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WEEK of MARCH 1, 2004 |
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Middle School Students Disappear Into Rabbit Hole by Jeffrey Stanley NOTE: Friday’s performance is sold out, and tickets are selling quickly for Saturday’s performances. THE QUEEN OF HEARTS, She Made Some Tarts “It’s a giant game board, and everywhere she goes the rules of the game change.” Director Amanda Selwyn was talking about her adaptation of the nonsensical comedy Alice in Wonderland, which 33 BFS Middle School students will premiere next week. Selwyn created the play by borrowing passages from previous stage adaptations of the classic Lewis Carroll children's books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. “I combined them because I wanted to use all the characters,” Selwyn says. Most of those characters, including the White Queen, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare, have become fixtures in pop culture. DON’T BE NERVOUS, or I’ll have you executed. Eighth grader Paul Silverman plays the Mad Hatter. “Alice goes into the rabbit hole and she comes to my tea party with my friends the March Hare and the Dormouse, and she ends up leaving because it’s so weird,” he says. Later he must give trial testimony in the case of the volatile queen’s missing cherry tarts. Eighth grader Louise O’Donnell portrays the March Hare. “I’m the Mad Hatter’s sidekick,” O’Donnell explains. “I’m obsessed with butter. The play for me is about eating bread and butter at the tea party. Basically, I’m self-obsessed.” BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING until you come to the end. Then stop.
Selwyn has also created an ensemble of dancing poets who periodically interact with the cast and the set as a kind of whimsical Greek chorus. Sixth grader Tsedey Moore plays Blue, a member of this poet ensemble. “I’m a blue flower,” Moore says. “In the beginning we say a poem. We do movement. We make a garden with our bodies and the scrim and the lights.” Those lights will be controlled by Stephanie Williams (The Trojan Women), who majored in drama at Vassar and is the lighting designer for this production. Selwyn’s trusty sidekick is eighth grader Ben Lynford, the stage manager, who has been diligently sitting on the book at rehearsals, feeding lines to the actors and keeping his 32 classmates in line. Alice in Wonderland will be performed Friday, March 5th at 7:00 pm and Saturday March 6th at 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Tickets are $5.00 for students and $8.00 for adults, and are available at the front desk in the lobby. |
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