Chalk About review: Mature, challenging dance theatre for an eight-plus audience

Chalk About

The Ark

★★★★☆

What do children want from theatre? This is a question Christine Devaney asked before she began making Chalk About, a challenging dance-theatre piece for audiences aged eight and over, produced by Scotland’s Curious Seed. Dinosaurs, they told her, break-dancing, explosions, a cameo from Beyoncé ... The children were also eager to tell Devaney what they did not want: absolutely no puppets or romance, and definitely no art.

Over 45 minutes Devaney ensures a young audience get a little of what they desire (albeit in fast-forward knockabout mime). Slyly, she squeezes in a lot of what they don’t too. There is plenty of art in this metatheatrical, gently interactive piece, which refuses to patronise its audience, either in form or in content.

The audience are never asked intimate questions, but the impulse is to put themselves into the story. What are they scared of? What shape is their own family tree? How do they feel about love?

Performed on Karen Tennent’s giant blackboard floor, Chalk About doesn’t so much tell a story as embody a series of emotional engagements. The performers Holly Irving and Sky So gain the audience’s trust by revealing little pieces of themselves, using calico cutouts and balloons (puppetry by another name).

The audience are never asked intimate questions, but the impulse is to put themselves into the story. What are they scared of? What shape is their own family tree? How do they feel about love? Choreography from Leandro Kees borrows from a lexicon of schoolyard moves as well as contemporary dance. Up close on the Ark stage, the performers’ physical prowess never seems unachievable.

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In the abstract dance sequences, as well as the “text part”, complex themes of friendship, first love, grief and gender are touched upon. In combination with the nonlinear form, this makes Chalk About quite a mature piece of work, arguably too mature for an eight-plus audience to fully understand. But as Chalk About insists, a young audience will have no problem letting you know whether or not they are interested in taking on the challenge.

Ends at the Ark, Dublin 2, today with schools performances, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. Moves to the Belltable, Limerick, on Thursday, October 13th, as part of Bualadh Bos Children’s Festival, and Black Box Theatre, Galway, from Tuesday, October 18th, to Friday, October 21st, as part of Baboró: International Arts Festival for Children