Come and Play: Interactive Theatre for Early Years Roma Patel, Holger Schnadelbach, Boriana Koleva Mixed Reality Laboratory, School of Computing Science, University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK {firstname.lastname}@ nottingham.ac.uk ABSTRACT The convergence of theatre and digital technologies can play a valuable role in theatre for early years, but, how an audience of under-5’s experiences and engages with these spaces is largely unexplored. We present an interactive performance installation and demonstrate how concepts from early years practice, in particular schemas, children’s repeated play patterns, can be used as a design framework. We integrated sensors and microcontrollers into objects, puppets, and scenography and invited eight groups of very young children and their grownups to explore the performance. We discuss how schemas are useful as a design and analysis tool in TEY, how schemas need to be expanded to include multi-sensory interactions with hybrid physical-digital objects, and how designers need to consider the roles of adults who scaffold interaction between very young children and their surroundings. Author Keywords Performance; interaction design; early years; tangible; children; theatre ACM Classification Keywords • Human-centered computing~Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms INTODUCTION Theatre for Early Years (TEY) refers to theatre for the under-5s and is often more challenging and experimental than other forms of children’s theatre [35]. The way young children process interactions through their embodied experience calls for a performance where the senses are central to the design. For that reason alone children’s theatre cannot be a simplified version of adult’s theatre. Recent research in neuroscience and developmental psychology shows that babies and toddlers have a remarkable capacity to learn and comprehend much beyond what was originally thought [5,9,15]. This challenges previous assumptions about the cultural and psychological value of theatre for very young children [35]. Children at this age engage with the world through doing, watching, touching and imitating. TEY audiences are therefore unpredictableand they have no concept of theatre conventions. However, these conventions are changing even in mainstream theatre. Interactive and immersive theatre has emerged, breaking down the barriers between audience and performer. It is more dynamic and is often preferred by TEY companies, but can be challenging and cost prohibitive [6]. An interactive format usually requires smaller audience numbers, tangible props, and spaces that can sustain curiosity, allow freedom of expression, surprise and time to play. Technologies and tangibles extend agency and imagination to an audience. and create unexpected and novel experiences that merge the tactile and the visual [10, 24, 28]. Digitally enhanced tactile objects could be a valuable addition to TEY because they appeal to young children. They encourage embodied mixed reality experiences beyond the screen and can have additional learning benefits [19]. Potential producers of TEY face multiple challenges. Interactive tangible technologies have not yet been closely investigated in TEY and many theatre practitioners do not know how to make use of them. The challenge is how to design experiences when there is very little related research, with the exception of [13,20,28]. Knowledge developed in education and psychology concerning children’s cognitive development, while theoretically available, has not found broader re-use in TEY production, and by itself, would not be enough for the development of more dynamic and grounded experiences. Finally, it is a challenge to break away from the concept of theatre in education s based on learning (often the motivation for TEY) and create professional children’s theatre with an emphasis on aesthetic and interactive experiences[35]. In this paper we address the emerging research around TEY by first introducing how children’s play patterns (or schemas) apply as a design and analytical framework for interactive props and scenography. We discuss how this approach can extend and support very young children’s play and interactions. We also consider how tangible technologies can move interaction beyond on-screen, in particular how DIY technologies can potentially extend agency in TEY and how finding the right balance between the performer and child interaction, materials and aesthetics require us to reframe our thinking. 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