Ella MacDonald and Emma James as Ella and Emma. Photo by Stoo Metz
When I was a kid I loved the book Funnybones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, a story about a child skeleton, his dog skeleton, and their grownup skeleton, and I also loved watching the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon series, but I don’t know that I have ever experienced anything before that connects this kind of fun Halloween-adjacent iconography children are exposed to around the idea of death with the practical reality of it touching their lives.
That’s just what Emma James and Ella MacDonald have done in their fun, inquisitive, and touching 50 minute theatre piece for all ages called THE SKELETON DANCE.
We are introduced to two young children, Emma and Ella, played by James and MacDonald, who have been left in the care of their thirteen year old cousin, Bailey, upon the death of their Uncle Trout. Despite the fact that it is past their bedtime Bailey is too upset to engage with them, or to go through their bedroom routine, and so they have been plunked in the playroom and are expected to amuse themselves. Emma and Ella have heard that their uncle has died, and they spend the duration of the piece exploring and processing what that means through engaging their imaginations and playing games.
The way the children engage with death as a concept is both incredibly charming and rooted in the real ways that we see the idea of death creeping into children’s consciousness. From competing over who can play a more dramatic death scene to connecting their dinosaurs stuffies to the idea of extinction, and some of the rudimentary science around fossils, to being engrossed (pun intended) in the more disgusting realities of death like the role that maggots play in burial, and the concept that, perhaps, after death, we become something else- and what might that be- James and MacDonald really capture the sense of wonder, confusion, and desire to have concrete answers to everything that children oscillate between when confronted with this kind of grownup topic.
Ella and Emma are portrayed both as children but also with a lot of the physicality and extreme expressiveness that we have come to associate with clown. Much of the delight we experience is in how the two children move, often climbing over one another, and getting into each other’s space, as you would expect from two young siblings. Brenda Duran has created adorable pyjamas for Ella and Emma, and incredible props- including giant juice boxes that allow the actors to actually drink water throughout the show, and dinosaur stuffies that transform into puppets in a truly hilarious and unexpected way. The sound design by Jackson Fairfax-Perry also works so well in following the kids whenever their happy playing suddenly dissolves into the grim reality that their uncle has died, and they confront the possibility that maybe this is going to change their lives forever.
James and MacDonald have done really well to integrate vocabulary that children often use, and the way that they mishear and misunderstand things, and rationalize their own interpretation to themselves. They also capture the energy of young children beautifully. There is room for them to keep playing with finding the unique speech cadences that children have, and to keep working on being really specific about how old Emma and Ella are. I got the sense that they were somewhere between five and eight, but I couldn’t always tell which one was older, which is always so important to siblings, and there could be a few more opportunities to play with how their ages create status between them- does the older one seek to protect the younger one at any point? Does the younger one idolize the older one? Even if they’re meant to be twins, children always grab on to even a few minutes of seniority they can lord over the other.
As a society we are not very good at dealing with death and with grief in ways that are helpful for the grievers especially, but also, I’m sure, for the dying. Children often are shut out of the process, as Emma and Ella are in this play, and we see how being removed from their parents at this critical moment creates additional fear and anxiety in them as they are left to their own imaginative devices when it comes to answering the big questions they have. Yet, at the same time children experience death just as adults do. I was five when my beloved grandfather passed away. My niece is three and just recently experienced the death of her beloved cat. THE SKELETON DANCE does a beautiful job of mirroring the grief experience of a child- who can be disconsolate in one moment and then fully engaged in a fun new game with their toys the next. Children live so much in the present tense; it’s one of the ways that they are magic, and this play celebrates that, and gives kids additional ways to connect with these ideas about death and dying in a safe, entertaining, and joyful little romp. I left the theatre with a light heart too- and what a gift that is in this world.
THE SKELETON DANCE is closed for now in Halifax, but there is more on the horizon. Visit this website for more details.
