THEATRE / The first stage: What can be done in front of the children? Marianne Brace asks three dramatists about the rules of the game

'IF YOU can grab them in the first 10 minutes then you earn the right to be listened to. If they think it's stupid and boring you've had it. Forever. Kids are not like adults, they won't be won over.' Nona Shepphard is a veteran playwright, with some 15 young people's plays to her credit. Her latest, for seven- to 11-year-olds, Struck By Lightning, is touring with the Molecule Theatre of Science.

Shepphard also writes for grown-ups, but what she loves about children's theatre is the audience. She describes the opening performance of Struck By Lightning. 'There were 500 kids making such a racket. The lights go down and they scream with excitement. And they let you know when they don't like something, so you've got to be really sharp about what you want to say, and clever about how you say it theatrically.'

But much is churned out which is neither sharp nor clever. 'The myth that when you're starting your career you write for children is completely wrong,' says Alan Ayckbourn. 'To write for children you have to be very good at what you do.' As a young playwright in the 1960s, Ayckbourn himself attempted a children's play. 'I was too young as a dramatist, if not as a person.' It wasn't until 1988 that he tried again. 'I run a theatre, and I noticed there didn't seem to be an awful lot for kids between five and 12. What was needed was all the qualities one tries to bring to adult work; good narrative, character, interesting themes.'

Because children's concentration is fickle, the playwright has to be all the more vigorous. 'You can see them switch off and get on with something more interesting, like talking to each other or picking the end off the seat.' Ayckbourn wants to 'catch 'em young' by 'bringing children into the theatre where we've got the works - stage, lights, sound, the facilities to tell our story best'.

The Glaswegian poet and playwright Liz Lochhead has written two plays for children. In her adaptation of The Tempest, The Magic Island (reviewed opposite), Prospero becomes a stage magician, Ferdinand becomes Fernandelle and the story is told from the child Miranda's point of view. Freedom and responsibility are the themes. 'Writing for kids, you're able to deal with these very large concepts,' says Lochhead.

Shepphard believes any subject can be tackled. 'A lot of theatre talks down to children. But kids are interested in the same things as adults: love, death, betrayal, anger and joy. There's no gap in their imagination.' Ayckbourn agrees. 'One of the great joys I found about writing for them is the issues you can address. I write about the things that lurk below the surface in my adult plays, which are mostly about good and evil.

'It's right that they know there are things that are harmful and destructive in the world which bring unhappiness. There's a great misapprehension that children want to laugh all the time. In my experience laughter comes low down in their list of priorities. They want to be excited and moved.'

Pace is crucial, says Ayckbourn. 'I start my plays at a speed which I hope is fast enough for the audience to say 'Whoops - I'd better watch this.' If you're late in a kid's play of mine you've missed about 15 minutes of exposition told in about a minute.'

Shepphard also aims 'to make the first 10 minutes spectacular'. In Struck By Lightning her brief was to teach the audience about electricity. Three children careering around on mountain bikes get lost in a storm, and two are struck by lightning. After this exciting opening those watching 'are so into the plot, they tend to listen. When I was in the theatre, you could hear a pin drop.'

Children warm to characters who - in the best pantomime tradition - speak directly to them, or ask for help. 'A lot of the fun in writing for young people is that there's so much less constraint about shouting out or being part of the performance,' says Shepphard. Her characters ask the audience questions. And Shepphard wants the actors to respond. 'I've said to them if the kids shout out the right answer - magnets - then cut out the rest of the page and go on.'

Ayckbourn keeps his actors on their toes too. In Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays, the heroine and her dog try to prevent Mr Accousticus from stealing people's voices. 'One of the things I've been toying with in my adult plays is giving the audiences choices over the way the story proceeds - that is, emphasising the live- ness of theatre.' Ayckbourn wanted younger audiences to realise 'that what they were watching wasn't a film or video but infinitely variable'.

In Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays heroine and dog enter a house with 30 rooms. 'It's a classic search. And the audience can choose which way they go - through secret panels, up ladders, inside chimneys. The actors have no idea because the narrator is turning to the kids and saying 'Which way?' It's always exciting, sometimes hair-raising.' When the heroine makes a speedy exit from the house it is the children who direct her. While the adults (possibly even the actors) haven't a clue which way they came, the children recall every twist and turn.

Ayckbourn finds his family plays 'very liberating'. His newest adult work, Wildest Dreams, is 'very surreal - and that came directly as a result of writing for kids. For some reason children trust their imagination to go with you, providing you're logical.'

But even for the best plays it's hard to give children a sense of the theatre's unique power. An actor asked a small boy whether he had enjoyed Struck By Lightning. He replied yes - he loved it; so did the toy dinosaur he was holding. 'You know,' the child said enthusiastically, 'he glowed all the time you were on the telly]'

'The Magic Island' is at The Unicorn Theatre - details follow review, facing page. 'Struck By Lightning', The Mermaid Theatre until 12 February (071-236 5568); then touring until 14 June. 'Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays' previews at the Cottesloe from 25 February (071-928 2252)

(Photograph omitted)