Imagine going to the cinema and becoming part of a pop-up orchestra who create every single sound FX and the musical score! The Enchanted Cinema’s new touring project, The Orchestra of Enchanted Sounds, invites kids and their grown-ups to join a pop-up orchestra playing unusual, delightful and ingenious instruments from a festoon-lit FX “tree-house” to bring to life scenes from much-loved animation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, celebrating 60 years of the book’s publication, paired with equally-cherished My Neighbour Totoro (4 excerpts).
This from the Guardian on Sendak’s own background growing up in a Polish-Jewish family in Brooklyn.
To his millions of readers, of course, Sendak will always be young, a proxy for Max in Where the Wild Things Are, who runs away from his mother’s anger into the consoling realm of his own imagination. There are monsters in there, but Max faces them down before returning to his mother for reconciliation and dinner. Sendak’s own exile took rather longer to resolve. The monsters from Wild Things were based on his own relatives. They would visit his house in Brooklyn when he was growing up (“All crazy – crazy faces and wild eyes”) and pinch his cheeks until they were red.
Sound FX include a creaking porch, a river, magical chimes for a giant tree, a tinkling bell for Totoro’s whiskers, or the roars and eyeballs of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things (you may well ask) and much, much more. We may even invite grown-ups to recreate Totoro’s snoring.
Every child gets a chance to be involved if they choose to, with older kids rising to the challenge of playing the xylophone or narrating the Wild Things animation live and younger ones delighting in the “cicada” shakers or “tree-frog” guyros.
The atmosphere is very inclusive and light-hearted and each show also features a live musical score by The Enchanted Cinema. The animated films are suitable for ages 4+.
TIMES
12.00-13.00
14.00-15.00
This event is part of The Orchestra of Enchanted Sounds Tour.
