This past weekend my best friend and I took my daughter to see Dallas Children’s Theater’s production of Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat. I was equally excited and nervous, my 3.5 year old daughter is currently obsessed with the book and knew she would love seeing it live but I was concerned she would act her age and we would have to leave in the middle of it.
Luckily, Dallas Children’s Theater has been operating for 30 years now so they know exactly what they are doing. Seating is general admission and while I paid the additional amount to get the seating closer to the stage I was pleasantly surprised to see that no matter where you sat in the small theater your seats would be perfect.
Once the show started, my daughter immediately became captivated with the show and watched the entire thing, laughing and clapping with the audience. While she completely shocked me with not talking or wanting to stand up, I did notice some other kids who were talking in the quietest voices they could manage or standing up and no one around even blinked an eye, but of course everyone was there with a child.
The play followed the book pretty much word for word, having read my daughter the book a minimum of 150 times I was able to gauge about how much longer we had before the end. I was surprised to see that in all, the show was only about 45 minutes long and while it felt appropriately short (because this is a theater for children after all), I didn’t feel like I overpaid for the length.
As the performance ended, they provided some insight on how things were done, allowing selected children to participate for the audience in seeing some of the back of the house tricks. It was so fun to see future stars on stage helping the actors and learn some insider info. They also had children celebrating their birthday that month come up to the front to sing for them.
One last surprise they had is that you had the opportunity to meet all of the characters, take a picture, and have them sign the playbill. My daughter wasn’t very interested in any of those but I did take a picture with the star anyway. I know she looks scared, but she was just mad that we hadn’t moved onto the next activity.
I will not hesitate to bring my daughter back again, and plan to go to one of the holiday shows. I am so excited to introduce my daughter to another genre of art and just can’t recommend it enough, even for your wiggle worms!
If you’re interested in taking your family, you can visit the Dallas Children’s Theater’s website for showtimes and pricing. Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat plays through October 27th, and then they jump into the holiday showings of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas & The Nutcracker! (Here’s a complete list of The Nutcracker showings around Dallas!)
Dallas Children’s Theater did not sponsor this post in anyway, in fact they don’t know who I am. I just had such a great experience that I wanted to share it with everyone!
