Krokus Festival, Belgium

The second of my European Festival trips, this time to the small town of Hasselt in Belgium for Krokus Festival of theatre for young audiences. I travelled on the Eurostar, an astonishing 2 hours from London to Brussels, not much longer than the time it took me to get to London from Kenilworth and so much nicer than flying, which I loath. 

It was a packed 3 ½ days of watching shows and meeting people from all over Europe and beyond, I squashed an incredible 10 shows into my time, spoke to loads of people, ate the obligatory chips and mayonnaise and returned with a very full heart and a head buzzing with ideas! 

Playmate, interactive installation by Den Draad

Krokus is a festival for children of all ages and the programme was packed. For obvious reasons, I decided to focus on seeing all the early years shows. There was dance, theatre, puppetry, film and installation but interestingly very little that I saw with live music. All the shows I saw featured between 1 and 3 performers, with varying levels of interaction and/or post show play included. From conversations I had, I believe this is an indication of the investment in performance for young audiences which is often for small intimate audiences and so is very difficult to make financially viable, hence few performers on stage. Once again, I find the pull between wanting to make the art I want to make and being practical and realistic, certainly there is a need for creative thinking.

The shows I saw were in a range of intimate settings as well as the more traditional proscenium arch setting with raked seating. I am naturally drawn towards shows in intimate spaces as this is the kind of theatre I am interested in making. I’ve picked a few of my favourites of the festival to write about:

Toutotour, for ages 1 ½+ is an enchanting puppet show with 2 puppeteers animating a bear puppet as the main character who in search of food and adventure journeys through different landscapes meeting a worm, a squirrel and sea creatures. As the performance unfolded the set developed with things being added to it throughout, the bear transformed physically into all the different animals of his journey. There was gentle humour and I felt mesmerised by the intricate puppeteering and the transformations. The company also made use of sound which came initially from a couple of bluetooth speakers which audience members were holding, once these were taken onto the stage this element did not develop any further. The children in the audience were captivated as was I.

Souvenirshop, for ages 4+, is a solo dance/physical theatre performance with a live pianist, set end-on in a traditional theatre space. I loved the concept which took the many objects that you would find in an art gallery souvenir shop to create a whacky and riveting piece of dance theatre. The physical humour was infectious and had both children and adults laughing. There was a Mona Lisa sweatshirt, an umbrella with clouds on it, Klimt inspired clogs, a Spanish fan, aprons with naked statues on and colourful lighting gels falling from the ceiling. The performer used the objects and clothes to hide and change shape leading to much hilarity. I found this show to be very clever and thoroughly engaging.

Sous la Neige (Beneath the Snow), for ages 2+, is a beautiful intimate non-verbal dance show with the audience sitting on the floor on two sides of the action. As we entered the space we saw, covering the playing space, a huge thick blanket of white tissue paper with two dancers holding piles of the paper which they were gently scrunching and blowing around. The show was an exploration of the snow with different things emerging from underneath, sea like snow creatures with lights in them, a big cloth which was wafted to create a storm and giant snow blankets, all animated by the performers. The show ended with an invitation for the audience to play in the snow. I loved the clean white setting created and the way the lighting design subtly changed this throughout. The performers were engaging, although at one point a couple of the children in front of me were whacked unintentionally by the giant snow blankets, but thankfully it did not spoil the show.

Art around every corner

Lastly, Coer de Patate (Potato Heart), for ages 5+, is a short performance featuring one performer and a potato puppet. With minimal tech and set the performer starting in the audience where her tummy rumbled. She made all of the sounds herself with no amplification and the majority of the performance took place on the floor in one spot. That said, the show was riveting, no less because the concept was wonderful and brilliantly executed through sound making, puppetry and acting. The story unfolded with the performer (a homeless person) searching for food in a bin, she finds a rotten potato and sits to cook it and eat it. The potato becomes a creature and they engage in physical dialogue where the potato does not want to be eaten and then changes its mind. This was so quirky and engaging, with an element of dark humour, the show ended with the girl cooking and eating the potato and then revealing the puppet living in her tummy. There were so many clever parts to this show and I could have watched it for much longer.

There were a couple of shows I saw with text in Dutch and inspite of the language barrier I still enjoyed very much. This made me wonder what I missed and also question the need to use text at all. I marvelled at the many languages spoken and felt lucky that the main language for everyone to communicate was English. That said I also enjoyed meeting people from Spain, who I had previously met at El Petit so I was able to enjoy some conversation in Spanish as well. An exhausting but fulfilling trip and hopefully I made some new connections too.