Bluey's Big Play The Stage Show opened at Civic Theatre Newcastle on Wednesday and will perform another four shows today before returning for more dates on April 24 and 25.

The 50-minute show features a new story written by Bluey creator Joe Brumm with new music from composer Joff Bush which follows a day in the life of the Heeler family. Bandit, Chilli, Bluey and Bingo are joined by other popular characters from the Logie and Emmy-award winning program.

The characters are brought to life on stage as puppets under the direction of Speers Point-raised puppetry director Jacob Williams, who took on the role fresh from a stint living in New York where he worked on the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of King Kong: Alive on Broadway.

His arrival back in Australia in late 2019 introduced him to the phenomenon that is Bluey. The show has become the most-watched series ever on ABC iView with more than 480 million plays and is broadcast internationally through Disney.

"What's beautiful about this stage version is that it's such a shared activity between the kids and their parents because the parents, they love the show as well," Williams said.

"They really identify with [Bluey's parents] Bandit and Chilli. They love the joy that kids get out of the show too, so it's a really beautiful shared experience."

Williams said the stage version captures everything that children - and parents - love about Bluey.

"One of the lovely things is that we play to a pre-recorded track of the voices from the show, so that gives us lot of the character," Williams said.

"We worked very closely with the production team behind Bluey and they were in the rehearsal room with us giving us pointers about gestures for the characters.

"We wanted to capture the essence of the characters, so it's a gentle blend of the expertise of [production company] Ludo and what we can bring to the puppets and the stage design. A show of this quality, we want to maintain that in the standard of puppetry and performance, so it's all from the Bluey universe and very much captures the joy of the show on stage."

The colourful set design replicates the animation from the show, while the larger-than-life puppets are purposely created so than everyone in the audience has a clear view of the characters.

"Bandit is almost six-foot tall and the glorious thing about being so big is you can sit anywhere in the theatre and still get a fantastic view," Williams said.

"The show looks fantastic even from the back row."

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