A Glasgow based company is bringing a children’s play that highlights the impact of “ocean toxicity” to Irvine next month.

Focusing on the impact litter and waste have on our oceans, Hopscotch Theatre’s Plop! In the Ocean will be playing in the Harbour Arts Centre on Saturday October 1 as it tours through nurseries, primary schools and community centres in Scotland.

Intended for a younger audience between the ages of four to seven, the play takes the form of a 50-minute-long Greek comedy.

Following characters Poseidon and Demeter, played by Tiana Milne-Wilson Fatima Jawara respectively, as they help save the planet from pollution and plastic.

Fatima said: “The play brings together these characters that people kind of know and are aware of and brings a nice message to it, making it colourful and fun for a young audience but also driving home a really important message.

“We had a group of kids come the end of the show, they were probably about six or seven, and they were telling us that they were going to go out on their breaks and clean up the litter and do little litter picking sessions. Little interactions like that makes it all worth it.”

Written by Sarah Mooney, the 'bard of Glastonbury' and the Roald Dahl Foundation's storyteller-in-residence, the play hopes to engage younger audiences through slapstick and eccentric comedy.

The script was inspired by Sarah’s time during an expedition across the Atlantic Ocean where she studied plastic pollution and ocean toxicity with a team of female scientists.

Tiana said: “I think the issue of littering has kind of slipped under the radar, it is a big undertaking and I think people choose to actively ignore it because it seems like a really big and hard thing to tackle.

“If you teach kids while they’re really young and all these kids grow up even with the simplicity of using a reusable water bottle and using a reusable coffee cup as they hit their teens actually makes a huge difference when it’s a lot of kids.

“We’ve been really pleasantly surprised with how well the nursery children we’ve had in have sat through it all.”

Plop! In the Ocean has been in the works since early 2020 but hasn’t been able to tour until this year due to Covid-19 related restrictions.

After the tour wraps up, Hopscotch Theatre’s yearly pantomime, a production of Jack and the Beanstalk, will begin showing in November and will run until January.

For tickets to Plop! In the Ocean, visit the Harbour Arts Centre’s website.