BWW Interviews: Sally Cookson Director Of We're Going On A Bear Hunt

We talk to Sally Cookson as she prepares for her new production of the wonderful Michael Rosen book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" to go into the Duchess Theatre this summer followed by a national tour.

Duchess Theatre
Wednesday 8th July - Sunday 16th August

What made you choose to do "Bear Hunt"?
One of the reasons was because it has been a family favourite in the household since my children were very tiny. My sister gave me the book as a present for one of the children when they were little. They both absolutely adored it and it became a kind of dog-eared and torn book that was used and read again and again and again. I just thought that it would make a very interesting piece of theatre for early years because it's so playful in its nature and had the potential to become very theatrical without being heavily text based.

So it has a lot of personal significance for you then?
Oh totally yes, very much so.

How did you manage to capture the sense of childhood adventure that is within the story?
Well we had a lot of discussions, especially with my designer, Katie Sykes, before we went into rehearsals and we umming and ahhing about that and we came up with the idea of making all the props out of household stuff, things you would find in the toy box, the play cupboard or in the nursery. Also classroom objects, so things like paint, paper, plastic and water. Once we had made the decision to use all of those early years play things it became not exactly effortless but it was the key to creating these wonderful environments. So rather than try and interpret them in a naturalistic way we've really stylised the whole adventure, so that for instance: the river becomes plastic buckets placed on towels with the performers filling them up with water; and, the grass is strips of plastic that look like the actors could have stuck them on themselves; and, the mud is brown children's poster paint that they pour into washing up bowls and then make hand prints with on huge pieces of paper.

Everything comes from an early years' play box and I think that this is one of the successes of the show. The children can immediately identify with the things the actors are playing with and we've heard that often  the children will go home and try and replicate what they've seen which they find they can easily do because it is objects they will find at home and not all high tech theatre stuff.

Giving the kids the sense they can go home and create the magic for themselves.
Exactly right. I suppose we're trying to just encourage the imaginative play which all children do so incredibly easily and effortlessly and I think that's what Michael Rosen does so wonderfully in his poems. It's an adventure into the imagination.

Was the design influenced by the Helen Oxenbury illustrations?
Not really, we thought that would limit us. The Helen Oxenbury illustrations are absolutely divine but once we had decided to go along the play box or classroom idea we took a much more stylised root. Having said that, we were influenced by the Helen Oxenbury illustrations when it came to interpreting the family, we have a dad and his children and there is a baby which is a beautiful puppet. Katie, the designer, used the watercolour illustrations as the basis for the costumes but the rest of the design is house hold objects used to create the look.

That sounds like it's been a lot of fun, I bet rehearsals were exciting.
They were, and very playful. It was very important to get on board a team and a group of actors who enjoyed that way of working because we devised and created it as we rehearsed, we had no script. I was very keen that we did not embellish the words of the poem too much, so the only narrative apart from the odd little line here and there is the text of the poem. The show has a very visual, physical emphasis and music is crucial to the whole thing. Benji Bower who is the composer has composed a wonderful score that really helps to bring the different moods of the environment to life.

But yes as you can imagine we had a great deal of fun rehearsing it, sometimes we would come across a few challenges, funnily enough it took us a long time to come up with how to do the snow storm. We wanted it to look very beautiful and take on a rather magical atmosphere but staying within the homemade feel, eventually inspiration came and I think we managed it. What was very interesting was we discovered through rehearsals that one of the themes is being brave and having courage and facing your fears. We really enjoyed exploring that and realised that even for very young children being scared is an enormous part of where they get pleasure from, being chased and hiding and being discovered, we have really emphasised that in the piece. There are a couple of moments where we take the children as far as we dare being scared but in a very safe and I hope enjoyable way.

I asked this question of Michael Rosen so if you don't mind I shall ask it of you as well: this will be the first theatre experience for some of the audience, what is your earliest theatre memory?
I do remember being taken to David Wood's the Owl and the Pussy Cat at the Polka Theatre and I must have been very young. Funnily enough he then gave me my first job as an actress as I was an actress for 10 years before I turned to directing, so it is very interesting that that was my first experience of theatre.