Spot On Children’s Festival brings Bluey, Green Sheep and free school holiday play to Riverside Theatres in Parramatta from 25 September.
There is a particular kind of anticipation that gathers around a theatre when children are coming to a show. Adults arrive carrying bags, water bottles and the practical equipment of a family outing, while children tend to notice different things – a poster, a colourful costume, the shape of the auditorium or the possibility that something unexpected might happen once the lights go down.
At Riverside Theatres in Parramatta, that anticipation becomes part of the landscape as Spot On Children’s Festival returns for the spring school holidays.
Running from 25 September to 10 October, the festival brings together live theatre, puppetry, storytelling and free creative activities, creating a family program that extends beyond the traditional theatre experience.
This year, two familiar names provide the centre of the program. Bluey and the elusive Green Sheep arrive from different corners of Australian children's culture, moving from television screens and picture books into a live environment where young audiences can see stories take shape in front of them.
For Riverside, the festival also reflects something broader about Parramatta itself. The city has become one of Sydney's major cultural centres, and Riverside Theatres sits close to the heart of that activity. During the school holidays, families can arrive in the centre of Parramatta and find an afternoon organised around imagination rather than shopping, screens or structured lessons.
The result is a festival that gives children permission to do something they already know how to do remarkably well.
Play.
Spot On Children’s Festival Begins With Bluey
The festival opens with Bluey's Big Play on 25 September, returning to Riverside Theatres for two days of live performances.
The stage adaptation brings the Heeler family into the theatre through puppetry, with an original story by Bluey creator Joe Brumm and new music by composer Joff Bush. The story centres on Bluey and Bingo trying to convince Dad to get off his bean bag and join the games.
It sounds simple, but that is part of the appeal.
Bluey's world is built around the ordinary spaces of family life. A living room becomes a jungle, a cardboard box becomes almost anything and an afternoon can turn into an elaborate game with rules invented along the way.
On stage, those familiar ideas acquire another dimension.
The puppets make the characters physically present, while the audience shares the same room with the performers and the story. Children who know Bluey from television are no longer watching a screen. They are looking across a theatre and seeing the Heeler family move through a live performance.
Bluey's Big Play runs for approximately 50 minutes without an interval and is recommended for ages three to seven. An additional 6pm performance has been added on Friday 25 September, alongside the scheduled performances on 25 and 26 September.
There is also an unusual little post-show possibility. Some children seated in the stalls can take part in a game of Keepy Uppy using air-filled balls and bubbles after the performance.
It is an appropriately Bluey-like ending – the distinction between watching and playing begins to disappear.
From The Screen To The Stage
The movement from television to theatre is more significant than it first appears.
Children are accustomed to stories arriving through screens, often in carefully controlled bursts. Live theatre asks them to watch differently. The performers are physically present. The pace cannot be paused. A sound happens in the room. A character enters from somewhere nearby.
For younger audiences, those details can make a first theatre experience memorable.
There is also something communal about watching a familiar story alongside other families. A laugh from one child can travel across a row. A moment of recognition can become audible. Parents watch their children's reactions as much as they watch the stage.
That shared response is one of the quiet strengths of children's theatre.
Riverside's Spot On Children's Festival is built around that idea, but it also leaves room for experiences that are less familiar.
That is where the Green Sheep enters the story.
Spot On Children’s Festival Goes Looking For The Green Sheep
From 7 to 10 October, Where Is The Green Sheep? brings Mem Fox and Judy Horacek's much-loved picture book into the theatre.
The original book has been part of Australian childhood for more than two decades, with its deceptively simple question becoming familiar to generations of young readers.
On stage, the search becomes a visual theatre adventure.
Three farmers set out to find the missing green sheep, encountering Blue Sheep, Red Sheep, Bath Sheep and Bed Sheep along the way. Puppetry and animation combine to create the changing world, while voices from students at Bankstown West Public School are incorporated into the production as narrators.
That last detail gives the production an interesting connection to Sydney.
The story may begin with a classic children's book, but the theatrical version has been shaped with the participation of children from Western Sydney. Their voices become part of the journey, connecting the familiar world of the picture book with a contemporary local audience.
The production is written for younger children, with Riverside recommending it for ages one to six. Performances run for approximately 45 minutes, without an interval.
For parents introducing very young children to theatre, that scale matters. Forty-five minutes can feel substantial enough to become an event without asking a preschool audience to sit through a conventional full-length performance.
The theatre becomes a place where attention can move, rather than something that demands perfect stillness.
A Different Kind Of Family Workshop
The Green Sheep experience can continue beyond the performance itself.
Families attending the production can book a free workshop designed for one child and one adult guardian. The session uses movement, sensory play and creative storytelling to return to the world of the Green Sheep and explore it in a more intimate setting.
There is something particularly fitting about that approach.
A picture book is often read together, with an adult turning the pages while a child points at details, asks questions or supplies their own version of what is happening. The workshop extends that relationship into physical space.
Instead of simply explaining how a piece of theatre was made, it gives children an opportunity to play with the ideas themselves.
The workshop lasts around 35 minutes and is intended for one child and one adult. Places are limited and need to be booked alongside the show.
It is also an example of the way Spot On Children’s Festival treats families as participants rather than simply audiences.
Theatre is the starting point, not necessarily the end.
Into The Box Opens The Riverside Courtyard
During the second week of the festival, the activity moves beyond the auditorium.
From 7 to 10 October, the Riverside Theatres Courtyard becomes the setting for Into The Box, a free series of school holiday activities running daily from 9am to 2pm.
There is no ticket needed and no requirement to arrive for a particular performance.
Families can simply drop in.
The courtyard offers face painting from 9am to midday, colouring and creative play throughout the day, balloon bending from 11am to 2pm and interactive Storytime sessions at 11am, 12pm and 1pm.
The structure is deliberately loose.
Children can arrive with a plan or without one. They can sit down and draw, watch a balloon take shape, listen to a story or move between activities. The day becomes less about completing a schedule and more about discovering what catches their attention.
That distinction is important during school holidays.
Parents often spend those weeks trying to balance activities with downtime. A free courtyard program allows the family to come and go without the pressure of making a full day out of every excursion.
A child might spend ten minutes colouring and then decide they would rather watch the balloon artist. Another might stay for Storytime and then return to the creative area.
The choice belongs to them.
Parramatta Becomes Part Of The Festival
Riverside Theatres sits at the corner of Church and Market Streets, placing the festival within one of Parramatta's busiest parts of the city.
That location changes the character of a family theatre outing.
A visit does not need to begin and end at the theatre doors. Families can walk through the city beforehand, stop for lunch, explore the nearby streets or continue into Parramatta after a performance.
There is also a useful contrast between the activity inside Riverside and the wider city beyond it.
Inside, the scale becomes child-sized. A sheep can be a central mystery. A cardboard box can become an invitation to explore. A puppet can hold an entire room's attention.
Outside, Parramatta operates at its usual pace. Buses arrive and leave. Office workers move through the centre. Shops open onto the footpaths and the Parramatta River continues its slow passage through the city.
The festival creates a temporary pocket within that larger urban environment.
For families living in Western Sydney, that matters. Cultural experiences do not always need to involve travelling into the Sydney CBD. Riverside provides a major performing arts venue within the community it serves, making children's theatre part of the everyday geography of Parramatta.
Spot On Children’s Festival Makes Space For Imagination
One of the recurring ideas across the program is the importance of imagination as an activity in itself.
Bluey turns an ordinary afternoon into a game.
The Green Sheep transforms a simple question into a journey.
Into The Box takes everyday materials, movement and stories and allows children to decide what they might become.
None of these ideas require particularly complicated explanations.
That may be why they work.
Children already understand that a cardboard box can be a house, a vehicle, a spaceship or something that has no name at all. They understand that a blanket can become a cave and a living room can become a landscape.
The role of theatre is not necessarily to teach them how to imagine.
It is to give that imagination somewhere to go.
In that sense, children's festivals offer a useful reminder to adults as well. The most memorable family experiences are not always the ones with the most elaborate schedules. Sometimes they are the ones in which there is enough space for a child to stop, look around and decide what happens next.
The First Theatre Trip Can Stay With A Child
For a very young child, going to the theatre is a small journey into unfamiliar territory.
There are new sounds, new rules and a room filled with strangers. The lights go down. People become quiet. Something begins to happen in front of them.
That first experience can shape how a child thinks about live performance for years afterwards.
Riverside's program recognises that gently. The shows are short, the subjects are familiar and the festival surrounds the performances with activities that allow children to move between watching and doing.
Accessibility is also part of the Riverside offering, with wheelchair access, Companion Card acceptance and assistive hearing systems available. Where Is The Green Sheep? includes a relaxed performance on Wednesday 7 October at 10.15am, with adjustments to sound and lighting for audiences who may benefit from a more relaxed environment.
These details are practical, but they also reinforce the festival's wider purpose.
A children's festival works best when children can experience it in their own ways.
When The School Holidays Become A Story
By the end of the Spot On Children’s Festival, the theatre will return to its usual rhythm.
The posters will come down. The courtyard will become a courtyard again. The families who have spent the school holidays moving between shows, stories and activities will return to school, work and the routines of ordinary weekdays.
But children's experiences of theatre tend to linger in unexpected ways.
A child may remember Bluey's enormous bean bag. They may remember a red sheep cartwheeling across a field. They may remember bubbles, a balloon animal, a song or simply the strange feeling of sitting in a dark room while something impossible happens nearby.
Those details are small.
They are also the beginnings of cultural memory.
For two weeks, Spot On Children’s Festival gives Parramatta a different rhythm. The city remains busy outside, but inside Riverside Theatres there is room for stories to become physical, for books to leave their pages and for children to make their own discoveries.
And perhaps that is the simplest reason to bring a child to the theatre.
Not to make them sit still.
To see what they do when they are given somewhere to imagine.