Why Do We Play? is a symposium of lectures around the issues raised by LIFT’s The Landscape Of Childhood season.

LIFT has a strong tradition of including children both as performers and audience in our work, and these talks from a selection of artistic practitioners seek to stimulate debate about the culture of childhood and how theatre can be used as a catalyst for youthful creativity. Chaired by playwright Biyi Bandele and curated by Seth Honnor, Why Do We Play? includes contributions from Tim Etchells, Andrew Quick, Marina Barham and Alan Read exploring the important imaginative potential of ‘just playing around’:

Tim Etchells:

Andrew Quick: Infancy and The Event
As both an academic and founder member of the Imitating The Dog theatre company, Andrew Quick takes the concept of ‘play’ very seriously indeed. For his lecture, Quick will be elaborating on his understanding of the ideas contained within Walter Benjamin’s Marxist tract Program For A Proletarian Children’s Theatre. Of particular interest is the concept of ‘the child’s gesture’ as a liberating improvisational method and the theory that the impermanence of youth finds its ideal expression in the fleeting nature of theatre.

Marina Barham: Playing Where One Cannot
Marina Barham presents a Palestinian perspective on the topic of Why Do We Play? for her talk Playing Where One Cannot. Drawing directly on her own experiences working with Palestinian children as executive director of Al-Harah Theatre group, Barham will recount how they overcame such obstacles as the bombing of their theatre to bring their work to children. She will also be discussing the importance of ‘play’ in warzones as a way of letting children express themselves, combat fe ars and experience the freedom youngsters elsewhere take for granted.

Alan Read: Small Talk
Small Talk but big ideas when Alan Read ties together theories from Nietzsche, Kant, Foucault, Le Corbusier and other great thinkers for his contribution to the Why Do We Play? debate. Inviting us to look at the urban landscape anew, Read will ask the audience to consider the cityscape not just in terms of architecture, aesthetics and history but also biology. He will be emphasising the importance of space both imaginative and physical in this context, and the formative influence the postmodern city has on developing young minds.