Star in the Jar offers magical tale for kiddies in Crawley

Star in the Jar comes promised as a magical story celebrating sibling love, the power of kindness and the joy of doing the right thing.

Adapted for the stage by Pied Piper’s artistic director Tina Williams, Star in the Jar is based on the picture book written by Sam Hay and illustrated by Sarah Massini.

The Pied Piper Theatre Company believes in the magic of live story-telling and has been performing throughout the UK, Europe and Asia with inventive shows for children for the past 33 years.

Star in the Jar tells the tale of a little boy who stumbles across a special star. He puts it in a jar and takes it on adventures. But the poor star misses its home… Can the little boy and his big sister find a way to send the star safely back?

Lauren Fitzpatrick plays the sister Sarah and Mark Notley plays her little brother Sam.

Lauren is looking forward to her first experience of performing in children’s theatre.

“It’s the first time I have ever worked with Pied Piper Theatre. I did a workshop with Tina last year.

“We were working on the play, improvising it, and I was offered the job.

“What attracted me is that it is so playful and so much fun… and there is just something about performing for children.

“They are not judgemental. They are really open and receptive. They don’t have any preconceived ideas. A lot of them are coming to the theatre for the first time. It’s really good to perform effectively on a blank canvas.

“It is about two young siblings.

“They are playing in the park and they find a star and the little boy wants to keep it. It is his new friend. The older sister is a bit more responsible and says to him that they have got to find out who it belongs to.

“The character of Sarah is very confident. She is very independent and quite sure of herself and quite intelligent. The boy is more playful and loving. He has got a lot of love to give which is why he wants to keep the star. But he loves his sister and is influenced by her.”

Lauren sees it as a play with important underlying messages.

“I think the play could easily be just seen as children playing and running around, but actually there is so much more to it than that.

“It is about loss and it is about friendship.

“The boy has to give the star back at the end and he is OK with that. It is about letting go and it is about friendship. It is actually about quite mature themes.”

Lauren graduated from Guildford a couple of years ago.

It was a great training ground from which to launch her career.

“Guildford was a challenge because you learn quite a lot in a short space of time. You have to grow up pretty quickly, but it was really rewarding.

“At some points you wonder whether anything is going to come of this, but you have got to trust your instinct and trust all that you have learnt, and it has all gone pretty well for me since I graduated.”

And after appearing in a big community play, she is now relishing a different kind of challenge…

Tickets on 01293 553636 and www.hawth.co.uk.

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