Spike

Combining shadow puppetry and physical comedy Spike is an interactive experience for the whole family. Spike is the story of an echidna, who is stolen from his nest, and hatches from his egg far away from home.

A young girl finds him. She is playing alone in the bush because she is being bullied by other children. He has no spikes yet and she doesn’t know what kind of creature he is. She tries to work out where he comes from, but accidently puts him in dangerous situations—in the nest of a crocodile, an emu and a turtle. He feels frightened, rejected, alone. As the story unfolds, she helps him to discover where he belongs, and he helps her to find her own “spikes” and stand up to the bullies.

Show runs for 40 minutes plus question and answer time. Starring Jenny Ellis and written by Jenny Ellis and Anne Brooksbank, this project was proudly commissioned by the Australian Children’s Theatre Foundation.

Spike was written in collaboration with acclaimed author Anne Brooksbank, whose work has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Children’s Books 2012.