Month: January 2013

Why Adapt Children’s Literature?

An adaptation is said to be “the re-casting of a work from one genre to another (adaptation of a novel for the stage, for instance)” ((Pavis, Patrice and Christine Shantz (1998) Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Ltd.  p.14.)). Adapting a novel into a theatre production enables a theatre company to utilise the essence of a previously successful/popular story, while allowing them to intertwine the original text with their own unique ideas. Therefore, making the old become the new.

For a newly established theatre company, we feel creating an adaptation is both a wise move as well as taking a risk.

It allows us to use a story, which has already proven itself to be popular and, if advertised efficiently, will hopefully attract a significantly large audience. However, being that the public will already know the story they are paying to see, adapting the original text into our own form could perhaps mean the audience will not take to it as they did the original.

The act of transforming a novel into a theatre script is not a task to be taken lightly, which is part of the reason why, as a company, we decided to direct our attention towards children’s literature. These stories hold within them magic and imagination, which is unparalleled in the adult world yet the comparably basic story lines and characters allow our company to efficiently adapt the story without tackling the complexities of adult literature.

The simple yet moving story lines will also compliment the elaborate staging our company favours.

 “Complex staging + simple storyline = successful spectacle”

Kate Dawson.

Word Count: 273

Works Cited

Production Meeting Note 24/1/13

Progeny Theatre Company Meeting

Date: 24/1/13

 

Attendance/Apologies: 

 Full attendance to this meeting.

Manifesto update/discussion:

  1. There is a massive culture now for how children should be protected in theatre today.
  2. Within theatre there are underlying issues present that shouldn’t be brought to there attention
  3. Something about the presence of these issues should be exposed to adults,
  4. a re-education to adults of the grimm nature of these stories so they then can understand
  5. combining the innocence of a story and exposing the darkness within it.
  6. Nostalgia?
  7. Adapting a traditional children’s tale in its
  8. highlighting and disassembling the illusion of the magic
  9. re tell and make obvious aspects of the stories that may have been overlooked for the children’s stories

 

What our Theatre Company Dislikes about theatre:

  • traditional theatre
  • Extreme taboo (child abuse, rape etc.)
  • children’s theatre being strictly for children.
  • Following practitioners to the letter
  • naturalism on stage (mirror to reality)

 

What our Theatre Company Likes about theatre:

  • using aspects or elements of practitioners to influence our performance style
  • breaking the boundaries of genre
  • taboo subjects (light)
  • spectacle theatre
  • Heavy technical
  • elaborate costumes
  • (Making children’s theatre for adults)
  • filter theatre – influence
  • paper cinema – influence
  • theatre as an escape
  • Tim Burton
  • hiccup theatre
  • taking something that everyone knows, and making is unrecognisable
  • representing the unrepresented

 

Possible ideas for Plays:

Children’s stories: Dr seuss, Grimms fairytales, The giving tree?, Roald dahl, enid blighton, beatrix potter, nursery rhymes.

 

MISSION STATEMENT:
We exist to change the perceptions and perspectives of those who are familiar with children’s stories. In doing so, we hope to alter the genre of Children’s Theatre, to directly encompass the adult audience. We aim to create theatre which allows escapism for adults by adapting children’s stories. Our theatre company aspires to create that which has not been seen before through controversial and innovative means.

 

TASK:

 

For Marketing group (KELSEY AND JESS)

  • Create a questionnaire to find how interested the public would be in coming to see a production of a children’s story for adults.

Difficulties Facing the Script

TIME

As we are devising our own script, a huge difficulty we will face with creating the script is time. As devising a script can take time from the first moment you think of an idea to the final script that you are happy with, we are going to  have to work quicker than we would intend to work through a script. The quicker we are able to have the script finished the more time that the actors will be able to learn the script and begin developing their characters.

 

STORY

Although we will be adapting a story that is already written, we will be creating our own storyline from this basis. The story must flow, have an understanding and also stick to the type of theatre we are wanting to create, therefore children’s theatre for adults. As we have looked at The Bloody Chamber and The Snow Child which are both written by Angela Carter I feel that my best script work will be produced by creating the images I envisage whilst reading the stories, while also maintaining the language that she uses within the stories.

 

CONTINUITY

As we were having three members of our team write the script, it will be the first time that we as a trio have written a script together and as a team. As we all have different writing styles, ideas and imaginations this could lead us to develop a difference of opinions in terms of where the story will lead and to what may happen within the script.

Robert Bull

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