by Michael Meigs

Children's theatre -- sometimes passed off as 'family theatre' -- is not easy, despite the deceptive appearance of ease when it's well done.  And there's not that much of it in Austin.

Visiting companies set up shop for a single day's performance at the One World Theatre out on Bee Caves Road or at the Paramount and State theatres downtown.  And of course, studios such as KidsActing, Buzz Productions, Easy Theatre and Center Stage offer young persons their first experience of performance.  There's even the Flying Theatre Machine that will initiate them in improv.

Very often purveyors of children's theatre or theatre by children are offering authorized adaptations of familiar stories, successful children's books, and movies.  Lots of these studios and various schools are doing Disney scripts -- for example, the MacTheatre at McCallum Fine Arts Academy performed Disney's Beauty and the Beastthis past September and the Buzz Productions did Disney's Alice in Wonderland, Jr. this past May.

There's some piracy, too -- not the Long John Silver type but copyright infringement.  To date those occasional offerings by community groups and others have remained below the radar (luckily for them, because Uncle Walt's administrators and their ilk are little inclined to tolerance or mercy).

Last week I attended two productions of original scripts for family theatre, done by uniquely Austin theatre companies in partnership with well-established Austin arts institutions. Judy Matetzschk-Campbell's Pollyanna Theatre Company has been performing since 2002; Teatro Vivo of Rupert and JoAnn Reyes, established at about the same time to serve, entertain and reflect Austin's Tejano community, has now moved into family theatre with a script submitted by Roxanne Schroeder-Arce to their first Latino New Play Festival in 2011.

The Scottish Rite Theatre, a gem of a playing space downtown near the Bob Bullock museum now under the management of Emily Marks, is once again offering original scripts crafted for young audiences, written and performed by artists different from those active there during the tenure of the Kelso family.  I missed out on SRT's Really Rosy, based on the Maurice Sendak book, which played through this past weekend.

Click to go to reviews of:

A Playground Superhero by Andrew Perry, Pollyanna Theatre Company

and

Mariachi Girl by Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Teatro Vivo

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