Theatre and dance

How The Giraffe Got Its Neck at South Street

By AF Harrold
December 10, 2008

This is a children’s show that is brilliant on several fronts.

First, the company Tall Stories really know what they’re doing and are fronted on this occasion by two exciting, funny and engaging performers (Paul Lancaster and Charlotte Thompson).

Second, they tell a couple of stories we already know in a lively collaborative manner – a couple of Just So stories, brought to life with mime and music and straightforward good old fashioned story-telling.

And third, the show is a beautiful clarion call for the sense of Darwinian evolution in a time when politicians are bowing to pressure to allow the teaching of supernatural mumbo-jumbo, such as Creationism, in certain schools on an equal footing as science.

But it doesn’t preach – the show isn’t Richard Dawkins’ hectoring for kids. It’s much nicer and gentler than that.

The story that isn’t in Kipling – How The Giraffe Got Its Neck – is told from a Darwinian point of view, after the two adventures meet a bunch of finches on a variety of islands who explain how their beaks have grown to be different shapes even though they shared a common ancestor.

It’s all to do with adaptations which are more useful in one place than another, and the same goes for the giraffe with the slightly longer neck who can reach the more luscious leaves on the higher branches.

This simplest (but most important) of scientific theories is explained along the way, without ever seeming to be a lesson being taught – and this is a tribute to the performers who do so good and to the puppets which litter the show like beautiful bits of flotsam and jetsam – made of the same materials as the stage set – sailing cloth and rope – it’s all of a seamless piece.

A wonderful little show – very short, but packed with stuff to gets kids brains thinking about the world.

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Listen: Evolution is a tool we use to understand the biology of life. Period. It is the basis of all life sciences, and from its understanding stems all advances in medicine, healthcare, nutrition, disease identification and eradication, genetics, botany, livestock and crop improvement, extended space exploration, improved weaponry, and a host of other extremely important scientific endeavors that improve the human experience or protect our soldiers. Understanding the concept of evolution is key to working in the vast majority of progressive fields, and dominating in these fields is directly associated with a nation's status as a world scientific, military and economic power. That's why the fact of evolution is taught as it should be--a fact.

TheMQ
12/12/2008 at 17:53

Modern evolution, as it continues observably today, has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It's happening, we see it happening, we've proven it to happen, we deliberately manipulate it into happening, and models accurately predict that it will keep happening naturally in the future.

TheMQ
12/12/2008 at 17:52

Sounds like a brilliant bit of brainwashing, all right. But, as I point out in my book "The Evolution Delusion", it doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. There is no plausible scientific explanation for the evolution of the giraffe's long neck. So the kids are being fed pseudo-science, not real science. But then, that is the case for Darwinian evolution in general, as anyone who seriously investigates its scientific claims soon realizes. The problem is that most people just lap up the "Just So" stories and have no idea what the scientific arguments are both supporting and challenging Darwinian evolution theory. KL