- Roald Dahl
Magnifico! Splendifico! Amazing! Thrilling! Tremendous! Ladies & Gentlemen . . . . James & the Giant Peach! After months of planning, and running the Monmouth gauntlet of producing five other plays simultaneously all the way to the end, James & the Giant Peach took the stage last Tuesday. Having had sixteen rehearsals, which makes it the most-rehearsed play in Theater at Monmouth history, expectations from the rest of the company were very high going into our opening performance. With only a half day of technical rehearsals and one dress rehearsal the morning of our opening, it was anybody's guess whether or not the show was even going to work.
We had begun back in June by conceptualizing the show as a circus/sideshow attraction: i.e. a huge story told by six actors with a trunk full of props and puppets, while their imagination and storytelling filled in the rest of the gaps. As we began the rehearsal process, I was overwhelmed at the amount of creativity and innovation that the actors and the designers brought to the production. What started off as a few sight gags and extra jokes around the edges, morphed into a rollicking hour-long surge of comedy and music and storytelling, with more tech & design elements than you could shake a stick at. So many in fact, that between sound and lights we had a cue every minute-in a fifty-four minute show. Needless to say Natalie, our fearless stage manager, is constantly on her toes even with the support of two assistant stage managers and two board operators.
(Natalie (SM), Xi (Lights), and Rew (Sound) hard at work in our hyper-short tech day)
Its interesting to me that the show intended for a family audience, which is always the last show of the summer to open, is often a cursory afterthought to many theaters and theater-goers. Few people realize that the work done for children is often more technical from both a design and performance perspective than any of the other work that goes on. The precision and crispness that a young audience demands, as well as their willingness to let you know if they are not having fun, makes putting on a show for these little patrons every bit as time-consuming as putting on Shakespeare for the bigger kids.
We certainly had a great time exploring many different Toy Theater elements and small-scale puppetry to solve problems of scale and large action sequences. Introducing a smaller puppet version of the peach and having the actors manipulate the object in wild ways, as well as miniature puppet-versions of some characters, gave us lots of interesting ways to tell the story, that one would otherwise not be able to encounter outside of a theater. As the director, I was most proud of these moments (the 'sharks' as popsicle-fins in the first two rows of the audience, the six different-sized peach puppets, the underwater sequence with the giant octopus) that showed our audience different ways to think about the way a story is told.
But more than anything, the original music in the piece, written by our dazzlingly talented Liz Helitzer was the highlight for everyone. She came up with four original songs utilizing Roald Dahl's imaginitive text, and wove them seamlessly throughout the piece. Each one of the songs is a real ear-worm, and leaves everyone tapping their toes for hours afterward. In rehearsals we would often have the songs stuck in our heads for days, and that was just fine with us. Congrats to Liz on such a huge accomplishment, and to the actors for doing such a beautiful job of interpreting it!
It was also lovely to have my parents visiting last week, up from Texas. They were able to see all six shows in the season, and we had a fabulous day together in Boothbay Harbor, where we went whale-watching and ate very well. Glad to have you guys here!
Now the whole season is up and running, and we Monmouthians have been getting some much-needed rest! August is of course the part of the summer that we look forward to the most, since all rehearsals, technical or otherwise, are over with and we are just acting. Its a real privilege to spend these last weeks enjoying the dog days of summer and performing twice a day. And though the summer is coming slowly to a close, there are plenty of adventures left to be had!
(Cast, Crew, Design & Directing Team of James & the Giant Peach!)
Yours,
BBell
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