Gigi Roddick is only six years old, but she says her life has already been changed through theatre.

Roddick, a Grade 1 student, has watched three environmentally themed plays by Metro Vancouver-based DreamRider Theatre in the past two years, and now the way she looks at the world has been altered.

“I thought about graffiti,” she said. “I thought about all the trash I’ve seen in the dumps.”

DreamRider performs more than 250 shows to 65,000 children each year at no cost to schools thanks to partnerships with organizations that include the RBC Blue Water Project, Metro Vancouver and municipal governments.

The company is touring its new water conservation production, H2 Whoa!, that’s designed for kindergarten to Grade 7 audiences, to more than 40 elementary schools in Vancouver from Feb. 27 to April 30.

Vanessa LeBourdais, who co-founded DreamRider Theatre with her husband Ian Gschwind in 2002, says their secret is engaging more than just the minds of children when it comes to environmental education.

“Theatre, music and comedy really engages their hearts and spirits, so we get them really excited first before we talk really about any environmental issues,” LeBourdais said. “We get them laughing and happy and excited and cheering and screaming and then we say by the way…”

The approach seems to work. Roddick’s mother Madeleine Shaw noticed her daughter asked more questions after she saw DreamRider’s Zero Heroes, a play about reducing waste to zero. Gigi asked her environmentally conscious parents whether they really needed to drive somewhere or if they could take their bikes.

“I like the attitude that they bring to it that there a lot of different ways to approach some really big problems and everybody can make a difference,” said Shaw, co-founder of the Vancouver-based Lunapads which sells washable cloth menstrual pads.

DreamRider has also produced educational videos since 2009. With its videos and plays, the Lower Mainland’s environmental education theatre company has reached 750,000 children.

The theatre company’s videos can be viewed at dreamridertheatre.com, along with Good Green News videos produced by a team from Telus.

DreamRider has also produced an animated interactive game based on the Keep Cool! play about energy and transportation sustainability with the Centre for Digital Media on Great Northern Way.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi