Theatre
The Drooming; Chalk About
Valletta

It is often said that viewing the world through a child’s eyes opens us up to the genuine wonderment which our surroundings should fill us with. As jaded adults, we tend to forget how looking at things through another light might be just what we need.

Two very different performances at the ŻiguŻajg Children’s Arts Festival last month were Aleateia’s The Drooming and Curious Seed’s Chalk About, held at St James Cavalier and the Manoel Theatre Studio, respectively. They both appealed to elements which children thrive on: dreams and a curiosity about the ordinariness of life.

Aimed at older children, The Drooming featured three very quirky women looking for a means to start dreaming again. And for this purpose, they visit the apparent sleep expert Dr Droom (Joseph P. Vella), who has a dream room: a ‘droom’, whereby his methods apparently get patients to dream again.

Ornacia (Sephora Gauci), Lady Belinda (Loranne Vella) and Arshenazhaia (Miriam Galea) all meet in Dr Droom’s office because they have different reasons for wanting to dream. Haughty Lady Belinda has everything and wants something new to dream about, bumbling Ornacia wants to dream of wonderful things and the despondent Arshenazhaia doesn’t think she needs help to dream.

The reality is that Dr Droom plans to control their minds using his drooming device and thus enjoy the power of exerting his will upon others.

The three women discover several things about themselves and each other along the way, and finally band together to thwart Droom’s plan and get their dreams and lives back.

Children were, of course, meant to be reminded that your mind and your dreams are much more important than the superficial and rather selfish pursuits that adults seem to follow, seemingly forgetting what really matters.

I enjoyed Loranne Vella’s Lady Belinda in all her superciliousness as well as Gauci’s more comical Ornacia. I did find Galea’s Arshenazhaia rather distant and Joseph P. Vella’s Dr Droom a bit of a caricature of a villain, but I suppose that quirks and stereotypes are something that children might be more easily used to understanding.

Living for the sake of the things you love and enjoy is what enriches our humanity and makes us all similar but wonderfully different

The choreography was certainly good and the inclusion of different genres of music was clever; however, I wasn’t entirely certain about the original song about dreaming the ladies sang in the waiting room.

While Simon Bartolo’s direction pulled the piece together, I felt that its execution was not quite what it promised to be.

In a completely different genre of theatre altogether, Chalk About by Curious Seed theatre company saw Christine Devaney and Niels Weijer playing a stage version of their real selves.

Sephora Gauci, Loranne Vella and Miriam Galea have different reasons for wanting to dream in The Drooming.

Originally created by Devaney and Leandro Kees, this Scottish production used the floor at the Manoel Theatre studio as a chalk board, where their life story unfolded as they first made fun of stereotypical plotlines for children’s stories as well as trying to mime, emulate and goofily reproduce the requests for story elements which children make – from the Queen of England to dinosaurs and superheroes to aliens and monsters.

The performance became a dance and physical theatre piece in which simple life stories became more important than the fantastical.

Children were reminded that you don’t have to be more than human or famously wealthy to be special. From drawing around children selected from the audience to drawing a life for themselves, the actors showed that as a medium, drawing can cross barriers like language and culture, speaking to people of all ages.

I personally found this performance incredibly interesting and fun to watch, as it also incorporated helium balloons, to which clouds and human silhouettes were attached to form a three-dimensional part of the story.

The techniques were simple but effective and certainly proved that human life itself has a value beyond achievement or fame. Rather, living for the sake of the things you love and enjoy is what enriches our humanity and makes us all similar but wonderfully different – a great lesson to treasure indeed.