Guest Post: Artistic Director Kate Cross On The New Adaptation of THE SECRET GARDEN and The Egg Turning 20
'What do children, theatre, climate change and disability have in common?'
The Egg Theatre is a pioneering space in Bath where children and young people discover the power of theatre. Each year, they present over 400 performances, run dynamic participation programmes, and champion accessibility. The Egg is celebrating 20 years of work with a new adaptation of Francis Hidgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Artistic director of The Egg Kate Cross told BroadwayWorld about the adaptation, the work of the theatre and why stereotypes need to be challenged.
What do children, theatre, climate change and disability have in common? The Egg thinks the answer might be found by adapting Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 children’s classic, The Secret Garden, into a play for a family audience.
Let’s talk first about climate change. Is it or isn’t it a suitable topic for a young audience?
At The Egg we take the view there are no topics that are off limits for young people (let’s face it, they are seeing it ALL online) but how one deals with certain topics is the critical factor.
My take on the ‘how’: as grown-ups we labour under the misapprehension that everything was fine until our generation came along and messed it all up, ‘kids, you’re innocent and well-meaning, which means that growing your own veg and buying your clothes on Vinted is actually in your Gen Alpha DNA and we’re counting on you’! This stance is fed and watered by guilt.
Really, we have been marching towards this point since at least industrial revolution number one which makes us no more ‘guilty’ than our forebearers, but prone to guilt as we are, we seek our forgiveness in ‘educating’ the young or worse still, devolving responsibility to them.
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Photo Credit: Jack Offord
When this then leads us towards depicting a post-apocalyptic parable for 7-year olds, is this wholly responsible? Conversely – is it appropriate to say ‘You’ve got this, take these wildflower seeds, go home and save the world, buttercup by buttercup’!
As our newly encountered Climate Narratives Consultant, Hannah Mulder, brilliantly explained to us, the work that art can do is not to portray the dystopia of our fears, nor the utopia of our hopes, but the thrutopia of our collective imaginations.
What’s more, the joy of a good climate narrative is to celebrate the notion of interdependence and connectivity: isn’t this the very embodiment of the reason why people go to the theatre in the first place, to feel a sense of transformation and togetherness we don’t experience in other parts of our daily lives, and to feel connected to those past, present and future through the lens of an artistic proposition?
When Tom Wentworth (playwright) and Steph Kempson (director) proposed this adaptation of The Secret Garden, what they imagined was a disability-led version celebrating the healing power of friendship, diversity, and nature whilst reframing its inherent ableist stance. *
Our Creative Access Dramaturg, Kate Lovell, is adept at reimagining story structures in a positive light and can deftly shift emphasis to a satisfactory outcome. We have enjoyed her activist wisdom balanced by compassionate pragmatism on a few projects now.
Kate has helped us grapple with some of the complexities of how disability is framed in the novel. For example, the character of Colin has an unnamed impairment that limits his life. He is depicted as dependent and miserable. ‘He does have fatigue and physiological issues’, she says ‘but he is mostly disabled by internalising the oppression that he is in receipt of by the adults who are obsessed with him being weak and incapable.’ He is wrapped in cotton wool that might as well be asbestos. One imagines a simple flip will correct this inherent ableism when actually, the complexity of the challenge is as eye-watering as a ‘bolt-on solution’ is careless.
It is when Hannah a identified that the novel centres the individual as the place in which change needs to happen, rather than looking at deeper systemic issues and structures that we found ourselves connecting Hannah (climate) with Kate (access). Both issues are symptoms of the perceived belief in dominance and subjugation, be that between ‘man’ and ‘the land’ or person to person (gender, disability) and if we could challenge these underlying structures then we could find the solution to some of the more superficial story beats.
This is all to say, trust me, we are creating a really entertaining, funny and exciting adaption of The Secret Garden that will entertain and enthral without resorting to tropes and oversights that perpetuate a status quo that got us here to begin with.
*The Egg is proactive in working with disabled artists and embedding into its work the social model of disability: the notion that people are disabled by societal barriers rather than an impairment.
The Secret Garden will run at The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath from 2-26 July
Main Photo Credit: Emile Clarke
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