Show reviewed: 21/03/26

Show rated: Awesome 5 stars!

Family friendly shows aren’t really the genre I frequented the most this year at the Adelaide Fringe so when THE Soness Stevens, better know to the rest of the Western world as English voice of Hello Kitty (5-time TED speaker!) invited me to see her kids based show, I just had to say yes! Soness is a Tokyo-based voice actor whose claims to be featured on the “worst video game ever” and she has used this creative arts experience to produce a fun interactive show for kids that actually gets them involved in performing a live anime show (no prior known needed!) among other fun games.

Soness is effervescent and joyful as the hostess and it’s such a positive environment for someone neurodivergent (like myself!) to get involved in something artistic but also without rules or criticism of “what’s allowed.”. The centre of Anime-Zing! KIDS is the lesson that imagination and play inspires creativity and personal growth by letting children find their own voices and being empowered to use them through a series of art, games and activities that including voicing their own anime show! There were some super talented child actors in the crowd, so all current Fringe artists, we are on notice, the kids are coming for us and our lucrative jobs.

Soness’ is AuDHD and particularly likes to creates inclusive spaces and you can feel this is Anime-Zing! KIDS, it was a positive learning environment and as a relaxed venue, I felt that it really underscores the need for more of these type of performances for adults as well as children! Art as therapy isn’t just for the performer to have catharsis from their own experiences and tell their story, this show invited audiences to also be active participants in the creative process and feel valued as equal artists rather than just witnesses to a fringe show. I think that this is very important for kids to know that they can speak up and be heard for what they have to say in their own stories.

At the end of the show is a video game that Soness is developing for speech therapy that uses a child’s vocal control ie. indoor vs outdoor voices etc. The technique used measures the decibels and duration of the sounds in this current stage of prototyping and the kids get to see software they can code in being used in a way that no one else uses to control it. Soness has said: “Kids after the shows their parents send me links to games their kids have been developing in the Scratch software, too. And after the show they share their artwork and projects. We get to talk about art and human creativity and ways to keep expanding their skills.”