10/20/2009 4:02:00 PM Stages goes through the looking glass for 'Alice'
‘Alice in Wonderland’
Who: Stages Theatre Company
Where: Hopkins Jaycees Studio, Hopkins Center for the Arts, 1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins
When: Oct. 23-Nov. 8
Tickets: $12 and $15. Show is recommended for ages 6 and up.
Contact: Call 952-979-1111 or go to www.stagestheatre.org
By Ed Huyck
Starting this weekend, audiences at Stages Theatre Company will get to take a trip to Wonderland right alongside Alice.
The company's production of "Alice in Wonderland" features a set and staging that has the audience sitting side-by-side with the actors, watching events unfold in every corner of the Hopkins Jaycees Studio in the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
The adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic children's tale was crafted by Jim Hibbeler.
"When they asked me to do it, they asked how I would feel about it starting it in the round instead of the usual proscenium style, where the actors are on one side and the audience is on the other," said director Leah Adcock-Starr. "We wanted the audience to walk into the room and feel like they are walking into Wonderland."
To bring this to life, Stages engaged veteran set designer Erica Zaffarano.
"When audiences first walk in, there's an ordered little world, but as you get further away from the door, it becomes a little more chaotic," she said.
By the time the audience takes their seats, they'll fully be into Wonderland.
In fact, there are no traditional seats in the black box space at all. Instead, the audience will sit on long benches (with no assigned seating) that are covered with the same artificial turf as the set.
Once the action begins, the 23-player cast will perform not just in the center of the arena, but in spaces all around.
They'll also not just directly address the audience as narrators or give asides on the action, but will sit amid them.
"At one point, Alice goes and wedges herself onto a bench," Adcock-Starr said.
Part of the reason to immerse the audience in the setting is to help bring them into Alice's world.
"This story can be really difficult. If you don't care about Alice, then the story just becomes strange and quirky. You become distanced from the story because it is so odd. We don't want the audience to be distanced from the strangeness that Alice is experiencing. They have to part of the magic of Wonderland."
For most of the rehearsal process, Adcock-Starr and the actors worked in a rehearsal space, not in the theater.
To get the young performers used to playing to the whole space "we had the kids draw faces and post up pictures on the wall, and then have them direct their acting in different directions," she said. "The kids are used to playing in one direction. If they do that, it just flattens out. Once they got the hang of it, they love having to play everywhere and they love that the audience is all around them."
Zaffarano's set doesn't just draw the audience into Wonderland, it sets the mood for the place.
"Alice is, by nature, a very dark piece," she said. "I wanted to make it more fun, so we went with a lot of color and little magic things that happen."
The final proof comes when the performers take the stage.
"A set doesn't really come to life until an actor stands on it," Zaffarano said.
Zaffarano, who has worked in the Twin Cities for 18 years after spending time in Los Angeles, has enjoyed her collaborations with Adcock-Starr.
"She's almost a kid herself, and she really has a feel for what [the young performers] can do. She expects the most of them and that shows," Zaffarano said.
In the end, it's the story that makes the piece.
"It's so incredibly playful," Adcock-Starr said. "It's a giant riddle with such interesting characters that are so odd and playful. It also captures a little girl's ability to imagine her world. She sees the ordinary and imagines the extraordinary."
