Side by side. A story, a house and a relationship are built – both metaphorically and literally – with the help of the young audience. A production that proved a great hit with young and old alike returns to the Young People’s Stage at exactly the right time. Now, more than ever we need to remind our children that in order to rebuild what we have lost, we have to overcome our differences and stand side by side. As the director of the production, Fivos Simeonidis, notes: “What we want is to show children that however different you are from someone else, cooperation is the natural answer.”

Multi-award-winning children's dramatists Angelos Angelou and Emi Sini, founders of the Copernicus theatre group, are once again working together at the Young People’s Stage on a production that raises a number of productive questions: What materials go into the making of houses, buildings, relationships, patience and trust? How should we deal with obstacles and setbacks? How do we handle our mistakes? Can we manage on our own or is it better to ask for help? Should we share our ideas or keep them to ourselves?

The key themes of this production, which is all about creating, experimenting and improvising, are friendship, the value of cooperation and effort, perseverance, the joy of success, but also coping with failure: concepts that concern all children of school and pre-school age. The characters struggle, investigate, get tired, build, demolish and in the end realise that four hands are better than two. 

Fivos Simeonidis directs a colourful production with a nod to silent cinema and slapstick comedy, and creates a space for interaction with children. The production’s young audiences engage with a funny, fabulous, moving story that unfolds in an unorthodox building-site set. They are encouraged to play an active role in this “constructed” pandemonium, coming up with ideas, providing support, building, demolishing, answering questions and advising the characters at key moments in the story.

This is a moving and hilarious production for audiences of three years old and over that reminds us all that everything we do is like a job on a building site, whether it's for a house, a friendship, a creation or even life itself.