Every Princess Needs a Castle

Or, at the very least, a cardboard fortress.

Collaboration is one of my favorite things. Being able to work with a small group towards a common goal sounds a lot like group projects (which tend to go badly) but if the people you are working with are creative, smart, and imaginative then it’s really exciting for me.

And if you think about it, it’s really just magic when it comes together. I mean, group projects can be a disaster, but you really never know what someone else might come up with and might change the trajectory of whatever you’re working on.

It’s a small tickle of an idea and then with the input and ideas from others, the idea snowballs into something bigger.

That was the energy that crackled throughout the room that I was in on Saturday.

I was really excited to have been invited to see the show called ‘Forts! An Interactive Experience‘ at The Children’s Theatre Company. After seeing each production over the last few years, I’ve learned to resist knowing as little as possible before I see it and this was no exception.

All I knew was that it was interactive and it was a no shoes event.

On Saturday afternoon, my friend Sophia and I were let into one of the theatres, along with about a dozen other kids and their grownups, and saw mountains of cardboard boxes.

The goal? Build a fort.

And that was it. Build a fort.

So we got to work. But it was play, which is the best kind of work.

Our first attempt failed but it didn’t matter. We were having too much fun to care. We slipped into a world of living room couch cushions and blankets and cardboard and creativity.

The sounds of the room were laughter and chaos and the sounds of being a kid. You could hear and almost FEEL the rain, the lights dimmed as night approached but the flashlights kept things bright.

Once our fort was done (which we named Fort Adequate), it was explored by crawling kids while we looked what they built.

The whole afternoon we felt a little silly, but it was the best kind of silly.

And honestly I think the grown ups had more fun than the kids.

This is an impossible show (is it a show??) to describe in a sufficient way. Like our fort, my describing the fun is only adequate. It doesn’t come close to how much FUN it is.

But that’s something you should find out. Again, I go in blind to a lot of these shows and this is one where the less you know, the more fun, the more magical of an experience you will have.

Thank you to The Children’s Theatre Company for an afternoon of play.

Love, Hannah