A good theatre performance can have the power of transporting you into the story and making you feel like you are emotionally involved in it. This makes theatre thoroughly enjoyable and allows you forget the worries of life for a couple of hours. It is an immersive experience for both children and adults. Some people take kids to theatre performances to expose them to the various kinds of beautiful art forms, which is a culturally enriching experience for kids and has a positive impact on them in the long run. There are lessons to take from the important topics discussed in good plays and it serves as a way of increasing knowledge.

Here are some benefits of taking children to the theatre:

• All-consuming sensory experience: Theatre introduces your children to aspects like lighting, live music, costumes and stage design in a way that they will never see in stories on a screen. Audiences are kept engaged with the live performance by the actors’ expressions, stage workings, character costumes, music changes according to moods, etc. All this makes for a complete sensory experience for children and they experience stories like never before.
• They will gain important life skills: Exposing kids to the theatre gives them many valuable skills in the long run, like a great sense of imagination and creativity, cultivate a love for stories, learning to communicate, etc. They also learn to work in a group, be disciplined, have better self confidence and be comfortable with speaking in public. All of these skills will come handy in a workplace later, so it’s good to incorporate these habits early on.
• Better patience: The constantly changing pictures in films and television try to hold the attention of otherwise restless children and keep them hooked, which hampers their ability to be patient. But a good live theatre performance can keep the audience hooked to it even for long durations of time as the story plays out in long scenes and a static set. Theatre performances teach children to sit still, slow down and pay attention for longer durations.
• Better communication skills: One of the reasons kids should do theatre is for better communication skills. Communication is an important skill in the real world and is valued everywhere. Whatever your child becomes in the future, they will need to communicate clearly with others. Theatre performances teach clear communication, and show problems caused from miscommunication. It also expands their vocabulary and shows new ways of communicating.