Songs, puppetry and adventure abound in One Tiny Penguin. A brand-new show for ages three and older, the production is the latest festive-season offering from Birmingham Hippodrome’s acclaimed My First Musical scheme. Written by Julie Tsang and Jordan Li-Smith, the story follows title character Lumi on a globetrotting adventure from the North to the South Pole. 
What’s On chatted to Julie, along with the play’s director, Laura Ryder, to find out what’s in store for Lumi, his friends, and One Tiny Penguin’s family audiences this Christmas…

A brand-new musical for brand-new theatregoers slides into Birmingham Hippodrome’s Patrick Studio this month.

Co-written by Julie Tsang and Jordan Li-Smith, One Tiny Penguin features a puppet penguin on a journey of self-discovery. Aimed at audiences aged three upwards, it promises to be an ideal introduction to the world of musical theatre. 

Julie met Jordan on the Hippodrome’s residency for playwrights, writers and composers, when the pair proposed a children’s musical to be developed at the theatre this festive season. 

“We had an intensive two days, which was just a delight,” Julie told What’s On. “A bit of playfulness to discover if it was something that we wanted to do. At the end of it, you could match up with someone - a bit like speed dating - and pitch your ideas.”

The story which Julie and Jordan pitched concerns Lumi, the ‘tiny penguin’ of the title, who lives with polar bears in the North Pole - a place which penguin fans will know is not the bird’s natural habitat.

“That’s his family,”explains Julie. “That’s the world that he knows, and it’s a really beautiful, lovely and loving, caring world, but he does feel a little bit different. 

“He’s tasked with going on a huge journey to the South Pole, to get some ice to help light up the Northern sky. On the way, he meets lots of penguins - in Chile, in South Africa.

“Jordan and I were talking about being of mixed heritage and coming from two different backgrounds. When you spend time in that heritage, you feel like you belong, but you’re still a bit different.”

“I read the script and I fell madly in love with it,” says Laura Ryder, the show’s director. “It’s beautiful. It’s a really rich story. I was excited by how ambitious it is in terms of its storytelling and its scale, but also how ambitious the Hippodrome are with their production and the quality of what they want to make for children.”

The ongoing development of One Tiny Penguin is supported by the Hippodrome’s My First Musical scheme. The initiative is now in its third year - following the success of newly produced children’s musicals The Jingleclaw and No Such Thing As Wolves.

“They’ve really supported us; they’ve helped us through that journey,” says Julie. “I don’t think there are many theatre venues that would do that, especially when you’re going into something new you’ve never done before. It’s been lovely to know that you can take risks, make mistakes, and that it’s okay because everyone’s in it together. It feels very collaborative.”

The scheme is intended to foster working relationships, and then at the end of the process to present high-quality theatre for younger audiences. This makes for a dynamic and collaborative environment, according to Laura: “It’s been great to get scenes on their feet, and then Julie and Jordan will walk away and rework them and play with them in live time. To have such a rich, creative process - with lots of different creative voices, skill and craft - has been lovely.”

Laura’s role as director includes working with designers to combine Julie and Jordan’s words and music with visual storytelling.

“From the get-go, when we were looking at the story, there’s so much scale,” she says. “Lumi travels around the world, and I was really excited by what storytelling we could do when we ‘zoom out’ and Lumi can be really small as a puppet. 

“We start in the North Pole, and then he journeys around the whole world. Our designer has come up with the most beautiful design that allows us to play with scale, that allows us to travel round the space and arrive at different locations. I’m a big fan of spectacle - I think it’s important at Christmas to have moments which make an audience go ‘Wow!’ or ‘Ooh!’ There’s lots of elements of that in the set, and in the design. It’s going to look very visually beautiful.”

For Julie, an important moment came when she first saw her penguin protagonist, portrayed by actor & puppeteer Dylan Collymore.

“To see him as a puppet is just the icing on the cake,” she says. “It just makes it more real - and I can’t wait to see the children’s faces when they see Lumi. What I would love for them to do is look at Lumi and think ‘Wow, if Lumi can do this big thing, maybe I can do whatever I want to do!’ That sense of belonging is going to be lovely for families as well. Regardless of your family makeup, it’s all about love and friendship.”

With the Midlands’ biggest panto just next door, My First Musical provides a theatrical festive offering for younger audiences in the venue’s more intimate Patrick Studio.

Laura explains just how important those first experiences in the theatre can be: “I love family theatre at Christmas time. Sometimes it can be a child’s very first theatre show, sometimes it can be an adult’s very first theatre show. I’ve had lots of chats with the creative team on this - we can all pinpoint the first show we saw, or the first moment in theatre that made you go ‘Wow!’ Children navigate the world with play, and to be part of that, they engage with the storytelling of theatre so easily and so excitedly.

“We record the soundtrack, which will be available later. The idea of being able to re-listen and dance around your living room, and act out some of the moments, or be on a long car journey and listen to the album for the third time or whatever, is really joyful - a shared experience; all together. The story is beautiful, and fundamentally I think that’s what good children’s theatre needs - a good story. Julie and Jordan have created a story that hopefully really speaks to children who are learning about themselves, but also learning what it is to be brave, and learning to celebrate difference.”

One Tiny Penguin shows at Birmingham Hippodrome’s Patrick Studio from Saturday 5 December to Sunday 3 January