By Natalia Ramírez
It’s Christmas time, and the Quad Theatre is welcoming back a family production by Scratchworks Theatre Company in collaboration with The Barbican Theatre. This performance is directed towards younger audiences and combines puppetry, storytelling and live science experiments, all within a fictional world where we will be invited to follow the journey of mystery.
Our story settles on the small and snowy town of Seldomberg, where our hero, Faina, will find herself with a lot of trouble on her hands before she can hand in her final project.
Starring Sian Keen as Faina, together with Laura Doble as Astrid, and Alice Higginson-Clarke as Maude the talking owl, and written in collaboration with writer Jack Dean, this show takes on the challenge of mixing spectacle and narrative to sustain its younger audience’s attention during the two-hour run time.
Whether you are a kid and your school took you to a field trip, a teacher who is in charge, or simply an ordinary spectator of any age, you’ll notice that a lot is going on at the stage at all times. Kids engage from the very beginning and are invited to participate in a journey into the unknown.
Using a script full of music and scientific experiments with very committed acting skills, the protagonists must fulfill various roles, including narrating, performing different characters, puppetry skills, and even dancing and singing alongside the audience.
Highlights and representation
One of the many highlights that this performance offers is the fact that all main characters are played by women. Scratchworks Theatre company is a female-led enterprise that is run by these three creative women: Higginson-Clarke, Doble, and Keen, who have now created an encouraging role for women in science.
This is refreshing to see, especially when performing in front of young minds who might find some inspiration in them when pursuing future careers.
From the start, we see that Faine, our protagonist, struggles in the science academy since there are others at school who doubt her capacities. This doesn’t stop her, and we are all invited to join in her exciting and adventurous journey.
The use of special effects and dynamics keep the audience committed, especially those of a younger age, but not only that, but we can also see how these activities help the children engage with different science experiments and understand some scientific terms, such as fluid dynamics. Throughout the play, different members of the cast ask for volunteers, which will cause curiosity in the rest of the audience, and their attention will be stimulated.
The show carries on with several themes like problem-solving, forgiveness, friendship, curiosity, mystery, but most of all, it teaches us how it is okay not to know everything sometimes. It explores the idea of failure and how even that can become a part of a scientific discovery.
Experimental Theatre
At the end of the show, we had the opportunity to interview Alice, who admitted the experiments are her favorite part.
She said: “I love science experiments, but my favourite one, kind of because it can’t go wrong, but it’s very amazing, is the drop of doom. There’s always a little bit of uncertainty, but I’ll always remember when I first saw that drop of doom.
One of my personal highlights was the multitasking skills that each member performs. They are constantly shifting between storytelling, science experiments, puppetry, music, and movement.
Alice said: “It’s pretty exhausting. Every show takes a lot out of you because you’re constantly doing something. Even if you’re not speaking, you’re always getting a prop or preparing a puppet or creating sound effects on the music station.
“And it’s just our style of theatre that we’ve developed from when we first founded the company in 2013. So we always like to put lots of different elements into the show, puppetry, singing, movement, all of that. We just like to keep and fill our shows with lots of different styles to really engage the audience on many levels.”
Credits:
Christmas Production 2025
Engna/Faina Rasmussen – Sian Keen
Mythna/Astrid – Laura Doble
Zoona/Maude – Alice Higginson-Clarke
Music by Lucie Treacher
Set & Costume Design: Fi Russel
Puppet Design: Chloe Benbow
Set Building: Jay Kerry
Props & Set Additions: Lizi Bennett
Technical Stage Manager: Nathan Benjamin