Building Something Real: A Review of Forts

In my early days of being a parent, there would be afternoons when both my girls were home at a young age—four and two, or five and three—with the whole day ahead of us because my wife was working. I had to figure out how to entertain these kids. This was often during the winter months, when there weren’t a lot of options for things to do, at least not ones that were free, easy to get to, and fit the narrow windows between naps and mealtimes. So we would often pull some things together and make a fort in our office or in the spare bedroom in the basement.

When I was offered the opportunity to come check out the Children’s Theatre Company’s newest production, Forts, I went to my now youngest—ten years old—and recruited her to come join me for a 'theatrical experience'.

We arrived at the Children’s Theatre with very little knowledge of what was going to happen . While much younger children gathered with their parents in the lobby, running around and chasing each other, my slightly skeptical ten-year-old and I hung out and waited. Eventually, we were let into a lobby space on the stage that had been blocked off to create a kind of small antechamber where everyone could make a name tag and draw a picture on cardboard. The trappings of what was to come were right there for you to see, although we didn’t quite know it yet. There were a couple of lounge chairs, a rug on the floor, and in each corner, cardboard boxes stacked sixteen, maybe twenty feet high.

We were greeted by our two guides, Alex and Suzi, who told us there were only two rules: take care and be kind, and check it before you wreck it. They let us know that once things opened up, we would be in a room where we could build forts. Not much more information was given than that. My ten-year-old, sitting on a chair, watching preschoolers chase each other, gave me a What did you rope me into? look.

And then the moment came. The black curtains parted, and a group of about twenty-five kids and parents were unleashed upon the stage to find dozens and dozens of boxes stacked in pyramids, carpets all along the floor so you could crawl around, couches and chairs littered across the space like someone had dumped a giant living room into this space. Up above, lights hung—not full chandeliers, but hanging lights for the soft illumination of a day you would spend playing inside. We were told simply to start making a fort. Each of us, any of us. We could work together. We could work by ourselves.

My ten-year-old and I got right to work. Within minutes, I was transported back to those cold, often snowy or rainy afternoons making a fort with my girls. We didn’t have cardboard back then, but in this case, cardboard boxes were so much more fun.

For sixty minutes, my daughter and I were engaged in creating without rhyme or reason, without objective or defined structure.

The theatrical experience is much less theater and much more experience. Without spoiling things—because I really do think you should attend and bring a child with you—the general gist is that you build a fort, or watch kids build forts, and hang out. Over the course of the hour you spend in this space, time proceeds across an entire day. There are some very magical moments that occur throughout that day, and yet, like the entire production itself, there is a simplicity to that magic. The kind of simplicity one finds in play, and in theatre when it is leaning into what it does best: collective imagination.

The designers did an excellent job in two major aspects. The first was the soundscape by Jeffrey Levin. As the day progresses into night and then ultimately into the next morning, the soundscape follows that feeling. Every once in a while, I was pulled from what was actually a very engaging activity—building this huge cardboard fort with my daughter—by something like a dog barking, or a bell going off, or the passage of a car on the street, or birds chirping, or crickets coming out in the evening. At various points, my mind felt this experience of time moving quickly, the way it does when you’re absorbed in play.

The other aspect that was extremely well done was the lighting by Joel Zishuk, which mirrored this sense of time. And in one moment of the experience, it goes fully dark and then the stars come out. But don’t worry—there is light. It’s just handled by everyone holding a small flashlight, where the forts go from being something you’ve built to something you crawl and hide in, with lights flashing all around from other boxes, underneath sheets. That late-night sense of having made a safe space was palpable.

For sixty minutes, my daughter and I were engaged in creating without rhyme or reason, without objective or defined structure. And it was awesome. It was as much fun as I remembered when I was a kid building things. It was so much fun to experience it through her eyes. It was as much fun as I had just years ago making forts with my girls. And I think this fort was actually better than the ones we ever made at home.

I was frankly quite sad when the hour was up and the bell rang and we needed to help pick up, resetting the stage along with the stagehands and our guides so that the next group could come in and unleash their creativity by making a fort. 

Forts is playing at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis https://childrenstheatre.org/forts . Go. Build something with someone you love.

Photos by Glen Stubbe Photography