For those not familiar with the book, Not Now, Bernard is the simple story of a young boy, Bernard, whose parents are too busy to notice him. He tells them that there is a monster in the garden. They continue to ignore him. He goes into the garden. There is indeed a monster there, and it eats him up. The monster goes into the house, but, despite furious roaring, it is also ignored by the parents. They give the monster his tea and put him to bed, all the while failing to notice the change. ‘But I’m a monster,’ says the monster. ‘Not now, Bernard,’ says Bernard’s mother, and turns off the light.
Written and illustrated by David McKee, creator of Elmer and Mr Benn, the picture book is a delightfully grim exploration of what it feels like when communication between children and adults breaks down. When young people first encounter the story, they gasp with surprise at the unexpected twist – Bernard doesn’t even make it to the halfway point of the book – and then laugh with a complex mixture of glee and outrage as the monster is forced to endure exactly the same neglect as the child. Below the surface of the spare text and gloriously rich, colour drenched illustrations is a very uncomfortable examination of the consequences of failing to connect with each other, that pricks at the conscience of the adult sharing the book with the child. Not Now, Bernard was first published in 1980, but it seems ever more relevant in this age of rapidly multiplying and competing demands for our attention. We are all familiar with the experience of getting lost in our phones to the exclusion of the world around us, and the sight of an entire family immersed in separate digital worlds is an increasingly common one.
When we started thinking about adapting and directing the book for the stage, it rapidly became clear that there was an intriguing paradox here to explore and exploit: the story is about failed communication, yet communication is one of the key foundations of theatre. All successful productions are built on complex webs of connection – onstage, backstage, front of house, and with the audience. Some are thoroughly rehearsed and codified; others happen live, responding to the performance in real time. Alongside the telling of a story about non-communication, we decided to expose all the ways in which we are communicating, so that the production exemplifies how human beings function best. This realisation led to another, that we could amplify this approach to the book by integrating other ways of communicating into our production, specifically Makaton.
Makaton is a language programme that combines signs, symbols, and speech to help children and adults with communication or learning differences to express themselves. It is employed widely across education, health, and care settings, and is familiar to many children from school, where it is increasingly used in regular classroom communication. As Makaton is signed alongside spoken English, in spoken word order, it is relatively straightforward to teach and learn. This meant that we could integrate Makaton throughout the entire production, and that the simple, repetitive spoken text of the book became a tool for teaching Makaton signs to the audience. Our actors, although they are ironically playing characters who are not communicating, are employing a rich, multi-layered language, that is both aural and visual, and expresses emotional as well as literal sense, with precision, clarity and purpose.
Of course, this is more than a smart conceptual idea. The use of Makaton alongside the spoken words of the play means that the production is instantly more accessible to audience members with communication or learning differences, both children and adults. More importantly, however, Makaton is employed in every aspect of the production, and has been built into the fabric of the show from day one of the creative process. The possibilities it offers, and the challenges it presents, have informed, sometimes led, the devising and rehearsal of the production. This is no bolt-on extra. Makaton is fully integrated, and so the show is as much about exploring how we connect and relate to each other, regardless of communication or learning differences, as it is about the story we are telling. Every form of communication we use has an equal status. The production is not only accessible but fully inclusive.
This is an approach to inclusion that runs through the work of Roustabout. We aim to make theatre that is genuinely inclusive of as wide an audience as possible. Although we take gleeful pride in asking difficult questions, no one should feel excluded when they come to one of our shows. Our work is pitched at both children and adults, and we are always on the watch for jokes that children won’t get, or routines that will bore adults, for example. In the seven years since our first show, Luna, we have constantly looked for ways to include more people in our audiences, by, for instance, removing geographical barriers by touring to non-traditional spaces, or finding imaginative ways of funding schools’ performances to ease financial barriers. The full integration of Makaton into Not Now, Bernard is the next of these steps. Our decision to ensure the production supports communication or learning differences has not only influenced the way we have chosen to tell the story, but has become an integral part of the show itself.
Not Now, Bernard tours and runs from 26th September 2026 with dates currently booking until 28th February 2027. For more information and booking details, visit
Post a Comment