Oral Histories

As an adult I don’t visit a lot of theatres.  I didn’t know of the existence of Polka Theatre until my son was born five years ago.  So when I started to go to the theatre I discovered Polka Theatre and we started to take my son there.  It kind of made me feel quite into it.  This is good.  This is good for him to express himself, to have confidence and learn to express himself in the way that he wants.  I thought it was for him fundamentally. My first impression was that the building was a bit old perhaps from the outside, but when I entered it felt very very cosy.  It felt like a space where the children can go and just express themselves.  Obviously it was the entrance at the beginning and the ticket office. And then it was that open space where you entered and there was a very big hall with a little library, with toys, with fancy dresses, a table for the kids to paint. It just felt a free space really - very cosy where the kids could express themselves.  We attended the Polka not only for the theatre sessions, but also for storytelling sessions where I remember primarily my son interacting from a very young age with the spirit of the theatre and I wasn’t sure at the time if he was understanding what he was saying, but I felt that he was enjoying it and coming along with the storytelling, musical instruments.  I remember that in one of the sessions that you used to do in the Children’s Centres we went to this and it was a book called Shark in the Park or something like that.  When this man started to do his story for the day my first feeling was “he’s crazy.  What is he doing?”,  but for me it was an eye-opener how from being crazy or pretending to be crazy and doing very silly stuff how much he got out of the kids’ imagination.  I was so so impressed that something that I thought was close to silly or even worse and then as the session progressed it was like “Wow, the kids can not stop from putting their eyes on him. And it was like an eye-opener.  That was like one of the breaking moments when I thought “Wow. This is interesting.  This is nice.” And then on the days in the actual theatre.  Again it was this man storytelling and then he was doing some very basic sounds with some noise from something that he found somewhere and was doing silly musical patterns and then I was surprised how then my son came home repeating that.  We finished the session, we did the play and everything else we got back home and he started to replicate the sounds they were making in the Polka Theatre. I wouldn’t say that I have a favourite play or a favourite space. I like the whole experience actually to go there and be able to attend a play, play with them, explore books and explore ways of expressing the kids, being able to go to the little train in the coffee shop and being able to share with friends.  For me it was not only play, but it was this sense of friendship and community.  It really made me feel very welcome in the space.  It was almost like a day out.  You come to so many things after watching the play.  The fancy dresses that you have there was always enjoyable.  The halls where you can put the kids and they have a great time and there was a balance thing where you could put two of the kids together having a play.  The sense of exploring and the sense of freedom of moving freely from one place to another.  That is what is in my memory really. I love the fact that it felt like it was a cultural experience.  It was an expressing experience.  It was helping children through theatre.  It was not only the play.  It was more than that and I think it is so important that there are still institutions or organisations that are in the community and they give much more than simply a service.  I think it’s so important that an institution like that stays and remains and portrays the feeling that there is much more than the purely commercial aspect of the theatre. I really love that and think it’s important and I think that there is so little institutions that nowadays that are wanting to do that. It is ever so important. It is more important than ever. Theatre helps to overcome many barriers or many scares that you might have as a person.  If you are a bit shy or if you don’t have a lot of confidence I think that doing theatre it might help to overcome that insecurity and I think that from a very early age for my son that it was important for him to express himself and to see how other people express themselves.  I always thought that that was very good to help him build his personality. What I like about Polka and where my memories are very precious and very sweet memories is coming back to having the freedom to express, but it’s that feeling of being at home in a way.