ONE of the first shows to sell out at this year's Belfast Festival at Queen's was TiNY, billed as a 'teeny weeny show for the youngest audiences'.
Full of sounds, lights and textures, Replay Theatre Company's baby show is aimed at taking under-ones on a fantastical journey.
Over recent years the company has focused particularly on pre-schoolers - when children's brain development is at its most rapid.
Their other show Babble, which first played it at the Belfast Children's Festival in March 2013, is heading to Broadway next spring. TiNY has already toured throughout Ireland north and south and will head to England later this month. Underpinning all their shows is extensive research. "While both TiNY and Babble feel like a very relaxed experience with your baby, underlying it is that observational work with nurseries and we have a speech and language specialist who regularly works with us," says Replay's artistic director Anna Newell. "We are also very inspired by the work of Dr Suzanne Zeedyk who is an advocate of Replay. She is a leading early-years neuroscientist who is getting into the mainstream that message that what happens to you in the first three years of your life doesn't affect behaviour but actually changes how the brain develops because your neuro pathways are still forming and that social interaction fosters such neurological development." As well as playing in arts venues all over the world, the company believe in engaging with communities at grassroots level.
Anna believes these shows are just the start of ongoing work in this area. "Our long-term goal is to work with early years practitioners to pass on some of the strategies we used in the shows for them to use in their daily work," she says.
Jenny Lee