The directors of the Zurcher Theatre Spektakel recently announced that they were updating the festival’s decades-long commitment to making the arts accessible to everyone as well as reflective of everyone—to “social diversity,” in a phrase. So the inclusion of, say, Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold, the Beiruti exiles Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy’s delicately mordant space opera about being adrift in the galaxy, didn’t come as a surprise, though what a gratifyingly unlikely form they have given their parable! But that the Spektakel is counting kids—and their bedraggled parents—as part of this new “everyone” is unusual for festival fare. The underage offerings are plentiful, free, and appropriately short. They’re also geared to what matters to kids. Rage, for example, in the gleefully tantrumy Anger Management, or the chaos that ensues when you are only trying to follow adults’ incomprehensible rules (Gugus). There are lessons in how “the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone” via hip-hop moves (Spare Parts), and the gravity of climate change delivered through circus (T’es rien sans la terre). Finally, no gender-curious teen (nor their obedient parents) should miss Di/Strauss Technique, in which the brilliant, comic, slyly heart-piercing performance artist Ivo Dimchev channels “a queer operetta guru with ambitions of becoming a Club Med fitness instructor.” —Apollinaire Scherr