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In our Community View column in the Docklands and East London Advertiser, Communications Manager Stephen is excited about the new show opening the Summer Season, which celebrates the power of imagination and proves that there is always enough room for fun.
Read the Docklands and East London Advertiser e-edition
The Power of Imaginary Play
Written by award-winning teenage fiction writer Steve Tasane (Child I, Blood Donors), this humorous and inventive new show for ages 3-8 sensitively explores the child refugee experience, where the power of invention offers an escape from reality. It celebrates the power of imaginary play and proves there’s always enough room to have fun, even when the world is at its most daunting.
Ten in the Bed follows Naz and Iggy and their eight friends. Their bed is a place where imagination can fill their tummies with tasty treats and take them to familiar warm places. Well, sometimes.
Audiences can join the boat-bed’s disparate crew as they dream up playful tales of pirates, misunderstood sharks and fishing trips that hook some unexpected catches. But what happens if the bed is not big enough to fit everyone in? How do they decide who gets to stay and who has to go?
“I wanted to write a play for young children that would delight and entertain, but with a serious underlying message that would be felt rather than told,” explains Steve Tasane, the writer of Ten in the Bed.
“I wanted the boys in the bed to be the agents of their own recovery, to take charge of life events that had always been totally out of their control; for the boys to reconstruct their own narrative – the story of the refugee journey. A journey that ends with full bellies, a roomful of toys and – crucially – a bed which always has enough space for them all to sleep easy and warm.”
The story is told by two wonderful performers, Hari Kang and Hayden Mampasi, who has just finished playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theatre and recently won the Best Supporting Male Actor Award at the Black British Theatre Awards.
Ten in the Bed opens at Half Moon on 4 May, before heading off on a 10-week nationwide tour. It returns 4-11 June. Tickets cost £7. Book now.
Stephen Beeny is the Communications Manager at Half Moon