The “Guguță” Theatre visits children with a contemporary play that teaches them to be more cautious online

Although they are used to performing on stage in Chișinău, during the summer holidays the actors of the Municipal Puppet Theatre “Guguță” sometimes visit young audiences, bringing with them a theatrical story. At the end of last week, around 100 children from Russian-language kindergarten No. 184 from the Ciocana district of the capital had fun and learned to be more cautious online by watching the educational show PikPok.online@guguță.

The show has been in the theatre’s repertoire for several years and, as part of a project in partnership with the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC), has been performed in schools and community centres across the country. Thanks to this collaboration, between 2024 and 2025, the theatre team put on over 20 free shows for almost 2,000 preschool and school kids in different localities across the country.

“Nowadays, it is increasingly difficult to deal with the avalanche of information that surrounds us. With the help of the characters, we try to warn children to be vigilant about what they see on social media and various online platforms, to always ask for help from their parents or older sisters/brothers, who can give them useful advice. Media education is a priority for our times, and we are delighted that theatre can contribute to raising awareness of the risks associated with the Internet and developing critical thinking in children,” said Anghelina Codreanu, an actress of the “Guguță” Theatre.

The little ones watched the play with interest, applauding the characters who conveyed positive emotions, but also feeling sad for the wolf Hait, who, with the help of the boar Ghindă, distributed false information on the PikPok platform to manipulate the forest creatures and gain popularity through trickery.

“The show I saw today taught me that it’s not good to lie to anyone. You have to be honest and behave nicely towards your parents and other children. We must also appreciate our real, true friends and not trust fake friends on the Internet. The computer is just a magical machine that has no soul and doesn’t care about our feelings if someone makes bad jokes,” said 7-year-old Artiom Gorșecinicov, who will be starting first grade in the autumn.

“Watching the children’s reactions during the show, I can say that they enjoyed it. It is a contemporary, educational play, just right for today’s times, when children are under the influence of gadgets, which are often left uncontrolled by their parents. Being very busy with their own lives, adults often allow children to use their mobile phones, accessing everything they come across, without distinguishing between what is useful and what is harmful to their mental health. The play draws children’s attention to the fact that they should not trust everything they see on the Internet,” says Irina Șevcenco, a teacher at the preparatory group at Kindergarten No. 184 in Chișinău, who also told us that she will discuss the content of the play in her future activities with the children.

“We usually have discussions with the children after every activity. We analyse how a particular character acted and how the others around them reacted. We ask the children to come up with their own solutions to the problem addressed. It is very important, as spectators, to be actively involved in discussions and interactive games in order to understand the content of the play as well as possible. When they listen passively, after a certain period of time they may forget what they have seen. When children are involved in games with interactive elements, they are left with more impressions from the activity they participated in and retain the content better,” explained the teacher.

At the end, the young audience applauded the actors and thanked them for the performance.

PikPok.online@guguță is an adaptation of the educational story “A Click of the Fangs or the Manipulative Wolf”, written by Latvian media researcher Solvita Denisa Liepniece, and is aimed at kindergarten and primary school children.

The performance lasts 45 minutes and is included in the repertoire of the “Guguță” Theatre, both in Russian and Romanian. In partnership with the Independent Journalism Center, the “Guguta” Theatre launched the Romanian version of PikPok.online@guguță in November 2022 and the Russian version in February 2023.

The show is in the form of an educational and entertaining story and is intended for kindergarten children as well as primary school students. The play helps young children understand how the online environment works, encouraging them to analyze what they have seen or heard, especially on social networks.

The PikPok.online@guguță show tour is organized within the framework of the project “Media Education and Literacy and Optimisation of Newsrooms” (MELON). This project is financially supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Moldova.