Christian, Helen, Margaret, and Katalina

Christian and I just had a fantastic lunch with 11 year old Helen and her mom Margaret. Helen saw us perform our Mind Tripping show last August at the 2006 Indianapolis Fringe Fest. Margaret contacted us to let us know that Helen loved our show and to ask us to speak at Helen’s fifth grade graduation ceremony. We were thrilled that she enjoyed it, yet very surprised that she was only 11 years old.

As most of you know, we do not perform for children. Although our shows are family friendly, we perform primarily for adults. Our Mind Tripping show in particular is mysterious and freaky and makes you question your view of reality. When we finally got a chance to talk to Helen and ask her what she remembers about the show and what she liked best, she remembered quite a bit and was able to talk intelligently about the show.

We started to think about the fact that maybe we underestimate the thinking and comprehension ability of children, especially ones 10 and older. You definitely cannot entertain a group of five year olds as you can a group of ten year olds. Just like you can’t entertain college students the same as people say over 60. They require different approaches, different speech, and different humor. Sometimes these differences are slight - a subtlety or nuance to ensure understanding.

We thank Helen for giving us something to think about and to do some more research on!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under News from Christian & Katalina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.