With a Little Help From My Alien Friends: What makes a great show for kids?

The damsel in distress is a familiar trope of fairy tales. Her primary goal is to be rescued and married by a wealthy and powerful man, rather than to succeed through her own wisdom, strength and bravery. Cinderella is reunited with her slipper; Sleeping Beauty is kissed awake; Rapunzel marries a blind prince whose sight she restores by crying. Writing a show for children, I worked with my partner, the poet Harry Man (one half of our company, Fully Booked Theatre), to look at ways in which we could create a story where a strong lead female character could rescue the kingdom, and to re-evaluate the gendered stereotypes embedded in the idea of “happily ever after.” For instance, at the end of our story our princess does not end up getting married, she is anything but meek and there’s no sight of Prince Charming. The show, Space Rebel Princess, centres upon the story of a princess who is confident, clumsy and content with her own strangeness, while also being a visionary, a brilliant engineer, a space pioneer and a hero.