The Japanese Garden TPO Children's Cheering Carpet

"It’s about theater as a shared experience and I’ve never seen anything quite like it." — Tony Reekie, Director, Bank of Scotland’s Children’s Festival

Take a magical ride on an incredible Japanese garden carpet. For more than two decades, TPO from Tuscany has distinguished itself as a “visual theater company,” and The Children’s Cheering Carpet is one of its crowning achievements. Bonsai, stones, water, a Zen garden, and other elements of a Japanese garden appear on the interactive, magic carpet stage. It initially seems like just a big white carpet, but its digital images and sounds respond to the pressure of the feet or body. As the performance begins, a company member tells a story about how the garden was born. Audience members sit around the carpet, and a dancer starts to animate areas of the surface corresponding to five gardens in the original story. Then children in the audience are invited to explore and animate the gardens themselves, experiencing the reconstructed natural environment through their own senses. All week long, visitors will be able to see and investigate the carpet between shows during the Wexner Center’s normal gallery hours.

For young people ages 4 and up and their families

Member ticket presale: July 16–September 2. Public ticket sales begin September 4. Save approximately 10% when purchasing a 3-show package.

The Japanese Garden is presented by ArKtype in association with Crying Out Loud UK and directed by Francesco Gandi and Davide Venturini.