A Chinny Chin-Scratcher

I am interviewing theatrical designer and performer Shona Reppe about HUFF, when I hit a problem – apart from the fact that it is aimed at children, based on the story of The Three Little Pigs, and co-created with Andy Manley, I have no idea what it is. You see it’s not a play – there are no actors yet nor, says Reppe, is it an art installation.

Is it, then, a bit like a murder mystery weekend except without a sexy eastern European dressed in scarlet, a dishonest balding banker and Colonel Mustard in the library with lead piping? Or, in other words, I ask her, are the children detecting the story from scenic evidence?

"That makes it sound a bit like an interactive science project and it’s not." By this point I’m scratching my hairless chinny chin chin so Reppe tries to make things clearer: "It’s a theatrical walk-through experience."  …I’m not sure that helps.

I try a different tack: "Imagine I’m a child--","You don’t have to be a child," says Reppe, "it’s for anyone over 8."

"Ok, imagine I’m my age then. What do I experience on the theatrical walk-through experience?"

"You are guided through several rooms, each room is more or less timed so that it takes you on a journey. You are free to explore the rooms and the rooms have clues, and the way they’ve been decorated illustrates aspects of the story."

"How are you guided?"

"Through sound."

"So is there", I say, feeling at last I am catching on, "a sort of disembodied narrator?"

"It’s difficult to describe, you really have to experience it. It’s not: “Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and now come through this door,” it’s just helping you move from room to room." Reppe considers a bit more and then explains that it’s bit like the National Gallery where "you have people wearing tartan trousers who sit on the room in chairs." Tartan trousers??? – I missed those when I went to the Van Gogh to Kandinsky exhibition two years ago.

She refuses to reveal anymore: "I don’t want there to be a spoiler…I will tell you a bit, but I would like to keep things back. I always think it better to entice." I end up imagining HUFF as being a bit like that scene in Mary Poppins where the children jump inside the pavement drawings. You get to wander through the landscape of a fairy tale and poke inside the cupboards at the same time: "All children, and all people love looking inside things, and opening drawers, and opening cupboards and exploring – we all love exploring."

Reppe is evangelical about children’s theatre. Children are the audience of the future and, if we want them to keep attending into adulthood, it is essential that they are excited and challenged by the productions on offer to them. She praises the support she has received from Scottish theatre critics, Made in Scotland and theatres such as the Traverse. If, as she says, the most common audience reaction to HUFF is indeed, "I want to do it again!", then she is building audiences of the future not out of straw, or sticks, but huff-and-puff-proof bricks.