The city's water supply is in danger and it's up to Esmeralda Superspy Planet Protector and her faithful sidekick, Goober, to save the day.
They'll be doing that while entertaining some 30,000 kids across the Lower Mainland - including in the Coquitlam school district - in the DreamRider Theatre touring production of H2Whoa, a play that encourages kids and their families to conserve water.
"Goober has been in two of our other plays, as well as videos and video games, and he's a character that kids absolutely adore," said Vanessa LeBourdais, executive producer of the Tri-City-based DreamRider Theatre.
Apart from the hilarity of Esmeralda Superspy and Goober setting out on missions to defeat the Evil Evaporator and his new water gun - which has magically evaporated all the water in the city's reservoir - there's plenty of learning going on in H2Whoa.
"Along the way kids learn a lot of things they can do to save water, like turning off the tap while they're brushing their teeth, taking shorter showers," said LeBourdais. The superheroes take on the Evaporator (and not to worry, they do restore the watershed), but the kids all become official planet protectors as well.
An environmentalist, LeBourdais said she was inspired to create H2Whoa after attending a conference on water.
"You'll end up paying less in utilities when your kids are water smart," said DreamRider's co-artistic director and actor, Ian Gschwind. "That's why nine municipal governments in Metro Vancouver are bringing H2Whoa to their elementary schools."
"The play is really effective in getting kids to go home and bug their parents," she said. "And to me that's really exciting, because theatre reaches kids through their hearts and minds on all levels - they'll be laughing and singing along and having a great time and learning, but they don't even know they're learning."
H2Whoa is touring 17 elementary schools in the Tri-Cities over the next month.
DreamRider has also partnered with Telus to produce three Esmeralda Planet Protector webisodes, two of which launch this spring. And working with the Centre for Digital Media, DreamRider will release an animated interactive game based on another of their plays, Keep Cool, which measures behavioural changes kids make in transportation and energy use.
spayne@tricitynews.com
