The five year old or the parent? And what do you do when one of you finds it difficult to follow the rules?

We hope Big Up! will enthral and provoke everyone in its audience, regardless of whether they are Big or Small. We delight in the shared experiences parents have with their children at any Theatre-Rites show and are thrilled to reach out to an audience of young adult parents and young carers who may not have had this experience or opportunity before. We look forward to sharing our Residencies, this show - and hopefully a future theatre-going tradition - with them. It is brilliant to be working with 20 Stories High again to recreate the magic we discovered together through The Broke 'N' Beat Collective.'

Keith Saha (Co-Artistic Director, 20 Stories High): 'One of the strongest and most recurring themes during our research was the memory of being young, but desperately wanting to be Big and yet for most of us once we became Big, we forgot how to play. This production plays with the notion of who is the parent and who is the child and how as parents we are often so preoccupied with setting rules, being strict, being a certain kind of parent, or not knowing how to parent that we sometimes forget how to play. It is exciting for us at 20 Stories High to team up with Theatre-Rites again and experience making theatre for young children for the first time, whilst also engaging with the young people who are always close to 20 Stories High's heart.'

The cast is: beatboxer Hobbit, puppeteer Iestyn Evans, shadow puppeteer Clarke Joseph-Edwards and singer/rapper Dorcas Sebuyange.

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