Dancing onto the Zoom screen still wet from rehearsal, Children’s Theatre Company company member Autumn Ness was a bundle of joy in a recent interview, just like the preschoolers now coming to see the world premiere of Babble Lab, her new children’s show at CTC through April 14. (It will pop up again in July at the show’s co-producing company, Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.)
Ness has been a key player at Minneapolis’s flagship children’s theatre for nearly 25 years now. Starting out right after graduating from the University of Minnesota, Ness began in CTC’s performance apprenticeship program, eventually joining the resident acting company (“a great honor, and a great gig,” as she put it). She has since become a versatile performer as well as a creator. With her own pieces, she said, she is striving “to create new work for audiences of children and their families who have been marginalized by physical or developmental ailments that are barriers for them to experience the arts.”
That’s the thinking behind Babble Lab, directed by Sarah Agnew, which explores how sound and language intersect, inviting audiences of all ages into a science lab with a scientist as her experiment goes wrong, leading to a concoction of L E T T E R S bouncing around the room. She first started working on the show 10 years ago, inspired by her own children (with Reed Sigmund, also a CTC company member). During one doctor’s visit, Ness recalled, she and her two sons went to sit at some preschool table sets.
“In the room, there were two doctors in white lab coats that started doing experiments,” Ness said. “First, they blew up a balloon, let it go, and took down notes as they watched my son’s reaction. They repeated the same actions and tried to explain what they were doing, but it all sounded like gibberish.”
Ness said she saw links to Dadaism, the European avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century that responded to the seeming randomness of life with joyfully nonsensical art. “This got me thinking,” Ness continued, “Preschoolers are already Dada. They are bizarre, joyous, wondrous, and abstract. In thinking about my own children’s development, and my obsession with Dadaism, came forth Babble Lab.”
Her curiosity led her to London and Holland, where she studied with Oily Cart and Bamboozle Theatre, and she explored sensory theatre and the impact of sound with Dutch composer Jaap Blonk, known for his performance art and specialty in sound poetry.
“I studied theatremaking that didn’t require families to hang onto an hourlong narrative or have certain physical capabilities,” Ness said. “They taught me about immersive experiences that utilized sensory theatre to reach disabled children. It’s more than ‘come as you are’; it was built on not making the families do the heavy lifting. That blew my mind, to think about theatre in this way. I started to think: What if my work was more abstract? What if my work didn’t have to contain words or conventional language?”
It was during a workshop put on by CTC artistic director Peter C. Brosius a few years ago that Alliance Theatre co-artistic director Christopher Moses—then the company’s director of education—flew up to take a look at Babble Lab.
“When we finished, he looked intrigued and said, ‘We’d like to have it,’” Ness said. “I looked at the faces of Sarah Agnew and Peter, and they didn’t look surprised at all. I couldn’t believe it.”
In keeping with Ness’s all-access approach, there’s a performance ritual around Babble Lab. As the theatre can’t assume young audience members and their families know their way around the experience, CTC has created an exhibit in the foyer that uses all five senses to introduce kids to aspects of the show. Ness even comes out into the lobby as the main character, which she said gives the children “a sense of curiosity.”
The cutest ritual I heard about, though, was the little booties—little puppet socks—everyone puts on before they enter the theatre.
“They’re both functional and an aesthetic choice,” Ness said, explaining that, on a practical level, they keep the theatre clean from any slushy bits of Minnesota weather. The booties also transform the audience’s perception. “The uniformity tells them that we are all going somewhere together,” she said. “We got the idea to use them through a Swedish puppetry group named Dockteatern Tittut. They had great wisdom to share with us about this age group, and we are so thankful to them for this ritual.”
What a stunning idea! The thought of hundreds of little feet running toward the theatre made me smile. I was even more interested in what happens in the show. Ness explained the premise: The Scientist creates these L E T T E R S and thinks she can control them, but of course they now have minds of their own. Sound designer Katharine Horowitz recorded actors talking gibberish to create tracks that play as the letters dance around the lab. It’s an effect, Ness said, that gives the illusion she’s not up onstage alone.
“There’s such a fantastical feel to it,” Ness said. “Amid all these mishaps with the letters, we get this beautiful sound poetry showing how she learns to let them free. The kids get the beauty of the visuals and the parents get the message: Accidents and mistakes can be miracles and significant discoveries in science. We want to show children that you don’t know until you try, and that magnificent things come out of play and exploration.”
When asked what takeaway Ness wanted for these young audiences, she said she hopes they understand that their voices matter and that the world needs their voices.
“Kids have a lot to say,” Ness said. “Truthful things. Insightful things. If they choose to try to find and own their voice, it will fill the hole in the world waiting for them.”
Shantez (Shae) M. Tolbut (she/her) is a Chicago-based theatre journalist, educator, Off-Broadway stage manager, and award-winning playwright/poet who loves every aspect of theatre. Catch her enjoying shows, writing about shows (or working on them) whenever/wherever she can. www.blackstageeverything.com
