Alice in Toytheatreland

When I was last abroad, I was thrilled to see an exhibit of gothic toy theatres at Strawberry Hill, the former home of Horace Walpole.

I'd previously built a toy theatre version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, but the gift shop had a kit for building a toy theatre for Alice in Wonderland.

As readers of this blog know, I wrote my own stage adaptation of the Alice books, so it will come as no surprise that I bought the kit. It came as a printed book with cardstock pieces that can be cut out and glued together into a miniature theatre.

When you assemble the toy theatre, it looks like this:

The audience gets the full experience: the orchestra in the pit, spectators in the side boxes, and a full proscenium. Then the curtain goes up, and as the show begins, we see Alice out in the woods:

What's that? A white rabbit with a pocket watch? Alice tries to follow him and falls down, down, down the rabbit hole. The white rabbit is nowhere to be seen, but she spies a little door with a tiny keyhole...

Finding a bottle with the label "Drink Me" Alice decides to take a sip. Remember, though, kids, you shouldn't drink strange things when you don't know where they come from, especially if they're labeled "POISON" because if you drink poison, it is almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later.

And look at what happened to Alice! She drank from the bottle and shrank down to a teeny tiny size. There was also a very small cake with the words "Eat Me" on it, and Alice, being Alice, decided to give it a try.

Wouldn't you know it? After eating a bit of cake, Alice began to grow. Pretty soon, she was back to her normal size. The only problem was, she didn't stop growing. Alice grew and grew until...

...she could hardly fit inside the theatre! Distraught by this turn of events, Alice began to cry, until she realized she could just take a swig from the bottle and shrink again. The only problem was, when Alice shrank, she was washed away by a sea of her own tears until she arrived in Wonderland...

The first creature Alice came across was a Caterpillar, sitting on a magic mushroom, and smoking something nasty-smelling out of a hookah. Fortunately, Alice had learned in school to Just Say No to Drugs, so she passed the Caterpillar right by...

Alice came across a Duchess holding a baby. Alice had never met a Duchess before (though she had met many babies). The Duchess offered to give the baby to Alice to nurse for a bit, since she had to go play croquet with the Queen.

As soon as Alice took the baby, however, it promptly turned into a pig! (Don't you hate it when they do that?) Alice decided to put the pig down beside a tree, but as the little pig ran away, she heard something purring up in the tree...

It was a Cheshire Cat, grinning from ear to ear. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "In that direction, lives a Hatter, and in that direction lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."

Alice didn't want to go among mad people. She'd seen Hatters before, but none quite like this one. He asked funny riddles and sang a silly song. It ended up being the stupidest tea party she ever was at in all her life!

Alice left the tea party and saw little men who looked like cards painting white roses red in order to please the Queen of Hearts. She thought this queen sounded like a rather unpleasant person, but she did love to play croquet...

"Who is this? What's your name, child?" the Queen asked her. "My name is Alice, so please your Majesty," said Alice, with a curtsy. "And why are you not bowing before me?" thundered the Queen. "Off with her head!"

Instead of executing Alice, the Queen handed her a croquet mallet. Imagine Alice's surprise when the croquet mallet turned out to be... a flamingo!

"Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets!" Alice turned and saw the White Rabbit. He was dressed in livery and blowing a trumpet to announce a new trial. Someone had stolen the Queen's tarts...

The first witness at the trial was the Mad Hatter. He hadn't stolen the tarts, he said, and even if he had, he was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Next, the Queen called for the Cheshire Cat to appear. The Cat was about as cooperative of a witness as you would expect a Cat to be. The Queen was irate, and yelled, "Off with his head!"

Then, the Cheshire Cat disappeared... except for his head! "They'll never be able to cut off a head unless there is a body to cut it off from," said the White Rabbit. "Nonsense!" roared the Queen. "Anything that has a head can be beheaded."

Unable to execute the Cat, the Queen ordered that Alice be executed instead. "You can't hurt me," said Alice. "You're all just a pack of cards!" With that, all of the cards shrank smaller and smaller. Either that, or Alice grew larger and larger, until...

She could hardly fit in the theatre again!

Alice then awoke to find herself back where the whole story began. Perhaps the whole thing had been a dream!

That's the show, folks. I hope you enjoyed it!

ALICE Pictures

I just received photographs from the wonderful production of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that toured through North Carolina earlier this month.

East Carolina University produced the show, which was directed by Nick Lease and Michael Eubanks. A couple of the performances were at the Turnage Theatre in Washington, N.C., and another was at Parkwood Elementary School in Jacksonville, N.C. They took some great photos, and I wanted to share a few of them here.

Here's Alice (Catie Griffin) with her sister Lorina (Jordan Biggers) at the beginning of the show:

Alice falls down the rabbit hole and finds herself in a rather curious place.

Once in Wonderland, she encounters the Duchess, played here by Emma Myers.

A friendly cat (played here by Michael VanHouten) helps her along the way.

Here's the crazy tea party with the Mad Hatter (Connor Gerney), the Dormouse (Tyler Whitley), and the March Hare (Grant Morgan).

The highlight of the show was a manxome Jabberwock. You should have heard its mighty burbles when it came whiffling through the tulgy wood...

Fortunately, Alice slew the beast with her vorpal sword. What a finale!

Thanks to everyone who made the show a success, including sound and lighting designers Jayme Johns and Andrew Fiorini, Dylan Bailey and Jordan Early who costumed the piece, and puppet designer David Lynn. Leslie Shaw stage managed the show, and Patch Clark provided faculty supervision.

Here's a shot of the whole goofy cast and crew:

Everyone at ECU was great, and I hope to work with them again some day.

Washington's Turnage Theatre

I'm back now from North Carolina, where the students at East Carolina University put on a wonderful production of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

On Sunday, I got to see the show at the historic Turnage Theatre in Washington, N.C. It's a beautiful building, originally built in 1913, and renovated and reopened 100 years later by a local arts council.

Originally, there was a vaudeville theatre built on the top floor, above a department store. Roy Rogers performed there, and according to legend rode his horse Trigger up the stairs and right into the theatre. The space was also used to show movies, but with the advent of talkies, audiences started to complain about too much noise from the street. Consequently, management decided to build a second theatre behind the first one.

It is the newer theatre that is in use today. The old department store beneath the vaudeville theatre is now a spacious lobby and cafe that opens into the lavish theatre where Alice was. The arts council has plans to eventually restore the older vaudeville theatre as well, but has to raise the money first. Fortunately, they were kind enough to let me upstairs to see the older space, and I took a few pictures. It's beautiful up there.

Near the stage is an indention in the floor where a piano used to be that could be played during silent movies. The ceiling is amazing, but falling apart. A chandelier used to hang down over the audience, but it is long gone. You can still see the balcony (though not climb up to it right now) and even go into the office, where the word "REVIVAL" is stenciled on the wall.

Best of luck to the people of Washington as they continue to renovate this gem of a theatre!

Wonderland, N.C.

This afternoon, I saw the students of East Carolina University put on a wonderful production of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Today's show was in Jacksonville, N.C., at Parkwood Elementary School. Lots of folks showed up, including my old friend Jeff Hidek, who I used to do theater with in Pensacola, and who now lives in Wilmington.

It was great to see Jeff again, and his daughter seemed to enjoy the show, as did the other kids in attendance. Jacksonville doesn't get a lot of live theater, and this might have been their first play for some of the kids in the audience.

Catie Griffin, who plays Alice, did a wonderful job, and kids seemed to really relate to her. Michael VanHouten plays Lewis Carroll, as well as the Cheshire Cat and the White Knight. When he fell off his horse as the White Knight, there were howls of laughter from the audience.

The rest of the cast, likewise, did an excellent job. Jordan Biggers, who plays Alice's sister Lorina, also grabbed the audience's attention as the Cook and Tweedle Dee. Tyler Whitley, who plays Tweedle Dum (as well as the Dormouse and the King of Hearts), is considerably taller than her, but the staging made use of their height difference to great comic effect.

Emma Myers was delightfully frightening as the Queen of Hearts (also playing the Duchess and the Carpenter), and Connor Gerney was delicious as the Mad Hatter. Conner also operated some of the puppets, and his frog footman was a big hit with the audience. Of course, you can't have the story without the White Rabbit, which Grant Morgan hoppily played, jumping across the stage, later returning both as the March Hare and as the Walrus.

Many thanks to Nick Lease and Michael Eubanks for directing this production, and to the whole crew who helped bring it off today. Tomorrow, the show will be playing at the Turnage Theatre in Washington, N.C. at 2:00. The performance is free and open to the public, so if you're in the area, please come on out to see it!

ALICE Featured in Jacksonville Paper

My adaptation of Alice in Wonderland has been featured in an article in the Jacksonville Daily News in North Carolina.

I just arrived in North Carolina tonight, but earlier today the show had its first performance. There will be another performance I'll get to see tomorrow, and then one more I'll get to see on Sunday, after which I'll be heading back home.

You can read the article here if you're interested. I spoke with the reporter on Thursday over the phone, so I'm quoted in it, as is Liz Owens of the Zing Zumm Children's Museum. The play is being produced by East Carolina University, and is directed by two ECU seniors, Nick Lease and Michael Eubanks.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the show tomorrow!

ALICE Opens Next Week!

I'm very excited that my stage adaptation of Alice in Wonderland will receive its world premiere in North Carolina next week.

East Carolina University students Nick Lease and Michael Eubanks are directing the production, and I've been in touch with them over e-mail. We've made a few changes to the script, some of which I'll be keeping for future productions, others of which are necessary for a younger audience, but might be adjusted for different productions going forward.

The piece will open on Friday, March 16th, but I'll be having to miss that performance, as my plane doesn't get in until quite late. I will see the performance on the following day at the Children's Museum in Jacksonville, as well as the performance on March 18th at the Turnage Theatre in Washington. (Apparently, North Carolina has a lot of towns named after presidents.)

Though this production will be the world premiere, Kim Sharp previously directed two staged readings of the piece at the Abingdon Theatre Company.

If you live in North Carolina and you're in the area, maybe you can pop in for tea!

Alice Premieres Next Month

Next month, I'll be heading down to North Carolina for the first fully staged production of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

The production is being directed by Nick Lease and Michael Eubanks, two students at East Carolina University who are putting it together as their senior project. Their professor, Patch Clark, is mentoring them.

I'll be missing the first showing of the piece on Friday, March 16th, but I'll be there for a Saint Patrick's Day performance at the Children's Museum in Jacksonville, N.C. I'll get to see it again on March 18th at the historic Turnage Theatre in Washington, N.C.

I first wrote the adaptation at the request of the late great Christopher Catt. Kim Sharp at the Abingdon Theatre Company later directed two staged readings of the piece, the latter of which starred Mckenna Cox as Alice. She passed the script on to the folks at her alma mater, E.C.U.

And now, the play will be getting a full production! I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Songs for Alice

This past summer, I saw Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel's intimate chamber musical Songs for Alice at the Ruhrfestspiele Fringe Festival in Recklinghausen, Germany. Based on the works of Lewis Carroll, the play bypasses a linear narrative structure, instead using songs to structure the piece. I was telling people about it today, and a friend of mine going to Germany in January said he wants to see it if he gets a chance.

Well, Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel has not yet posted their schedule for January, but they have kept the show in their rotation, last performing it in Leipzig in October.

Charlotte Wilde and Michael Vogel have worked together since 1997. For this piece they used a freelance director, Hendrick Mannes, and added an extra musician, bass player Johannes Frisch. The play contains scenes and poems from Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, but it discards the narratives of both of those books. Instead, it presents incidents and songs in a seemingly random order.

Most stage and screen adaptations of the Alice books try to string events together into a logical sequence. Songs for Alice is notable for moving in precisely the opposite direction, presenting the different parts of the books as separate and distinct.

The play's use of puppets might once have set it apart from the world of musical theatre, but in the wake of such blockbusters as The Lion King and Avenue Q, puppets no longer seem so remote to musical-going audiences. Just as The Lion King sometimes merges together performer and puppet, Vogel frequently uses a similar technique in which he transforms himself into part of a puppet.

Avenue Q brought to Broadway the technique of having puppeteers dressed in neutral costumes standing in plain view of the audience. Vogel makes use of this technique as well, though he often suits his own appearance to the action of the scene. During the tea party sequence, for instance, he dons a top hat to become the Mad Hatter while also manipulating puppets of the Dormouse and the March Hare.

Other puppets include a Dodo bird, a Flamingo croquet mallet, a Caterpillar that blows real smoke and a White Rabbit puppet that is both comic and vaguely threatening at the same time. This aesthetic, both comedic and frightening, carries through the entire piece. Such an approach can perhaps be seen on Broadway, such as in Wicked's use of both playful musical comedy and foreboding signs of totalitarianism. The scale of Songs for Alice, however, is exactly the opposite of that for Wicked. While the Gershwin Theatre can fit 1,900 people, a technical leaflet on Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel's website claims Songs for Alice works best in a theatre that measures 12 by 10 meters and that the audience can be no more than 200.

If you're interested in finding out more about this exciting production, check out Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel's website here:

Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel

http://www.figurentheater-wildevogel.de/

Alice This Weekend!

This Saturday and Sunday, the Abingdon Theatre Company's Pop Up Playhouse will present my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. We have a great cast, including Glenn Beatty, Alanna Chuyan, Mckenna Cox, David Meyers, and Maayan Schneider. Kim Sharp directs.

The family-friendly performances will be at 11 am this Saturday and Sunday mornings in the June Havoc Theatre. That's on the second floor of the Abingdon Arts Complex, 312 W. 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan.

Admission is free, but if you want to make reservations, e-mail Vincent Scott at:

vscott@abingdontheatre.org

For more information, check out:

The Abingdon Theatre Company

http://www.abingdontheatre.org/

Alice to Return!

Mark your calendars for September 7th and 8th. That's when the Abingdon Theatre Company's Pop Up Playhouse will be performing a staged reading of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. The Abingdon did a reading of Alice earlier this year, and I'm very excited that they'll be bringing the piece back in the fall. Bring the kids!

Recklinghausen Recap

Now that I'm back in the States, I wanted to post these publicity shots of some of the great shows I saw at the Ruhrfestspiele in Germany. First of all, here's the wonderful cast of Heute: KOHLHAAS, based on the novella by Heinrich von Kleist.

And here's that great scene with the fabric in Red Giselle.

This photo doesn't quite capture the mask puppet in Songs for Alice, but it can give you an idea of what it looked like.

Here's the dish-smashing scene in Carl Sternheim's Die Hose / Burger Schippel.

Dancing maenads from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

The cast of Maria Milisavljevic's Brandung in front of their ice set.

The cast of Der Weibsteufel with their equally impressive set.

Why don't we get theater like this in the U.S.?

Recklinghausen - Day Two

So my second day at the Ruhrfestspiele I saw two plays. The first was Le Navire Night, a "dialogue for voice and cello" performed in French (and cello). The music was provided by American cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, while French actress Fanny Ardant recited a story by Marguerite Duras about a passionate love affair that takes place over the telephone. There was no set and very little movement, which fit the play, which is essentially an ode to the power of the human voice.

The other play, Songs for Alice, was performed in one of the tents set up for the Fringe Festival. Figurentheater Wilde und Vogel performed scenes and songs from Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books, though in no particular order. The play alternated between English and German, sometimes with the two being spoken simultaneously by different performers. The unifying piece was "The Walrus and the Carpenter," which was sung in snatches (in English) throughout the play. Interestingly enough, they translated "The Jaberwocky" into German, which had to have been a feat. I imagine the nonsense words are only truly effective if the rest of the poem is easily understandable, thus the decision to have that piece in German.

Tonight I see Carl Sternheim's Die Hose and Burger Schippel (yes, there should be an umlaut there, but my keyboard is limited right now) in the smaller theatre of the festival house. It's a coproduction of the festival and the Staatstheater Nurnberg. (Again, sorry for the lack of an umlaut.)

Recklinghausen, here I come!

Recently, I received a Cohn-Lortel travel grant through the City University of New York to visit the Ruhr Valley Theatre Festival (Ruhrfestspiele) in Recklinghausen, Germany. I'll leave at the end of May and be at the festival for the the first week of June. It's very exciting!

As part of the travel grant, I'll be writing a review of the festival for Western European Stages, a journal that is published out of CUNY. Productions come to the festival from all over the world. I've mapped out at least 10 productions I really want to see, including a ballet from Russia, a Kleist adaptation for children from a Belgian company, a German piece inspired by Alice in Wonderland, a Brecht play done by a company from Luxembourg, and a new adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

The plane and hotels are now booked. Hopefully, I'll be able to blog live from the festival!

Alice in Wonderland

Come out this Saturday for a free staged reading of my adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by the Abingdon Theatre Company in their June Havoc Theatre, 312 W. 36th Street, in Manhattan. The reading will be at 11:00 a.m., and children are welcome.

Kim T. Sharp is directing, and the cast includes Kim Allen, Gail Merzer Behrens, Jeanette Bonner, Mackenzie Hawkins, and Jacob Moore. It should be a great time!