Kids

An important exchange of ideas about the nature and importance of culture for children will take place in London over the coming weeks. Initiated by the Swedish Embassy in London in the run-up to the Swedish Year of Young Culture 2007, which will see the country engage in a nationwide debate about its cultural offerings to its youngest citizens, Small Feet Go Far will encompass Swedish theatre, film and literature at events hosted by the National Theatre, the NFT, the Unicorn Theatre in Southwark and the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon. The festival will mean that families and schools get the chance to see some of Sweden’s best work for children as well as creating opportunities for discussion between both countries’ arts professionals. Feature continues

Suzanne Osten’s play ‘The Girl, the Mother and the Rubbish’, based on her book about growing up with a mother who suffered periodically from mental illness, is one of two productions that will open the festival at the Unicorn Theatre on Oct 11. The following day, after a rehearsed reading of ‘The Children of Medea’, which she wrote with Per Lysander, Osten will take part in a discussion on child psychology in the theatre. At a third event she will debate the topic of taboos in children’s theatre with our own Philip Pullman and Henning Mankell (who may be familiar as a crime writer; in Sweden he is also well known as a children’s playwright and director).

Pioneering, prolific and, above all, passionate about the importance of seeing things from the child’s perspective – these are the qualities that define Suzanne Osten. She’s a playwright, a director, a teacher – and for 30 years she’s been the artistic director of Unga Klara, Sweden’s largest theatre for children, a groundbreaking company with its own ensemble and two performance spaces that is part of the City Theatre of Stockholm.

I spoke to Osten on the phone before she arrived in London. Is the experience of childhood very different in Sweden, where formal schooling starts much later than in the UK, smacking is banned and parental benefits are the envy of the world?

‘There are differences, of course’ she says, ‘but there are more similarities’. She begins to talk about the powerlessness experienced by children wherever they live, then – suddenly – she corrects herself: ‘There is one huge difference: if you ask Swedish children, they know that they are not supposed to be beaten’. Returning to the theme of powerlessness, she says that children in both countries give similar responses when asked about their fantasies. Their concerns are about friends, family, pets, health, divorce – and fame. Osten’s take on the ubiquitous obsession with fame is an eye-opener for me. She interprets it as a manifestation of a universal longing for power. ‘I want also to be famous’ she declares, describing how, as she waited for the (excellent) reviews for a recent play, she was ‘ nervous, at the point of vomiting.’ She is an established director but those overwhelming reviews mattered because they gave her access to power and her immediate reaction was ‘Wow, it gives me power to do what I need to do, get what I need to get, buy the things I need.’