Who Decides?

'Who decides?' is a great little story with very many good points to children. It shows in the finest and funniest way how different we humans are, and most importantly how important it is that we embrace the unknown and do not let us scare. We can learn from each other and become better people.
All children, their parents, aunts and uncles - everybody should see this performance.

Director and playwright Methe Bendix has created a truly beautiful, entertaining and relevant performance that certainly takes children's theater to a whole new level. Anne Dalsgaard and Katharina Kamber manage to make the show so playful and musically enlightening.

Two girls have been sent to day care. Two totally different girls who do not know each other. The caretaking takes place in something that looks like a garage or workshop - with two shelves filled with colorful plastic cutlery, kitchen utensils, old bicycle wheels and a lot of other knick-knacks, a workbench and an old projector. “The caretaker” is a kind of Big Brother voice that gives the girls small hints as to how they should interact and what to do. But who of the girls are to decide when no adult is present?

One of the girls is proper and practical. The second is creative and impulsive. They do not resemble each other at any points, and one will in many ways just like to play alone. We see them sorting things as the caretaker has asked them to. One takes all the great gold and silver things, and gives the other girl the so-called "ugly" things. The things that do not fit. The creative girl turns on the projector, and suddenly it is the "ugly" things that are beautiful. They create beautiful stories and the projector is used throughout the whole performance.

With this approach the girls find the interesting sides in each other. They discover characteristics that they wish to be in possession of, and learn to look beyond themselves. The girls meet each other in the middle, and realizes that the shape that they each see as either a duck or a rabbit can easily be both. They learn that we as humans can easily be both.

Creativity flourishes, they are playing and most importantly, they both decide. Together they create a crazy play to delicious music, that quickly gets the youngest in the theatre up and dance. Especially the funny sound effects with perfect timing creates a joyous feeling. Together we feel love of kind and a blossoming friendship.

Two little girls have been sent to day care in a kind of a workshop. A room full of shelves, with knicks and knacks. The girls are quite different in mind, though they are quite alike to look at. But they like their own kind of stuff. It is indeed fortunate. But the girls have to learn to see it for themselves. One man's garbage is another's gold - and they are creating and building and who decides? Which angle is right? Which perspective gives the correct view?

The two girls spend every button on the stage, and it becomes quite magical. First they build a large useless construction, but suddenly everything flows, and the girls get all the jugs and vases and gizmos fixed to the construction, and to a symphony of a soundtrack they create an absolutely wonderful dance and installation, exactly when children and adults alike are in play, in flow. Both as a child and as an adult you feel excited.

The two actresses, Anne Dalsgaard and Katharina Kamber, perform refreshing well. The performance is incredibly worth seeing and stimulating for children. After the show, I could sense it in the children’s play.
It is a joy to observe the clear flow in the actresses´ bodies. We sense how good it is to cooperate and accommodate each other's differences and build on it.
A good idea would be to extend the experience with a workshop where the children are allowed to create images of things on the projector or build cages or sculptures of objects or garbage – just like the girls.

Teater Hund & Co. har just become “City Theatre” in Copenhagen - and congratulations to them - we are looking forward to see the results of that!
We send five large stars and say: "hurry up, go see it!" Congratulations to director and playwright Methe Bendix.