On May 9, Chicago Children’s Theatre will give the city its first taste of a trend that’s started to catch on elsewhere: plays for babies as young as six months. CCT’s artistic director, Jacqueline Russell, promises a highly interactive show where crying, nursing, and running around the room will be pretty much A-OK.
And Dot and Ziggy is the first toddler piece that you’re developing from scratch yourself?
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It used to be easy. When I first started, I called Judy Blume up at home, and we got her book Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing. It’s not as easy to get book rights these days, but it’s different in every case. Sometimes you call somebody and they’re really open to it, and sometimes it’s three years of dealing with people who don’t even know who owns the rights anymore.
We do some practical things. We don’t darken the room—sometimes the little-little ones are afraid of the dark—and we don’t have amplified sound. Sometimes loud sounds intimidate the little ones. That also allows the cost to be lower, so the experience is less expensive.
What happens if there’s a meltdown in the room?
