Since 2008, The Lost Lending Library has been enchanting pupils as it travels around primary schools in the UK, its 314 floors filled to bursting with stories from the world’s wildest imaginations. London-based theatre company Punchdrunk Enrichment have adapted their flagship three-week long creative educational experience into a 55-minute family show for this year’s International Festival. And this interactive performance (for parents, and kids aged 6–11) is certainly no ordinary visit to your local library. 

Writer, director and former Lost Lending Library performer, Mia Jerome, describes the project’s newest and most magical journey yet, from the schoolroom to the stage. ‘I think the biggest challenge is that, in the school shows, the children are the protagonists,’ she explains. ‘Although we still want to inspire a love of books and stories, the children are under no obligation to go away and write. But we really hope that they do,’ she continues. ‘The focus here is to spark curiosity and to let them know that they can lose themselves in books, but they can find themselves there too.’ 

The school-based workshops from which the EIF show is spun naturally centred around pupils. A shortened stage adaptation will slightly shift focus onto the library’s mysterious staff, who share their own stories with the audience. But that’s not to say the quirky cast are any less keen to encourage our wee ones’ inner writers. Visitors to the library will stumble across Peabody, guardian of the miscellaneous department, a beady-eyed librarian searching for new stories to fill up her empty shelves.

‘The difference between a family show and a school show is huge,’ explains Jerome, who took over the project earlier this year. ‘All of our audience members get to create a story with their librarian. It’s an immersive experience. So I hope that parents who are bringing children are as engaged as their children are.’

Sure to set lightbulbs flashing above little heads, the show aims to run deeper than a simple hour of entertainment. Punchdrunk Enrichment are a theatre charity passionate about keeping kids’ noses buried in books. 

‘As children, we soak up everything around us,’ observes Jerome. ‘We naturally attach learning opportunities to stories all the time. I think that the work Punchdrunk is doing just speaks for itself. Giving children that agency to create is so important.’ The literacy project inspires long-lasting awe in primary pupils who are lucky enough to have the library visit their school. Jerome has seen its impact first hand in her days performing as a lost-lending librarian. Her most memorable anecdote involves a pupil catching her off-guard (luckily in-costume to protect the magic) on her way to work. Taking off her headphones to the unmistakable sound of a child screaming, she realised she was being chased up the street by a little boy from a workshop she’d done months earlier.

‘He proceeded to draw a tatty gold library card from his pocket,’ Jerome recalls. ‘He was waving it at me shouting, “I've been writing lots of stories! Is the library coming back? And are you here because the library is coming?” It honestly blew my mind,’ she says, grinning. ‘He was carrying that library card, tattered as it was, around in his pocket in the hope that he would be able to visit the library again. That scenario has happened to me hundreds of times in different ways since I’ve been working on this project.’

A personal passion for literature took hold of Jerome at an early age, which explains her unyielding enthusiasm for this work. ‘As a child at school, I just loved reading and loved stories,’ she says. ‘I’m a working-class girl, and we didn’t have facilities like this in the 80s when I went to school. So, to be attached to a project like this, I feel incredibly lucky. I don’t take it lightly. And I think that the work that we do has a very, very long-lasting impact that can change people’s lives. It’s a wonderful thing.’

The Lost Lending Library, Church Hill Theatre, 3–27 August, times vary.