Every child has a story to tell if we just listen.

Byline: By Chris Speyer 

Chris Speyer, co-artistic director of Monster Productions, explains the importance of theatre for the very young.

BUT they're babies! You can't do theatre for babies!" These were the words of the then drama inspector for the Inner London Education Authority.

I began writing for under fives in 1978 when my wife, Katherine Ukleja, and I were running Theatre Kit in London. The move into under fives theatre was prompted by an occasion when we took Katherine's niece Annie, then aged three, to see a performance of one of our shows for children.

Finding that various aspects of the show frightened Annie, Katherine decided that we should develop a form of theatre tailored to the needs, interests and concentration spans of under fives.

Having overcome the initial scepticism of the Arts Council and ILEA, Theatre Kit's under fives shows went on to be enormously popular (and Katherine's niece grew up to be the general manager of Miracle Theatre Company).

Although I have written, and continue to write, for other age groups, `babies' have become my favourite audience. They are far more sophisticated and discerning than many believe, they are endlessly inquisitive, uninhibited and, if what you offer them is good enough, prepared to immerse themselves totally in the world you create.

I have a passionate belief in the importance of family and, springing from that, a belief in the importance of family members sharing experiences. I know we at Monster have done our job when parents and children are equally engaged in the excited chatter that follows one of our performances.

When Ieuan Einion and I established Monster Productions in 1999 our primary aim was to continue the work for under sevens that we had been creating for 13 years for Northern Stage at the Gulbenkian Studio.

In May this year Monster was awarded three year funding from the Northern Rock Foundation to research and develop theatre for under fours.

In the move to under fours, my family, again, played a part. It was the adoption of our daughter, Ming, that gave me an insight into the potential for a whole new theatre for the very youngest children. Ming was abandoned at the age of two months at Changsha railway station. She spent the next year in a children's home in China.

The trauma of abandonment had quite naturally left its scars and her development was retarded by the lack of interaction she had experienced during her time in the home.

Adoption itself, particularly inter-country adoption, is a traumatic process for a young child.

To help Ming heal and develop, and to learn how to best parent a child with Ming's history, Katherine (who is herself a trained therapist) and I gathered as much information as possible. In addition, we worked with therapists who specialise in infant trauma and family dynamics. This opened my eyes to new methods of interacting with very young children and taught me that even pre-verbal children are storytellers.

On one occasion I watched in amazement as my then 14-month-old daughter acted out the story of her life with her therapist.

On another occasion, in the garden, Ming, now aged three-and-a-half, stopped what she was doing and announced: "I have a story". The story she told us was this:

"There was a dragon and the dragon had a secret. The secret was a baby. The dragon hid the baby. The dragon was looking after the baby. The Mummy was looking for the baby. She couldn't find the baby. She was crying. Then lots of other mummies and daddies who know how to find babies when they are in secret places found the baby. They took the baby and put it in a cot. There were lots of babies."

Although Ming knows how we adopted her, we have not discussed the details of her abandonment. The poetic accuracy of her story astonished us. Other adoptive parents have reported similar experiences.

These accounts fly in the face of previously held theories of memory in pre-verbal children. They teach us that we should not make the mistake of believing that children only understand and remember what they can verbally express. Indeed the link between understanding and language is far more tenuous than we used to think.

Of course, children do not need to have been abandoned to have a story that they need to share. What story is more extraordinary than the story of our birth? I want to develop a theatre that honours childhood experience, exploring and reflecting the adventure of self-discovery.