The Shivers, by emma + pj

The Shivers from emma + pj, set to wow young audiences aged 7-11 with its explosive soundtrack, live video trickery and larger than life characters. This ingenious piece of theatre is the perfect conversation opener for grown-ups to talk to children about spotting misinformation, how to stay safe online and trust their intuition. The Shivers will tour to six venues in the region, with two of these also offering audiences a post-show space for them to stay and talk about its themes together.

We caught up with creative team Emma Clark and PJ Stanley from emma + pj to find out more about what audiences can expect.

You developed the show through workshops in collaboration with children and teachers in the London borough of Camden. Can you tell us a bit more about this and why it was important to you as artists?

The show was originally commissioned by New Diorama Theatre through their primary schools programme, including an extended co-creation process with primary age young people and their teachers in five schools across the borough of Camden. At the beginning, we had a handful of ideas about themes and references we were interested in, but we held back on crafting the characters and story until we were deep into the workshop process with the schools. It was a brilliant opportunity to understand this age group’s interests, creativity, and understanding of the world, and ensured that the show was made with and for its audience.

It can be difficult to encourage children aged 7-11 to see live theatre shows. What do you think makes The Shivers such a fun experience for children in the age range?

It’s an extremely energetic and funny show, designed to move at the pace of an action-adventure story. Seven to eleven is quite a wide age range, so we worked hard to ensure that the show was full of colour, movement, and silliness for the younger children alongside complex characters with challenging and satisfying story arcs for the older children.

The three actors are unbelievably versatile and charismatic and are so skilled at drawing all kinds of audiences into the story (adults included). The show also has a lot to offer in its visuals and sound design – there are big sequences making use of live video and green screen, which are techniques that many in the audience have never had the chance to get up close with before.

The show incorporates some clever technology, what did this allow you to do creatively?

We wanted to use live video in a way that would feel magical but accessible to the young people, linking the themes of misinformation to the experience of watching the show. In R&D, we experimented with a green screen system that plays with the disconnect between what the audience is seeing on screen and what they are seeing in live space. These tools also helped us to build the world of our main villain Miss Information, who is glitching colours and sounds to take over the world’s information.

The show has a 1970s spy thriller vibe, can you tell us why you chose this style and a bit more about the characters?

We knew we wanted the show to have real pace and high stakes, along with plenty of the intrigue inherent in the themes (and to keep the attention of the age group). From the workshop process we learned just how well-versed this age group is in terms of genre storytelling, including tropes from action, adventure, fantasy, video games, cartoons, even police procedurals! The spy genre felt ideal for a story that was orbiting around misdirection, ambiguity, and a fuzziness between true and false. We also enjoyed drawing from our own childhood references like Spy Kids as well as lacing the show with loads of jokes for the adults that feel more in the world of James Bond or Slow Horses. Most of the characters are drawn from this fun, pulp genre with a modern twist to engage the young people who might be more familiar with Marvel than Mission Impossible.

And finally, what are you looking forward to about taking the show out on the road across the South East?

After several rewarding years touring schools, this will be the first fully-fledged theatre tour for The Shivers. It’s always a privilege to connect with new audiences away from home and introduce them to our work. PJ is also from Hampshire and we were artists in residence at The Spring (our first tour stop) a few years back, so it’s also something of a homecoming away from home. We always learn a lot as artists from sharing the work in different contexts, and we’re excited to see what new things we can discover about the show during its South East adventure.