Thursday 25 June 2020

Work-through

I've hired four actors for a five-hour work-through of the book to my Charlotte and Wilbur, sometimes known as Wilbur and Charlotte. Tomorrow from noon to five, Regina time.
General intro: who you are, how I know you, and thank you, SKarts. 
My objectives: to the hear the characters speak, to draw upon your experience as theatre professionals re script, staging, props, lighting, costumes, sound, sf/x etc.
I'll ask questions not looking for definitive answers but possibilities.
My vision for the show is a mainstage Christmas or late-season show, a musical. I imagine the stage I know best--the round at Globe Theatre, where all four actors have performed. I want to create for others what I experience in a musical theatre audience. In a word, enchantment. In two, total submission.
Why an adaptation of Charlotte's Web? Because the moral stakes are high, it offers positive models of parenting and teaching, it shows how to find love in a time of darkness, it contains humour and play, it believes that words matter, it gives us a beautiful rendering of the great theme: time passing.
All the characters are deeply embedded in their world, without irony (except Templeton, the rat). They're all fully who they are.
So we'll run each scene, pause for questions, run it again. Then each act. Then the whole show, time permitting.
And the last question will be, Should it be called Wilbur and Charlotte or Charlotte and Wilbur?

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