You’ll never find an audience or a cast more invested than at a seasonal show, where kids find their feet in front of you. But performing arts provision for the youngest is in peril

What’s your favourite play of the year? I’d probably go for Somebody Jones’s How I Learned to Swim, though I was also bowled over by James Macdonald’s revelatory revival of Waiting for Godot and had a soft spot for The Comeuppance by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Anyway, never mind those – the best show is yet to come. There’s only one performance but I’ve managed to get tickets because I know one of the cast. In fact, I look forward to helping them rehearse their lines at home.

Yes, it’s almost festive show time in schools. Over the coming weeks, in classrooms around the country, antlers will be whittled from cardboard, paper headwear snipped out and glittered, scripts divvied up and learned. But next month’s winter performance is bittersweet for me. This is my youngest daughter’s final year at primary school. It will be the last time I perch on a much too small chair with all the other proud parents and carers for a show that, past experience has taught me, may well have funnier jokes and catchier songs than some of the 150-odd shows I see each year as the Guardian’s Stage editor.