Do you know a toddler? Have you tried to communicate with them? Then you know the meaning of the word “babble.” That incoherent, jumbled-together sound that resembles but isn’t quite a word. It’s amazing how somehow we learn to translate this foreign language after spending some time with them.
“Blippety-blue? Oh, you’re hungry.”
“Meeepphhh? Ah, you want your blankie.”
“Gippooomy? Yes, here’s your toy.”
Autumn Ness, a Waconia native, actor, and playwright, understands the importance of these early babblings. This spring, she authored and starred in Babble Lab at Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. The show - targeted to a preschool audience - is all about the power of one’s voice.
“It’s a show about language,” she says. “And the joys and struggles we have learning to express ourselves and communicate.”
For Autumn, it’s not a show made only to entertain kids. Babble Lab comes from her experience as a mother of two sons.
“This story is very personal,” she says. “Both my children struggled in their development of spoken speech and then later with reading and writing. You start to see that children have a strict right and wrong put on them about how to use language and communication. The power of your words should be magical, musical, playful, and fearless. That’s what I want for preschoolers who see our play.”
Autumn notes that holding preschoolers’ attention requires a bit of effort, experience, and a healthy dose of patience.
“Preschoolers are a wild audience!” Autumn says. “We take great care to think about all the details that could make the theater scary or confusing. We check seating, lights, sound levels, the length of the show, and the pace. Everything needs to be geared toward their developing brains and bodies.”
She adds that the plays for this young audience have a structure with moments where the children can go wild and then moments when they’re drawn into a small detail that requires more focus.
“It’s almost a zoom-in, zoom-out mentality,” she says. “The kids are so in the moment, so you, as the actor, need to be in the moment also.”
Autumn has been working in some capacity for family audiences for 25 seasons, so she knows a thing or two about entertaining kids.
“Children are the most rewarding audience,” she says. “Kids are so responsive. They have no qualms about yelling up to the stage to tell your character what to do next.”
She also says experiencing theater at a young age is important for kids.
“Theater is all about the empathy muscle and seeing something on stage that tugs at your heart,” she says. “Experiencing that at a young age changes you forever.”
At age nine, Autumn got her first taste of theater when she was cast with Children’s Theatre Company in Hansel and Gretel. She never looked back.
“I was completely hooked on telling a story to an audience,” she says.
Autumn has been in more than 75 different productions with Children’s Theatre Company, including roles as the stepmother in Cinderella, Mrs. Wormwood in Matilda, Fiona in Shrek the Musical, and as a solo performer in The Biggest Little House in the Forest. She’s also a youth theater instructor and received a fellowship and award to develop programming geared to children on the autism spectrum.
She’s currently performing Babble Lab in Atlanta for their preschoolers for the summer but is returning to Minneapolis to appear in upcoming productions at Children’s Theatre Company.
Visit childrenstheatre.org for tickets and more information.
It’s a show about language. The joys and struggles we have learning to express ourselves and communicate.