Theatre. Music, storytelling and workshops at the City of Arts and Sciences Christmas Festival

Dec 16, 2005

This weekend the City of Arts and Sciences is holding its 5th Christmas Festival, a broad programme of free events at the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum and L’Hemisfèric and children’s rate entry to L’Oceanogràfic. Three plays, storytelling, performers, workshops and a concert by the famous TV characters “The Tweenies” are among the events on offer this year.

Around the perimeter ring of L’Hemisfèric two plays will be performed relating to two important literary figures, Don Quixote de la Mancha and the writer Jules Verne. On Saturday the 17th at 12:30, "Robby Robot and the Knight of the Sad Countenance" presents a lonely and eccentric actor rehearsing a monologue from “Don Quixote”. An interruption from the peculiar butler Robby Robot ends up having an unusual effect on the work of Cervantes.

Also on Saturday, the Jácara Teatro company will perform "El Rayo Verne" at 19:30. In this play, a book-man called Jules Verne appears before two little girls and the great French novelist will lead the two friends into a chain of adventures, when one of the girls’ beds turns into a boat, and island and a time tunnel. This performance will encourage children to read and help them to discover this author, in the year that commemorates the centenary of his death. 

At the Santiago Grisolía Auditorium in the Science Museum on Saturday and Sunday at 12:30 and 16:30, there will be performances of "777 de RAM", a reflection on the impact of the computer on our daily lives. It portrays the spectacular side of IT, overhead projection, video, 3D images and their potential, but the characters of the “Painter” and the “BIT” also allow us to think about the importance of other values such as friendship, creativity and nature.

Over the course of the weekend, the perimeter ring of L’Hemisfèric will be the venue, from 11:00 to 19:00, of various craft workshops on how to make bookmarks, puppets and rockets. At the Science Museum there will be workshops on Toys, DNA Animation, Foucault, Dialogues, Aeroplanes and papier-mâché bigheads, on Saturday from 11:00 to 19:30 and on Sunday from 11:00 to 17:00. Visitors can also take part in team games such as “The Parachute” and crafts such as “Cariocas or asteroids”. 

The Museum will also host “The Medieval Science Fair”, where there will be a troubadour who shows the different professions of the age: an alchemist who experiments with the transmutation of metals and chemical reactions; an astronomer who will present the Medieval view of the movement of the Earth and the stars; and an Explorer who will explain the way knowledge was spread during the Middle Ages.

At L’Hemisfèric, several VIPs from Valencian society will take part in the storytelling sessions that will be held on Sunday at 11:30, 13:00, 16:30 and 17:30. "The Polar Express" is the story that will be told at the Museum on Saturday and Sunday at 12:00 and 17:00. It recreates a Christmas story with the participation of all the children. Finally, the story "Julio Verne goes diving at L’Oceanogràfic" will be told on Saturday at 12:00, 12:30, 15:50 and 16:30, in another homage to the great novelist from Nantes. On Saturday and Sunday the Simpsons will also be visiting L’Oceanogràfic, where they will be participating in the dolphin show and interacting with the audience. On Sunday, “The Tweenies” will be the stars of the day, as they give a concert in the dolphin house, presenting the Christmas carols from their latest record.