Now that Wobble has wobbled and before rehearsals for Marianne Dreams begin, we decided to grab Replay’s Artistic Director Anna Newell for a good grilling…

What did you do before working for Replay?

For the five years before I started with Replay, I ran an interdisciplinary arts programme at Queen’s University imagining lots of different projects and making them happen – modules called “Adventures” and “Further Adventures”, projects where we got medical students dancing, and projects in weird and wonderful venues – the old police station on Queen Street, the Crumlin Road Gaol and out and about in various corners of the city.  It was an amazing time and I got to work with many different artists from lots of different disciplines – filmmakers, conceptual artists, site-specific theatre makers and sonic artists – and it really changed how I made work and how I thought about making work.

 Before that I spent 16 years making theatre work with and for lots of different audiences on lots of different scales mostly in Scotland but also further afield.  About half of that work was within a community context – including accidentally setting up a 50-strong women’s acapella harmony singing group in Dundee called Loadsaweeminsingin (that’s still going 18 years later!); and I now run a similar group here in Belfast.

 Why do you want to make work for children and young people?

I find the challenge of creating a dialogue between myself as an artist (and all the people who work with me) and a particular age-group very exciting and inspiring.  And more and more, our projects are being created through that sort of a dialogue – WOBBLE (our recent dance theatre show for 2-4 year olds, created in a co-production with Assault Events) was made working closely with a local nursery, with the children there providing inspiration and feedback. 

 I believe really passionately that nurturing the imaginations of our children and young people is crucial to their development – and to ours.

 What are the challenges of making work for young audiences?

 Each age-group has its own challenges – this year alone, we’ve made a show for older teenagers, a show for mid primary school children and a show for toddlers.  And each time we make a new show – often through new processes – we learn more and ask ourselves new questions and set ourselves new challenges.  For example, watching teenage boys watching a show that was quite dialogue-heavy, I decided I wanted to find out what might happen if we made a show for them that was much more rooted in high energy movement and dance, and so we’ve asked Stevie Prickett (who was in WOBBLE and who I’ve collaborated with for over 15 years) to make a piece for Autumn 2013 called BOYS DANCE WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING – and this November we’re starting initial research workshops with groups of teenage boys in both school and juvenile justice settings to start to explore what that show might look like.

 Of all the shows for young audiences you’ve seen, which has been your favourite? 

 It was a tiny one-man show from Switzerland called MINOR MATTERS – the audience came into the room to find a tramp sleeping in the corner who woke up and proceeded to tell the audience a story using only the things that he had with him in his few bags.  His grumpy, resilient, wry personality captured the kids and as the story unfolded it became clear it was his story about how he’d ended up where he was.  Such a simple idea but layers and layers of complexity underneath it.  An amazing performance and one that still brings me to tears thinking or talking about it. 

 Over the years, I’ve seen some amazing pieces of work from all over the world – it does seem to me that, at its best, theatre for younger audiences embraces a freedom of form that allows magic to happen – whether it’s (literally) crawling through the alice in wonderland tunnels in Carte Blanche’s amazing interactive show or loving the gorgeous and cheeky simplicity of Scottish company Catherine Wheels’ WHITE or being taken hostage on a bus in Copenhagen in a piece for teenagers about forced marriage amongst immigrant communities in Denmark, the best children’s theatre I’ve seen is the best theatre I’ve seen.

 What’s your favourite show you’ve ever directed?

 Aargh, that’s too difficult!  It’s been 22 years making stuff and every time I think through it, there’s a different favourite!   It tends to be ones that try to stretch and bend and even explode ideas of what theatre or performance can be, that takes risks, that challenges me.   In recent years, making a performance installation called NIJE NAS STRAH (WE ARE NOT AFRAID) in a secret apartment in Sarajevo that the audience was led to blindfold was pretty special – and terrifying, as I had no idea whether people would love it or hate it (fortunately it was the former!); and, since being at Replay, I did love creating THE SCHOOL UNDERNEATH – making something where the audience was so close to the action was really exciting – and we set ourselves some brilliant and ridiculous challenges – there was a stage direction in the first few pages that said “ a girl falls out of his pencil case”, fire came out of one of the characters’ hands and the entire set shook!  And at the same time, running through this exciting all-action story was a profound statement about the power of imagination and how everyone has the possibility within themselves to be extraordinary – as the lead character said towards the end, “even normal people can save the universe!”.

 If you hadn’t been a director what would you have been?

 Probably a wedding planner!   I love making adventures for people, occasions, rituals, finding the thing that makes it special and unique – and I’m a bit uber-organised.  Which I suspect may be a bit annoying at times……!

 Or a child psychologist.  I’m fascinated by the psychology of children’s development and, if there were 36 hours in the day, I’d do an open university degree in it.

 But mostly I find it difficult to imagine doing anything else.  At a precocious 7, I wrote and directed my first show and persuaded my friends to be in it.  It was called THE FROG IN THE WELL.  I also played the frog.  Not out of megalomania but rather because I couldn’t find anyone else who was prepared to be painted green and spend most of the show down the well.

 What’s your most vivid childhood memory?

 Not necessarily the most vivid memory, but certainly the most relevant: I used to really love the cartoon series Mr Benn – the idea that somewhere there was a shop where you could walk in and walk out of the back door into a different adventure each time.  This really captured me and I wanted to believe that the shop existed and that if I looked hard enough I would find it.  Maybe I went into theatre because I worked out I could make that shop happen…