Theatre-Rites

One of the UK's most celebrated theatre companies for children imagines a world that celebrates its rubbish; where at the touch of a puppeteer's hand, the contents of a bin bag can come alive before your eyes. Inspired by a culture which encourages us to constantly update and disregard, Rubbish will show children waste materials in a new light, celebrating all those unloved objects left behind. A duckling formed from old tea things that have lost their shine, a bin bag boy, and a jovial shoemaker crafted from old leather and the tools of his long lost trade; all valuable scraps from Rubbish's magical junkyard brought to life onstage.

Four excavators don protective gear as they rummage and scavenge through a mound of bin bags brimming with unloved rubbish. Out of each bag an animate figure is born, discordantly composed from discarded objects, and sometimes helping to build itself. The performance shows young audiences the skills and processes puppeteers use to give life to inanimate materials.

In the spirit of reparation and re-invention Rubbish is inspired by a cabaret format, introducing the re-invented form for a younger generation as each bin bag tells its own tale in a series of vignettes. By exploring old forms in new ways, Rubbish aims to jettison the economic notion of value and to re-discover time honoured ways of respecting and keeping. By representing and re-creating scrap as characters onstage, Rubbish will allow children to engage with contemporary problems of national wastage in a fun and curious environment.