CHILDREN gawped at eerily coloured sci-fi scenes, played with an art exhibition they were encouraged to touch and laughed at the antics of a naughty rabbit.
Wheee!, Lakeside Arts Centre's international children's theatre and dance festival, returned yesterday to the centre at the University of Nottingham –and showed that you don't need CGI effects or 3D glasses to capture young imaginations.
One favourite was Wanted: Rabbit, a 35-minute play suitable for kids two and older about police looking for an escaped rabbit.
Kids also looked at – and played with – the puppets and gadgets in A Right Load of Stuff and Nonsense, an exhibition of puppets and machines by puppet maker and designer Marc Parrett.
Marc even included a post-it note wall where kids could suggest puppet ideas. Suggestions included "dinosaur", "dragon", "bear", and "the England Football Team".
For Lakeside director Shona Powell, the puppets are also intriguing because they are made of common household items. They are quite literally rubbish.
"Children can go home and make things out of stuff that would otherwise be thrown away," she said.
Then there was the Luminarium. The multi-roomed, multi-coloured inflatable complex had parents and kids queuing down its side waiting to get in – and raving about it when they got out.
Over the road in the Djanogly Gallery, First Cut - a more traditional art exhibition featuring works made with scraps of paper, also fired young imaginations.
The festival runs until Sunday, and they're saving some of the best bits until next weekend. In a side room, juggler, "mad scientist" and all-round entertainer Matt Pang rehearsed a complicated machine that goes through a series of increasingly comic manoeuvres to throw a ball.
"I toured it for the whole of last year," he said of the act featuring the machine. "But I'm redeveloping it.
"Last year it was a lot of things going wrong. Which is fine because you can work it in and make it funny."
Wheee!, Lakeside's International Children's Theatre and Dance Festival runs until Sunday with events all through the week. They include family plays Wanted: Rabbit (today), Paperbelle (Wednesday and Thursday), and Puppet State Theatre's The Man Who Planted Trees (Friday).
Visit lakesidearts.org.uk for a full schedule and details of the events.
