Unicorn Theatre Trip

The Death of Cinna (the Poet)

Screams for freedom

He sits in his chair, nervous

The sounds of his pencil scribbling on paper

Desparate to stay indoors

For the Crown

Is a beast without a heart

On 13/2/20, our class went to the Unicorn Theatre in London, a theatre that is solely based on creating shows aimed at children. The two shows that we went to see were I, Cinna (the Poet) and The Bee In Me.

I, Cinna was about a very minor character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who gets killed just for having the same name as a conspirator that assassinated Caesar. Cinna was a poet who struggled to write and get through life due to his social class. The show was set in modern day, so phones and computers were used, as well as police rioting and protesting footage was shown throughout. The show’s cast was only one man, Tim Crouch, who played Cinna but he was also the writer of the script. It was originally shown in 2012, with some parts of the script not being used in this performance.

Before the show, the audience was given a notebook and pencil before the show. This was to be used later on when Cinna asks the audience to write certain words on different pages in the book – a clear representation of audience participation, which always works well with child audiences, as they feel like they are impacting the story in some way. It also made them feel like a poet, which is inspiring to a lot of children and could potentially impact what career they want to choose when they’re older. The show was aimed at 11-14 year olds, so some mature themes were mentioned, such as how Caesar was assassinated and conversations about politics and who or what you would be willing to die and kill for. The audience seemed to be a little bit uncomfortable when they were hearing this, but I think it added to the experience and that it made them understand how Cinna was feeling. I think our group could incorporate audience participation in our performance because that could make the experience more interesting, it would keep their attention on the performance itself if they were being spoken to, and the element of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ in theatre for children excites them because they feel that interacting with the characters on stage makes them feel important.

The Bee In Me was about a young child that was neglected by their parents. The show often references the main character turning into a bee and also treats every scene as if it is a level in a video game – this shows that every day for the young child is a challenge without reassurance from their parents, so uses turning into a bee as a form of escapism to make them feel better about the situation that they are in. The show’s cast was three people, who played all the characters in the show. All of them were narrating what was going on, like telling a story. The main character of the young child wasn’t named, as the cast often referred to that character as ‘you’, meaning the audience could feel like they are actually in the story and it helps them understand what it’s like to be neglected and help visualise what it’s like to be in that child’s shoes. The show was aimed at 6-9 year olds, so didn’t explicitly explore any serious topics other than the neglect, but other topics such as bullying, stranger danger and struggles in school life were involved, topics that are often touched upon and explained in a lot of other pieces of children’s theatre to educate them. During the show, a lot of rhetorical questions were asked by the main character, which made the audience keen to answer them because child audiences like audience interaction and they think that questions are always aimed at them. The actors did make it clear when real questions and rhetorical questions were asked, but this didn’t seem to translate very clearly to the audience and the actors seemed unsure of how to calm the children down afterwards. We can use this research in our performance to make sure to make it clear when we want any questions to be answered by the audience and to have a method in place to bring back the attention of the audience if they become overexcited or the meaning of words or phrases is lost in translation.