Wilde about this winter treat as The Selfish Giant comes to Fareham and Havant

They will be performing the children’s show at Ashcroft in Fareham on December 12 and then The Spring in Havant from December 21 to 23.

But, as with so many of us, this was not how they planned their 2020.

‘We made the show a couple of years ago in 2018 and it's toured a lot since then,’ says Tessa. ‘This Easter just gone we were supposed to be doing quite a big tour and going up into Scotland for the Puppet Animation Festival. The Ashcroft and the Forest Arts Centre (New Milton) were booked in for that tour – we've rescheduled them twice now, once to November and now back to December, and then The Spring is our little Christmas run.

‘It's just those three venues, which is going to be lovely.’

Although it has been ‘a rough year’, Tessa has found that being adapatable has been the key to survival.

‘There are benefits to being creatives – we're very used to coming up against a brick wall and having to find a way round it or over it or under it.

‘Where my theatre company is very small – it only has two or three permanent members of staff – although that meant we weren't eligible for most of the emergency funding, which was a shame, it's meant that we can do quite drastic U-turns and rejig how we make work.

‘We had a funding grant from the Arts Council just before lockdown to tour one of our shows across the UK. We wrote to them and said: “Can we reuse this to make a digital online piece?” And they said we could.

‘We've released a digital, interactive, choose your own adventure-style adaptation of a show we made last year called The Anarchist’s Mobile Library, and that's now doing a digital tour.

‘We're in quite a fortunate position in that we've got The Selfish Giant touring both live, and because we've got a recorded version of it, The Spring is offering that out to people to watch at home too. So we've got digital stuff and the live shows. We're doing alright but it's a bit of a rollercoaster in many respects.’

The Selfish Giant was originally created with Soap Soup Theatre, a company started by Tessa’s friend, Tomasin Cuthbert Menes.

‘Soap Soup’s work quite often adapts traditional stories, and my work normally devises original work from scratch. Tomasin approached me for The Selfish Giant. There's so many beautiful elements in it, and it's kind of wintery without being too festive so it's a good one to put on in the winter for people who might not celebrate Christmas – it's got that traditional story about someone learning a lesson and there being retribution in the end.

‘But we also really enjoyed the challenge in maknig more accessible to audiences of today.’

Wilde’s original short story contains some heavy-handed Christian allegories at the end, which they decided to change.

‘The story starts really beautifully. Then it's almost like he took a couple of weeks off, and in that time someone had rapped him on the knuckles and said: “This needs to be more religious”,’ she laughs. 'It's quite an abrupt change of tone.’

Now, the focus is on the unlikely friendship between a little girl and the giant, Grinter.

‘It's more about their friendship and learning the lessons from that. We also wanted it to have this circle of life – a going-through-the-seasons feel to it.

‘Hopefully we've done the story justice but given it a nice fresh twist.’

Tessa and Tomasin were the original performers in the show, but with the latter taking time out to become a mother, Stevie Thompson is joining Tessa.

With so many in the arts world struggling for survival, Tessa says The Selfish Giant is a perfect example of how much goes into creating a new work – all of the different skills and the freelancers they take on, many of whom have been ineligible for financial support.

‘I don't think people realise how many are involved in putting together a show. To make a show like this we employed 18 people, and there's only two people in it.

‘There's a professional dyer who died all the fabrics for the set, there's a costume maker, movement director, dramaturg director, lighting designer, two puppet-makers, it's a huge operation. I think it cost us around 50 grand to make, and that's just to make a small-scale two-person show.

‘It just goes to show the iceberg-effect in theatre – what you see on the stage is a tiny little part of the process and the team, there's this huge machine whirring in the background.’

The show has also been changed a little, to adapt to the current circumstances.

‘It's as safe as we can make it

‘And the important thing for anyone coming is that we've rejigged it, so we no longer go into the audience, we don't have physical contact, but we do have verbal interaction.

‘This show is very sumptuous visually – it's a real visual treat, so we don't need to rely on any of those classic pantomime-y things, and the puppetry is so gorgeous, so hopefully even from a distance we can draw the audience in.’

THE SELFISH GIANT

Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham, December 12

ashcroft.org.uk/event/selfish-giant

The Spring Arts Centre, Havant, December 21-23

thespring.co.uk/whats-on/family/the-selfish-giant