Return to the Forest at Aviva Studios

Children’s theatre is often underestimated. There’s an assumption that, because it’s for kids, it must be simpler, softer, smaller. Theatre-Rites have spent more than 20 years challenging that idea, making work that insists young audiences deserve the same artistic ambition as anyone else. Return to the Forest is a brilliant example: a high-concept puppetry and dance show that smuggles big ideas into play, and gives children licence to push the boundaries of what a theatre experience can be.

Return to the Forest invites children aged 8+ to step inside a museum space filled with precious objects. When dusk falls, the objects begin to stir, as if they’re yearning to be freed. As the objects drift through the building, the audience follows, transported from the museum into the heart of a wild and magical forest – via spaces within the venue that are usually off-limits. This journey balances mischievous magic with a more serious undercurrent, exploring our relationship to objects, environments and the stories we tell about where things belong.

That balance is shaped through collaboration. Return to the Forest brings together Theatre-Rites and award-winning South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma, whose high-energy movement guides the journey, alongside the magical puppetry of Theatre-Rites director Sue Buckmaster. It builds on The Global Playground, their previous collaboration for Manchester International Festival 2021, which The Reviews Hub called “a playful, uplifting, deceptively simple dance confection… with an appealing, infectious energy and a clear message about the power of play.”

Rather than fixing its audience in place, Return to the Forest unfolds through movement and participation. With a limited audience size, children are guided through the building as the work develops around them, becoming part of the action. That feeling of being gently out of bounds – of wandering into spaces they might not usually be allowed into – is central to the show’s mischievous energy, carefully constructed to give young audiences a sense of agency.

What begins as playful transgression gradually opens onto more complex ideas. Without spelling them out, the work invites reflection on care and ownership, on museums as places with an ethical function, and on wider questions of ecology and colonialism. These ideas aren’t presented as lessons to be learned, but as experiences to be felt, leaving space for young audiences to make sense of them in their own way.

As with all of Theatre-Rites’ work, accessibility is built into the form. Return to the Forest is non-verbal and sensory-led, allowing audiences to engage on multiple levels. The work is also shaped through ongoing collaboration with children during its development, with small groups given behind-the-scenes access and a sense of authorship as the piece evolves across different venues. That process feeds directly into the live experience, resulting in a show that feels porous and responsive to the people encountering it.

Premiering at Aviva Studios before travelling to Sadler’s Wells East, Return to the Forest makes the case for children’s theatre as something ambitious – capable of holding complexity, asking difficult questions, and trusting young audiences to engage with them.