Stephen is a performance maker with a diverse practice working in the Theatre for Early Years field. He makes high quality and meticulously crafted original work.    

Project: I See Red

 

Session: 26

 

Delivery date: 4 February 2026

 

Present:  Stephen Noonan, Greg Cousins,  Dave Brown and Jason Sweeney

 

Location:  Upstairs Cirkidz, 27 Fifth St, Bowden SA 5007

 

Time: 9:30 am – 5 pm

 

Videos:

 

 

Red’s fourth appearance

https://vimeo.com/1162385039

 

 

Red’s last appearance

( this goes into a discussion about book ending the opening sequence of building 3D floor corflute structures and jumping over them with invited children and then posting all the final corflute sections through the chute)

https://vimeo.com/1163214051

​

 

 

 

 

The Little Red Button By Claude AI and Dave Brown

 

In a quiet world made entirely of white, lived a girl named Luna. Her white house sat on white grass under white clouds. Her white cat purred on white pillows, and white flowers bloomed in her white garden. Everything was peaceful and perfectly, purely white. One morning, a tiny red button rolled through Luna's front gate. It was no bigger than a marble, bright as a strawberry, and completely out of place. "Oh my!" said Luna, bending down to look at the little button. "You don't belong here at all." The red button trembled. It had travelled so far to find this beautiful white world, hoping to make some friends. But now it felt scared and different. "Please," whispered the button in its tiny voice, "I want to stay and be part of your world. But I don't want to turn white. Red is who I am." Luna picked up the button gently. She had never seen anything like it before. As she held it, something wonderful happened—the button's red glow made the white flowers around them look pink in its light. The white clouds above seemed to shimmer with the faintest blush. "You know what?" Luna smiled. "I think our white world has been waiting for you. Not to become white, but to help us see how beautiful we can be together." She placed the red button in the centre of her white garden. Now, instead of endless white, there was a warm, glowing heart that made everything around it seem more alive and special. And from that day on, Luna learned that sometimes the most wonderful thing about a world isn't how everything matches, but how beautiful it becomes when something different decides to stay just as it is.

 

 

The Two Worlds Idea

 

1. Familiar and the Alien 

2. the way we treat the unknown as alien, dirty, not to be trusted.

3. Needs differentiated musical voices - so that the RED world is heard and felt in the music as different.

4. The music plays with that … 

5. The music becomes a one Cue entity with clear (albeit unnoticed by the audience) sign-posts that orchestrate and support the action like a conductor with a baton. 

6. You’re writing music to a physical score - in a way that allows refinement as the performance finds its rhythms and relationship with its audience.

7. We can use QLAB for the segments first up and use those to refine timing and signposting. 

8. It essentially becomes a music-score and image-theatre-score (action-response sequences) that are held together by a lightly choreographic synergy.

 

 

What Is Stephen Doing?

He’s making an invitation to the children to participate in a game of his making.

This is how you do this. Just follow my lead and you’ll be fine.

 

• this is my home  base

•  I’m distributing some white cards through a chute for us to play a game with

• the first part of the game is to make a town of little white structures and then see what it takes to make them fall over 

• then second part of the game is to make a set of steps for a child to follow Steve to the home base and then receive a set of new postings  of some small white cards 

• the smaller white cards are then collected and taken back to where the kid is sitting. 

• the two sets of cards and given to the child to look after

• then 4 big cards are laid out - these big cards each have a particular kind of music attached to them

• then the 4 small cards are collected and they are triggered to make a percussion loop 

• Steve invites the chosen kids up to dance to the rhythm of the percussion loop

• then he triggers the sound of each of the 4 big cards

• then he picks each of the big cards up - trigger their sound and makes a stack of sound - percussion and the instruments.

• when he jumps off them, they stop. 

• The game was to involve the kids in this card, music, movement making adventure - so it’s cause and effect and involvement all the way … 

• Steve sets out to make a copy of the big rectangle with the kids involvement - and there should be a low key music attachments to this process that is designed to show that we can all contribute to the making of a lovely movement, card, music compilation together … and it’s all lovely and complete and perfect.

• but there’s a piece missing - so it’s not as perfect as he would  like - and what is actually missing is the thing that’s been trying to be a part of it all - all the way along - but it has been rejected by him as the alien unknown or the thing that doesn’t belong … but of course it can belong and it makes things richer and more amazing for its presence and inclusion. 

 

So the game is - I want you and I want to make this lovely world out of these lovely white cards and their music - and I can show you exactly how to do it … 

 

He grows to see - with the help of the children that you don’t need to be stuck in your preconceptions about things - loosen up and be open to possibilities - it doesn’t always need to be “no! I know  how it goes. This is how it should be. No -that does not belong here. What if Steve says yes, what if he lets himself be changed and takes a chance on something new and different”

 

 

Proposed costume below:

black t-shirt , black shorts, black shoes and black socks. This is set against a design of red and white corflute.