Canberra theatre company Child Players ACT is embarking on its 20th anniversary and season with a production of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

When I catch up with founder and artistic director BJ Anyos, I find that it’s the first full production they’ve done since covid under their Child Play Theatre Training Program, where kids do the on-stage and backstage roles, although they have done conventional productions.

The secret of the company’s success is in her team, which includes production manager Angela Fewtrell, musical educator and composer Susan West, writer and mentor Katie Kavanagh, artist in residence Rebecca Setnicar and musical director and educator Georgia Pike-Rowney.

Everyone who works at Child Players ACT also has a day job, not least Anyos, an early learning co-ordinator at Questacon, where she has been working for 20 years and is responsible for creating workshops for young children called Science Time.

This is also the first Child Play process production they’ve done since the death of Anyos’ mother and co-founder of the company, the late Kathy Thomas, a noted champion for the theatre in Canberra.

It’s the second time they’ve done The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, having staged it in 2012.

“We always do plays that derive from classic books… good books make good plays,” Anyos asserts. The Chronicles of Narnia series was written by CS Lewis in the 1950s, she notes, meaning that it’ll soon be 80 years old.

“It’s about deep, fundamental emotions and characteristics… it’s good versus evil with a big plot and themes that are still relevant.”

Anyos is well aware of the Christian undertones to the story, especially in the Christlike figure of Aslan the Lion, and she tells me that Lewis was trying to make the story of Jesus more accessible.

But she’s not emphasising this, saying: “People of our generation went to Sunday school but I’m not sure how many young people are aware of this theme.”

One of the great things about the Narnia stories is the identifiable characters, “all the little girls wanted to play Lucy but others want to play Peter, Susan, Edmund, too.”

The White Queen – the villainess of the story, is being doubled by Jessica Fellows, who has been with the company since age eight, and Lily Welling, who has been with them since she was a teenager and is now performing professionally.

This time they’re using professional adult actors to play some adult roles. The professor is played by real-life ANU physics professor Matthew Wooding, who is new to theatre, and Aslan is played by Robbie Wearden, who’s done a lot of kids’ theatre around the town.

“To have two fresh faces to join the Child Players family is lovely,” Anyos says.

One of the features of the Child Play-style productions is that they work with double casts, so that when your group is not performing, you get to do all the backstage roles, lighting, sound, everything, with professional theatre people teaching.

This is convenient too, because it means they have ready-made understudies. 

Anyos hopes that her company prepares young people with life skills, saying: “One of the joys of theatre is the life lessons you learn – co-operation, teamwork, working towards a common goal, resilience.” 

There’s also the adage that the show must go on, which teaches kids respect for deadlines and working towards a hard-set goal.

“My aim is that every child gets the opportunity to do theatre, although very few will go on to become professional actors,” she says.

Her son is a case in point. She and mum Kathy started Child Players 20 years ago while Anyos was directing Seussical the Musical for Phoenix Players. Her then 10-year-old son (he’s just 30 now) asked if he could operate the spotlight but they found there was nowhere he could learn that.

“Let’s start something,” she and Kathy said.

Right now, everybody’s having lots of fun and when we’re talking, she’s painting the set, which will have three main scenes – the house with the wardrobe in it, the Narnia winter-scape and the Narnia spring. 

The costumes are especially fun, with minotaurs, Mr and Mrs Beaver, unicorns, squirrels, griffyns and hardest of all, a centaur. 

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Belconnen Theatre, October 4-12.