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Twenty years ago, Sue Giles, the art director of Polyglot Theatre, was watching her children playing with cardboard boxes in the backyard.

"I thought if we had thousands of people, would it be great," she said. "And this is the beginning."

We built this city in the Melbourne Arts Centre in 2011. Image Credit: Ponch Hawkes Courtesy of Polyglot Theater

In 2001, they brought the interactive cardboard construction site We Built This City to Melbourne’s city square for the first time. All stay to play and play"), and then head to the Kennedy Center in Washington, the National Theater in London, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and China.

During that time, the urban landscapes built by the children exceeded Giles’ imagination-this journey gave her a unique insight into what makes us the same and what makes us different, because she See the world's metropolis through young eyes.

Now, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, this work will go home this weekend. Giles again wondered what this simple and profound show would reveal. Two years later, the children were warned of the pandemic in many scattered boxes.

Simon Abrahams, the current director of Fringe Festival, joined Polyglot as the co-CEO after the show was created. "I am totally in love with it," he said. He and Giles decided to take it to the world.

We built this city in Brazil in 2016. Image credit: Rainbow Sweeny courtesy of Polyglot Theater

The first stop is the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, where 3,000 people come to play 10,000 boxes a day. At midnight, they were still stacking the remaining boxes, and the CEO of the center even stepped forward to help.

"That's where we really see the urban form taking shape in our work," Giles said. "We have completed the entire part of the work, and people are building large monuments and showing people around.

We built this city in Seoul in 2012. Image source: Emma Dodd, courtesy of Polyglot Theater

"And the other half of the city is a kind of shanty town, all underground, and the children built these [shopping] malls where you climbed. I walked through the maze of boxes with the children... We have basically Built Washington, DC."

Children in Melbourne built large houses with fences and backyards, and children in Sydney built an opera house.

But the similarities between what appears are always greater than the differences, Giles said. As Minecraft and Fortnite have shown, we all have the urge to build deep in our hearts. "Children's inventive consciousness and imagination do not vary from country to country, even the opportunity to gain freedom in this way is a very different experience in cultures around the world."

In China, a team of policemen sent to the show always carried boxes and dragged the children out to check their registration, "too many boundaries were set." Giles said that eventually they warmed up and became allies, but "Later the family's feedback was that'we would have liked more freedom'."

In Japan, touring after the great earthquake and tsunami, they had to negotiate a show that ended in catastrophic cardboard damage.

Giles and Abraham are interested in watching the post-pandemic performance. "I think they either focus on family and family and their experiences in the past two years, or we might see the opposite: monsters, sculptures and mountains and what they want to see, but they can't do it," Abraham Say.

In 2017, we built this city in China with actors and safety details. Image source: Viv Rosman provided by Polyglot Theatre

Giles said that this work is inherently risky: there are few rules other than "keep the road open," and Polyglot coordinators mostly follow the guidance of the children.

"We have a group of Goths in Perth: they want to destroy everything, but we said'come to build', they just rebuilt the interior of the apartment and stayed there all day. You never know if the wind will destroy everything. They were all blown down. At the National Theatre, they all blew into the Thames, at the Sydney Opera House, they went to the harbour.

“Chaos does dominate, but it’s incredibly dramatic and built on stories and narratives. You can follow your child’s journey. I sat down with a child who built a pagoda to drink paper cups of tea. Others The child opened a secret door and said, "Hush, we are hiding a refugee.""

Giles also likes the tension between adults and their children who really want to build and control. They "have this subversive level and they disappear."

Abrahams wanted to bring back the city we built for this year's Fringe Festival-this weekend's show is to save the festival that was cancelled by the lockdown.

"It sounds like a pile of cardboard boxes, and it's not more complicated than this," Abraham said. "But this is the most extraordinary experience."

On Saturday and Sunday, we built this city in Carleton University Plaza. Tickets are at melbournefringe.com.au.