Space Play enables children and adults alike to experience a joyful sense of interstellar wonderment at Cardinia Cultural Centre in June and July.
Wave your hands and a cloud of asteroids surrounds you. Fly down to the moons of Jupiter and pass by the rings of Saturn.
Team up with friends, run around the space and move the planets and the stars.
Space Play emerged from an ongoing collaboration between Box of Birds and the artists and technicians from the University of Technology Sydney.
Box of Birds is a collective of artists working together to launch the virtual world off the screen and into the play spaces around us.
The idea started with Box of Birds director David Clarkson about 2011.
“My nephew is a gaming designer and I was seeing the crossovers between the theatre and gaming,” he said.
He reached out to the University of Technology in Sydney and made contact with Dr Andrew Johnston, co-director of the Creativity and Cognition Studios.
They started “a long and productive relationship exploring these crossovers between gaming technology and theatre experiences”.
“We were a little bit ahead of the curve.”
David said the idea was “to get kids off the computer screen and playing in the world around us with the same technology and maybe theatricalise it a little”.
Space Play will run at Cardinia Cultural Centre from Saturday 24 June to Sunday 30 July.
“It’s about a half-hour experience. Some kids last 15 minutes and some want to stay for three hours and just play for endless hours,” David said.
He said it was best suited for children aged 3 to 13.
“Sometimes some older kids are too cool for it,” he laughed.
“But adults play with it as well.
“When we did it in Adelaide, everyone was up waving their arms, throwing asteroids.”
Visit XXX for tickets and more information.
