Licketyspit is a children’s theatre company based in Scotland. We specialize in creating new work for children from the ages of 3-7, but we are also very popular with older and younger children, and with adults. We perform in theatres, community venues and schools (where we frequently play to children from 3-12).
Licketyspit recently became resident company at the Brunton theatre, Musselburgh, East Lothian (www.bruntontheatre.co.uk).
people
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history
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how we work
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extending the impact
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education
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special education
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touring/booking
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AIMS
Licketyspit seeks to create dynamic and meaningful theatre and related outreach and education experiences to inspire and fire the imaginations of Early Years children.
When developing projects, Licketyspit works directly with children, seeking to make work, which pushes the boundaries of what may be perceived ‘age-appropriate’ to create shows, which actively engage, challenge and entertain. Licketyspit wants its theatre to be a memorable and empowering encounter for children.
Licketyspit employs a bold, theatrical performance style incorporating live music, songs, inventive design, humour and importantly a direct rapport with the audience with opportunities to interact and invent. The company-audience relationship is key to the spirit of Licketyspit, which aims never to under-estimate its audience.
Licketyspit’s work encourages children to extend their live theatre experience by re-playing the story, characters, rhymes and songs at home, in the playground and at school.
Licketyspit actively welcomes audiences of all ages and our shows are uniquely able to appeal to nurseries and whole primary schools and to children with special needs of all ages.
AUDIENCES
Licketyspit’s work is carefully developed and piloted in schools and nurseries with our youngest audience members - the 3-7yr olds. We believe that good theatre for children should be good theatre and this is reflected by the large and enthusiastic audiences that have reponded to this work, aged from 3 - 93!
We aim to fire children's imaginations and make them laugh! We welcome broad inclusive audiences of families and school groups in theatres, school and community venues. Licketyspit also offers education resources, CPD and pre-show work with audiences with special educational needs. The company is noted for the long term impact of it's work and also produces interactive programmes, books, CD's and Teacher’s ResourcesActivity packs.
There are interactive elements to Licketyspit's work, which has a distinctive style involving strong stories, bold design, catchy songs and physically dynamic performances.
Our work is very portable. Licketyspit provides teaching resources, interactive programmes, books and the company ensures there are opportunities within the shows for children and adults to actively engage with the performance and join in with songs and rhymes, which they can take home and remember.
TO CONTACT US
write to
Licketyspit
Brunton Theatre
Ladywell Way,
Musselburgh EH21 6AA
SCOTLAND
phone
0044 131 653 5258/9 or 0044 131 556 6637
licketyspit@blueyonder.co.uk
Or if you click on contact us... in the sidebar,
you can send us a message direct from this site.
NEW PROJECTS UNDER DEVELOPMENT
LicketyLeap!
Lickety-anyone, -anything, -anywhere, we can imagine!
A new experimental interactive project for 3-5 year olds.
Directed/lead by Virginia Radcliffe, designed by Ali Maclaurin, Sound and music, Tim Brinkhurst.
Licketyspit in association with The Brunton theatre, Glasgow City Council with support from the Scottish Arts Council.A new interactive theatre experience for 3-5 year olds.
Children often say they would like to come on stage and be in our shows, Lickety- Leap is a show where at last they can!
LicketyTales
Licketytales has been developed in response to frequent requests for productions outside the company’s Tours. Licketytales of Wee Witches and Molly Whuppie can be performed anywhere – nurseries, school halls, classrooms - with great ease and children seem enjoy them as much as the full scale productions. They are very interactive and so it is preferable to keep audience numbers under a hundred to give every child the chance to express themselves creatively and to be heard.
Magic Spaghetti
Licketyspit has had many requests to re-mount Magic Spaghetti, which as well as being a hugely popular and successful show had some impact on children’s ideas about Healthy Eating. Funding possibilities are currently being explored.
Autumn 2009 Hare and Tortoise
We hope to mount a new Licketyspit production of this play by Virginia Radcliffe and Deborah Arnott, in Autumn 2009.
Vikram Seth’s Beastly Tales
We are aiming to co-produce this production with The Scottish Chamber Orchestra early in 2010.
Lickety Expressive Arts Workshops
Licketyspit is currently developing a series of drama-led expressive arts workshops. We can offer these to Nurseries in response to the very positive feedback for the piloting/developmental nursery work which we have always done as we work up in tandem with new shows. (see education below). Licketyspit has real expertise in this area and is also happy to lead training session with teachers.
Licketyspit was launched in 2004 following the completion of the ground-breaking Wee Stories Early Years project (2001-3) directed by Licketyspit Artistic Director Virginia Radcliffe.
Productions
Spring 2004 - Wee Witches - 8 week tour to large and small scale venues across Scotland and to Cambridge Junction.
December 2004 - The Christmas Quangle Wangle , 3 week run in main house of Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
Spring 2005 - Magic Spaghetti - 9 week Scottish tour to nine venues for weekly residencies of performances, workshops and an Interactive exhibition about eating! Venues included Traverse, Glasgow Citizen's and MacRobert, Stirling.
Spring 2006 - Molly Whuppie - 9 week Scottish tour and Manchester Royal Exchange. Production toured with live harp and fiddle from top folk musicians Mary McMaster & Gavin Marwick.
Spring 2006 - Vikram Seth’s Beastly Tales development project with Scottish Chamber Orchestra and composer Rory Boyle and Scottish Nationat Theatre workshop.
Autumn 2006 - Molly Whuppie - 3 week Scottish tour.
December/January 2006/7 - Molly Whuppie re-developed especially for Christmas as a spectacular large scale production in collaboration with the Byre Theatre, St Andrews.
December 2006 - Green Whale new production opened for Christmas run in Main House of Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh before touring Scotland Jan - March 2007.
Spring 2008 – Heelie-go-Leerie new production for 9 week Scottish Tour Autumn 2008 – LicketyLeap new interactive production for 3-5 year olds.
Autumn 2008 – LicketyTales of Wee Witches and Molly Whuppie, touring.
PEOPLE
- Artistic Director Virginia Radcliffe
- Business Advisor Iain McFadden
- Sylvia Dow
- Martin Duffield
- Lucy Mason
- Lorna Saunders
- Liz Smith
HOW WE WORK
All Licketyspit’s work is developed with our youngest audiences of 3-7’s, usually with a nursery group (s), a P1/2 group and a group with special educational needs.
The process for each show tends to be slightly different. Generally, on a new show, Virginia will go into schools early on in the writing process and take drama workshops to try out her ideas. On Quangle Wangle, Designer Catherine Lindow also ran design based workshops, which had a huge impact both on the concept and design of the show and the writing. Once rehearsals begin, the whole company will regularly go into school and have groups of children teachers and parents, visiting the rehearsal throughout the process. The same children will then see a preview of the show. This enables them to get an insight into how a piece of theatre is made. It is of course invaluable to the company in making sure we get it right! – that our materiel and its and our relationship with the audience works. This is a fascinating process.
Virginia writes: 'As a writer/director, what I found through the early workshops we did, was that work for this audience can be more complex and interesting than I had first thought. There is a huge range of understanding among children of the same age and even more when ranged from 3 & 7. So each show has to work at quite a simple level but can also have more complex layers for children who want them.
'Also, children of this age love language. It’s one of the main things they’re engaged in learning about. They don’t at all mind not understanding everything they hear. as long as they don’t feel lost and alienated. Early Years children are well used to mapping their way through adult conversations and trying to make sense of them. They also find language extremely stimulating and of course love the rhymes, rythms, and sounds of words whether or not they understand them literally.
'We are frequently surprised by the aspects of the shows that children particularly connect with. I suppose because we are adults! which is why the workshops are so key. Often children’s responses to the developing work will send us in new directions we hadn’t anticipated. This connection with the audience is inspiring and keeps us rigorous about the work .It also means that other children quickly connect with the finished shows. We’re very happy that our audiences feel a real sense of ownership about our shows and I think this is why.
'In Licketyspit shows there tend to be common factors – the story works at a range of levels, no one section is too long, there is a lot of humour, there is a rapport with the audience (no fourth wall), strong visuals, music, catchy songs, poems and opportunities for joining in. We want our audiences to feel that our shows are happening ‘now’, when they are watching them and might be different if they weren’t there!
'These elements also make this work very accessible to children with special educational needs which Licketyspit is keen to support through additional pre-show workshops, touch tours of the sets and signers.
'I think one of the very interesting aspects of children’s theatre is that you have to make work that both fires the imagination of the audience and the imaginations of creative team. Consequently there is a real range of different sorts of theatre being produced for children. Which there should be!
'Wee Stories’ Andy Cannon always says ‘children like adults wanting to spend time with them’ and I absolutely agree. Children respond to being taken seriously as an audience and to being challenged and are capable of fantastic attention to detail. I find I can use everything I’ve learned in theatre, over 20 odd years, in the work I’m doing for children’s audiences now.
'We find that our work appeals to a wide audience of children and adults of all ages. This is because 3-7 year olds are such a great audience! The things that matter to them tend to be the big things in life – like overcoming fear, jealousy, love, fairness…..these don’t stop being important as we grow up! Also they have a great sense of humour. If you make work which entertains your target audience and yourselves then it can potentially entertain anyone and apparently, so far anyway, it does!'
© Virginia Radcliffe 2006.
EXTENDING THE IMPACT OF THE SHOWS
Children are incredibly attentive. When you make work for them nothing is wasted! We find that children remember the stories of our shows and re-create them. We try to make this easier in the way we do the shows, through repetition, opportunities to join in, catchy songs, poems:
Molly Whuppie dance,We often incorporate elements into the designs that children can recreate at home or school– like the Singing Ring joke in Molly Whuppie, or the Grannies with the shawls, or the Jumblies made of kitchen implements in Quangle Wangle, or the Hare wearing red tight on her head and the Tortoise a washing basket shell…etc
Molly Whuppie sing,
Molly Whuppie ran through the woods
and she went to see the King!…
Interactive Programmes
All Licketyspit shows have interactive programmes which are given free to every child seeing the show. These tend to have simple illustrations of key characters from the show, which can be made into puppets and used to ‘tell this story to somebody else or make up your own story’. We also include poems or songs from the show and some basic information about the company.
Books and CDs
We have produced children’ books based on both Molly Whuppie and Wee Witches, written by Virginia Radcliffe and illustrated by Catherine Lindow. These have been very popular and bought by a number of schools and libraries.
In 2007 Licketyspit produced an audio CD of Molly Whuppie with Harp and fiddle.
“In 2006 we had the chance to see you performing in your wonderful Molly Whuppie play in St. Andrews. Our daughter at this time only two was thrilled about the piece and wanted to take Molly Whuppie home. After some discussions we managed to convince her to go home on our own not without having acquired a book and the precious CD. Since then Marianne hasn’t stopped listening to the CD and at the same time she has never stopped loving Molly Whuppie. Unfortunately we are now suffering from a “crisis” as in a hire car the CD got lost… Do you think you would have the chance to save a little girls desperation and send us 2 more copies? Thank you for your help in advance and thank you for this wonderful play!!!” – Sabine Royale, Germany.
We also have audio CD’s of The Hare and The Tortoise, produced by Virginia Radcliffe and Tim Brinkhurst for the Wee Stories Early Years Project. The Times Educational Supplement wrote of The Hare and The Tortoise CD:
“Virginia Radcliffe (Hare) and Deborah Arnott (Tortoise) play almost all the parts and make an excellent job of the characters. They certainly kept me enthralled through a dreich afternoon train trip from Dundee to Glasgow. Aesop’s fable has been expended with a lot of byplay between Hare and Tortoise, a number of funny incidents – bairns will love the Bunn Brothers and the Spooky Wood – and songs and chants to join in. All will delight under-5s. Children appear as fans, spectators and cheerleaders, so there is a sensible interactive element. The 71 minute CD is divided into short sections, with enough repetition built in so that teachers can choose to use the story over several days. The last track is a 12-minute straight telling of the tale. A first-rate teachers’ pack is available, with lyrics, activities and suggestions for follow-up work.” Sheena Wellington. Teachers' packs
Teachers' packs are available to accompany all shows with resources and ideas for preparation and follow-up activities across the curriculum. Licketyspit is also experienced at delivering workshops for teachers to support their utilising our productions at school before and after their children have experienced a performance. 'Molly Whuppie kept us in Assemblies for weeks afterwards!', Edinburgh Head Teacher. (Molly Whuppie was also developed into a 3 month project at Graysmill Special School)
Family packs
We are planning to extend the Teacher Pack idea into a play resource for interested families.
Website
This website (designed and maintained by John Radcliffe) is in a state of continual development. Feedback from audiences can be found relating to all the shows.
Feedback forms
Licketyspit gets a lot of fascinating and invaluable feedback from its audiences through the post-show feedback forms.
EDUCATION
Because Licketyspit creates its shows at such close proximity to its audience, we are in a strong position to support teachers and parents to use our work as an educational resource.
The Teacher’s Resource packs are currently available to teachers accessing the show, for free and by email on request. These contain a short prose version of the show, script excerpts, ideas for preparation and follow-up activities which can be relevant to Drama, English, Environmental studies, Art & PSD. This work is highly relevant to The Curicculum for Excellence.
Lickety Expressive Arts Workshops
Licketyspit has a wealth of experience at delivering drama based workshops for Early Years children using a range of expressive arts – story-telling, play-making, music, poetry-making, design and visual arts. These can be delivered in tandem with productions and independently.
Continued Professional Development
Licketyspit is happy, where possible, to run drama based workshops for teachers. This can work well when a cluster of schools are accessing a week of shows at a central venue. We also offer free pre-show workshops to groups with special educational needs.
Licketyspit receives a huge amount of feedback from schools some of which can be found under ‘shows’ on this website.
SPECIAL EDUCATION
In Licketyspit shows there tend to be common factors; the story works at a range of levels, no one section is too long, there is a lot of humour, there is a rapport with the audience (no fourth wall), strong visuals, music, catchy songs, poems and opportunities for joining in. We want our audiences to feel that our shows are happening ‘now’, when they are watching them and might be different if they weren’t there!
We find that the above elements make this work highly accessible to children with wide-ranging special educational needs.
“In my work as a Head Teacher of a Special school I found my Early Years training was invaluable” (Licketyspit Board Member)
"My son is disabled and visually impaired and he loved all the different smells and music. It was great. Your company are so in touch with kids. Keep up your hard work. This was our second show, we saw Wee Witches, fantastic." Parent MS ‘05.
"Everyone in the language unit at Sunny Bank school loved the show – you just tell them! " Seven-year-old to teacher/Aberdeen’05.
"We had to write to say how much all of is at St Nicolas’ school (SEN ) enjoyed Magic Spaghetti. The children were totally mesmerised and drawn into the action." - Teacher "Two children with only echolalic speech have been singing independently, your spaghetti song, which is fantastic!…we are amazed by the children’s responses. " Teacher SEN school MS’05
"“It was lovely to hear him laugh. It was as if you’d written it just for him!" Carer of teenager with severe autism. Xmas QW ‘04
TOURING AND BOOKING
Licketyspit tours to theatres, schools and community venues. We tend to play theatres with a maximum audience of 500, commonly between 100 and 300 seaters. The shows are very physically demanding on the actors, so we aim to do a minimum of one day shows in each tour. We get large public audiences in theatres for weekend and school holiday performances and tea time shows mid-week.
Frequently a local authority will book several days or a week of day time shows and put us in one venue – which could be a school – and bring in other neighbouring schools by foot or by bus. This also makes it easier for the company to do additional workshops for children with special educational needs. Increasingly community performances in the early evening are being added to these. There is enormous scope for using performances of a Licketyspit production as the focus for other events for children and families. We have had a touring ‘interactive eating’ exhibition, dance, art, music workshops, special menus (eg 'Pobbles Pudding' and 'Orient Calf Noodles' at the Traverse, or 'Sugarina Biscuits' at North Edinburgh Arts!), Library picture competitions. We are really happy to support activities around the shows as much as possible and have lots of ideas!
If you would like to be on our bookers mailing/email list and find out more about booking Licketyspit please contact us on 0131 653 5258 or email to licketyspit@blueyonder.co.uk
Licketyspit is also interested in discussing co-production with venues and local authorities.