TRAILER: The Trumpet of The Swan

Can a brass horn be the key to love? Louis, a trumpeter swan, is different from his sibling cygnets, for he was born without a voice. But with great diligence, patience, and resilience, Louis learns to play the trumpet and communicate his thoughts and feelings through the power of music. E. B. White’s award-winning story "The Trumpet of the Swan" is inspired by the natural world and our own very human need to connect and to communicate. This innovative, all-ages production features both spoken language and American Sign Language. It runs from October 23 - November 22, 2015 at Wheelock Family Theatre in Boston's Fenway neighborhood.

Wheelock Family Theatre is a professional theatre company that creates intergenerational and multicultural productions that provide a shared experience for the whole family.  Our productions celebrate the diverse range of families found in the world today and seek to unite them in the shared experience of live theatre. Learn more at wheelockfamilytheatre.org.

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WHO is SHREK? Christopher Chew at the Wheelock Family Theatre

"Arts education is essential. There can really be no debate about the importance that the arts have on a civilization or more specifically a community. Education without significant contributions from the arts truly does not exist whether school systems and communities acknowledge that or not. The creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication fostered through arts education touches every other aspect of education more so than any other discipline. Wheelock Family Theater recognized that long before it became popular to talk about 21st Century Learning Skills or the 4 Cs of successful education. Their mission has been focused on transforming lives through exposure to live theater and education in the arts throughout their successful history. Wheelock Family Theatre has not only participated with the theater community at large in the creating art that transforms lives, WFT has nurtured and established an environment that has been transforming lives of countless individuals fortunate enough to walk through the doors and join this inclusive, wonderful family.

My entire professional career has been devoted to both education and theater. Whether I was teaching a theater course or not, my theater education has profoundly affected my perspective on how I work with students in all of my classes and now as a building principal. My acting career has always been affected by my perspective in education and the awareness of how our choices are perceived by others. My experiences here at WFT have allowed me to bring my entire experience with me to the storytelling craft more so than many of my other performing opportunities. I have treasured each and every aspect of my journey with WFT and value the rich tradition that it has and the magical impact it has on its audiences. It is an honor to be a part of that tradition and a privilege to be able to include my family in the larger Wheelock extended family. As a professional actor, there are not many opportunities to share the stage with my children and my daughter’s participation in this production has been a truly special experience that we will both always treasure. For that, we are both tremendously grateful to WFT and appreciate their contribution and commitment to the wonderful Boston Theater Community!"

Christopher returns to WFT having appeared in The Little Princess, Beauty and the Beast and The Sound of Music.

Review by Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek: The Taste of Sunrise

Inclusive and Intersectional: THE TASTE OF SUNRISE

photo by Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo

 (Boston, MA) In Susan Zeder’s The Taste of Sunrise, Tuc (Elbert Joseph) grows up poor, black and deaf in an ASL-ignorant hearing community in Ware, IL.  At the behest of the well-intentioned Dr. Graham (Donna Sorbello), Jonas Tucker (Cliff Odle) sends Tuc to a school for the deaf to learn how to speak. After years of social solitude, he finally meets kids just like him. They teach him sign; Tuc learns to communicate and to express himself. With help from friends Maizie (Amanda Collins) and Nell Hicks (Brittany Rolfs), discovers what it means to self-discover, to lose and then rebuild one’s identity.

Wheelock Theatre is no stranger to inclusivity. They routinely host performances for the hearing and visually impaired. Taste of Sunrise is told through spoken dialogue, ASL interpreters, and supertitles. Traditional actors are joined by ASL actors who sign the dialogue as the traditional actors speak. When appropriate, the supertitles are projected onto the stage above all of the action.  A delicate balance is struck as both types of actors share the stage to interpret Zeder’s play. Director’s Johnson and Lement have done an excellent job to gently conveying the great strides this production takes towards equality. This is an inclusive, intersectional production that encourages the hearing audience to learn from the performance. It warmly welcomes the members of the disabled community into the audience, whoever and however they are.

Elbert Joseph delivers a strikingly beautiful and sincere performance as Tuck. With simple movement and gesture, he was able to convey opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. He tells a spirited story with such warmth that it’s specific message instantly reaches across the divide to be universally appealing and inspiring. While the performances of the rest of the cast are excellent, this production would not be as great as it is without Joseph. It is his performance as Tuc that blends all of the separate elements into one successful production. He was a wonder to watch.

It is deeply satisfying to watch a performance that normalizes the experiences of the disabled. In a beautiful contrast, it outs the abled community’s behavior as strange and awkward when the two communities commune. In this production, when Tuc experiences hardships or trauma, it’s regularly because the hearing aren’t paying attention to Tuc’s needs. For example, Tuc is calmly hunting honey in Act 2 when a pair of hearing men see him covered in bees. They assume the worst, try to save him, but their involvement leads to Tuc’s serious injury. This episode is a brilliant metaphor for the abled community’s influence on the disabled community. Had they regarded Tuc’s behavior first or, heaven forbid, trusted Tuc’s experience, the bees wouldn’t have stung anyone.

There are dramatic moments in this production that some might find disturbing. In one scene, Tuc is bound to his hospital bed. Johnson and Lement make it abundantly clear to the audience that Joseph could break character and walk away at any moment. Rather, these scenes carry weight because of the emotional trauma Tuc experiences. Just as Tuc is casually stripped of his humanity in earlier scenes that depict him engaging the people of Ware, he is similarly but more traumatically stripped when he is bound by his hands to a bed by doctors. Tuc isn’t just restrained, his voice is silenced. The hearing community has denied Tuc agency and expression. It’s disturbing because it should be.

All of humanity shares an innate need to connect, to understand and to be understood. While The Taste of Sunrise is specifically about a deaf child learning to live in the world around him, it is also about Man’s need to self express in order to understand and be understood. It is a complicated production but Wheelock has divided its heavy material into bite sized, manageable chunks for viewers young and old to enjoy

 

Review by Jeremy Goodwin; Boston Globe: The Taste of Sunrise

An inclusive message from ‘The Taste of Sunrise’

Toward the very end of “The Taste of Sunrise,” there’s an emotionally eloquent argument between Amanda Collins’s Maizie, a teenage girl with a hard-luck life and Hollywood-inspired dreams, and Tuc, a deaf boy who has befriended her, played by Elbert Joseph, an actor who indeed happens to be deaf.

Maizie can hear just fine but was born to deaf parents, she explains, and she doesn’t want her children to be stuck between worlds like she was. With the aid of American Sign Language (ASL) and plenty of nonverbal communication, Tuc insists that she has a home in his hilltop shack.

Between these two actors and others onstage who unobtrusively interpret for them, the characters’ words are rendered in spoken English as well as ASL. In the swirl of emotion and the swift rat-a-tat-tat of their exchange, it’s almost hard to tell where one language ends and the other begins. They’re all just different voices, different parts of the same story.

It’s in moments like these that this production of Suzan Zeder’s play at Wheelock Family Theatre finds its energetic stride, depicting people in trying circumstances looking for some sort of connection in a world that seems bent on keeping them isolated. If parts of this earnest play, intended for young audiences as well as adults, feel a bit like a nutritious serving of theatrical vegetables rather than a compelling drama, it’s a modest price to pay.

Joseph didn’t start acting until he felt inspired, as a 12-year old, by a production of “Peter Pan” at the Wheelock. His performance as the centerpiece of “The Taste of Sunrise” is sandwiched between turns as the same character in “Mother Hicks” (at the Paramount last month) and “The Edge of Peace,” which opens at Central Square Theater on April 3.

Zeder’s trilogy deals with the evolving state of the deaf experience in America, as seen through the doings in and around Ware, Ill., before, during, and after the Great Depression. This trio of productions is billed as the first time the plays have been mounted in consecutive fashion in (more or less) the same city.

Joseph plays Tuc as a large-hearted simpleton prone to big emotions and forceful mood swings — here he’s terrified, there he’s bursting with anticipation. For all its lack of verbal speech, it’s a very loud performance, suggesting the sublimated frustration of a young man who is frequently silenced. Sure, I would have preferred more nuance, but the many children in the audience at a Saturday matinee seemed to follow everything just fine, and that seems closer to the point.

Co-directors Kristin Johnson and Wendy Lement weave some wonderful moments of understated poetry into a story that otherwise works in broad strokes. The depiction of children being struck by scarlet fever, and, later, of one character’s death, go far with simple props and graceful movement. When Tuc physically leans on the memory of a departed family member in the second act, the visual metaphor is easy for all to grasp, yet quietly pretty.

Costumed onstage interpreters perform much more than a purely functional purpose. They are parallel manifestations of each character’s inner life, and move within the action with grace and wit. (Line by line, the play’s text is also projected at the rear of the stage.) Long gone, Johnson and Lement seem to say, is the sole ASL interpreter relegated to a little oval in the corner of a television screen — or wearing street clothes, bathed in a footlight, at the front of the stage. (In a post-show audience talkback, Zeder said this is the most “inclusive” production of the play she has seen.)

Janie E. Howland’s set and Lisa Simpson’s costumes evoke the Depression, though there’s a notable shortage of the dirt and grime we might expect on a farm or among rural townsfolk who still mistake midwifery for witchcraft.

Though a group of young students from the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Allston prove a quite welcome addition to the ensemble, the play gathers momentum when it focuses on only a few characters’ stories in the second half. Brittany Rolfs brings a bemused swagger to Nell, the midwife whose fondness for singing to the gravely ill is mistaken as malevolent spell-casting; her efforts to lay aside her own grief do much to aid the show’s climax. As a very likable Maizie, Collins is both street-wise and naive. Cliff Odle projects warm-hearted gravitas as Tuc’s father. Ethan Hermanson is a steady anchor for the audience, as the narrating voice of Tuc.

The heavy-handed nature of this play is hinted at in its title. But with this production Wheelock offers a tasteful model for mixing together the deaf and the hearing — onstage, backstage, and in the audience — to create an entertainment that is coherent to each and panders to neither.

 

A YOUNG CODA ACTOR SHARES HER PERSPECTIVE

by Ingrid Jensen O’Dell

Ingrid Jensen O’Dell is an 8th grade student at Harborlight-Stoneridge Montessori School.  In The Taste of Sunrise Ingrid plays a student at the school Tuc attends. She is the daughter of WFT Inclusion Coordinator Kristin Johnson

Being in a unique show like The Taste of Sunrise is certainly an honor. As a Child of Deaf Adults, a CODA, I can relate to this play and some of its characters. One hearing character in the play, Maizie, is a CODA. In one scene she says that she can hear and speak, but she is Deaf inside. Being Deaf inside to me is having Deaf memories, having Deaf characteristics, or placing myself into the category of Deaf people. That is something that I can relate to very much.

My time is not spent entirely with Deaf people, or with hearing; half of my time I am with hearing people, and the other half I am with Deaf people. I am comfortable with that, because I can fit into hearing and Deaf culture as a whole. Maizie does not like being part of two worlds. She would rather be in one world, the hearing world. To me, it is not a scenario of two worlds; it is simply one world, with Deaf and hearing together. I feel that I am not part Deaf and part hearing, but a swirl of both. I cannot say that I would rather be Deaf or be hearing, because I am already both, and I will forever be both. In the past, when I have told someone that my parents are Deaf, that person would usually act surprised, but in a nice way. There have been a few people that have felt sorry for me, and would apologize for my having Deaf parents. When I heard what those few people said, I felt, in a way, insulted. Deaf parents are not inadequate, not in the slightest. If you discredit Deaf culture, you are doing so to me, and other CODAs.

Deaf and hearing people are basically the same, but there are some differences. Deaf people notice more things visually, because they cannot hear what is going on around them. Their loss of hearing enhances their other senses, like sight. Hearing people can see and hear, so these senses are about equal. I have characteristics of a Deaf person, for instance, the one I just described. When I am watching a movie in a theatre, I often feel lost and confused, because there are no captions. To get people’s attention, I tend to tap them on the shoulder or try to get their attention without speaking. I read quickly because I am used to reading the captions on television or movies, which shift very quickly.

There are a lot of bonuses with having Deaf parents. I can play loud music; they won’t complain. I can sing as loudly and as obnoxiously as I want; they won’t complain. I can pretend to be Deaf. I can convince people that I am. I can talk on the phone endlessly; they won’t get annoyed. I can listen to music on the radio in the car, and they won’t be bothered. Occasionally, my mother will put on her hearing aid and listen to the music as well. When I’m not sure if my mother has her hearing aid on, I shout or talk loudly to see if she will react. It often surprises me when she does react, because I’m not used to it.

There are some things that aren’t great, like when the batteries in the smoke alarm are low and I have to hunt all over the house to stop the beeping. When I’m in the car and the turn signal is on and beeping when it shouldn’t be, I tell my parent that it is on. When my dog is barking, or the microwave is making weird sounds, I tell my parents. I am not told to tell them when these things happen, but I tell them because it bothers me, or I feel that I need to inform them.

All in all, Deaf people and hearing people are the same, but different. I am a CODA, and I am proud to be one. There is nothing wrong with being Deaf, having Deaf parents, or even just knowing Deaf people. If I ever have children, I will keep them, unlike Maizie, and I will teach them sign language. I will never be able to ignore my Deaf self, not that I will ever want to. I am Deaf and hearing, and very proud to be both.

Girl Scouts and Cookies coming to Pinocchio!

Troop 76269, Brownie & Junior Girl Scouts, will host a cookie sale in the lobby of the Wheelock Family Theatre on Sunday, February 8th at 5pm; after the 3pm show of Pinocchio!

Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Patties, Caramel deLites, Lemonades, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Trefoil Shortbreads, Thanks-A-Lots, and Cranberry Citrus Crisps, all cookies are $4.00 a box.

There is also a new trial cookie; a gluten-free, chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal cookie for $5.00 a bag, "Trios".

Both troops are using the proceeds from the cookie sale to fund badge work, trips and service projects.

Additionally, you can support the Girl Scouts and donate purchased cookies to Rosie's Place. The Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts are involved with Cookies for a Cause and donating to the Greater Boston Food Bank and troops overseas.




Join the Girl Scouts on Sunday February 8!

PINOCCHIO costume designs by Miranda Hoffman

"Alice" at Wheelock finds balance for young and old audiences

Metro Boston - 10/22/2014  -Nick Dussault

The Wheelock Family Theatre kicks off its 34th season with “Alice,” a new musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic books “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice through the Looking Glass.”

Written and directed by 24-year-old Stoneham native (and frequent Wheelock performer) Andrew Barbato, “Alice” takes the audience on a fun trip down the rabbit hole for a coming-of-age tale that’s sure to resonate with people of all ages. Barbato's script finds a sweet spot somewhere between fairy tale and the acid trippiness of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit."

Rife with humor (some of which goes right over the younger heads in the crowd), “Alice” also boasts some not-so-subtle messages including the belief that nothing is impossible, the importance of what you do for others, and the high price of perfectionism.      

While Barbato’s enthusiasm for the story is clear from the start, his narrative sometimes loses its way. In Act I you might find yourself wondering who’s who and how you got to certain places. But stick with it. By the time you get to the Mad Hatter’s tea in Act 2, everything makes sense, except, of course, the logic of the locals at the tea.

Though the music, written by Lesley DeSantis, isn’t something you’ll be singing on your way out the door, it is warm, touching and perfectly appropriate for this piece. Alice (a vocally stunning Maritza Bostic) and the Queen of Hearts (the always-impressive Leigh Barrett) share the show’s finest musical moment, a lump-in-your-throat rendition of “Paint the Roses Red.”

Aubin Wise also delivers a standout performance as the White Queen, while Alexandra Nader shines in her stellar turn as the Cook. Russell Garrett finds the perfect amount of mad for the Mad Hatter and Jenna Lea Scott shines as the Frog Footman.

Matthew Lazure’s set (which feels like it could work in a Tim Burton film) is the perfect backdrop for “Alice” while Scott Clyve’s lighting design greatly enhances the magic of Barbato’s impressive debut production.

 

"Alice" Performs a Mash Up at the Wheelock

Wicked Local 10/23/2014
-Iris Fanger

Lewis Carroll’s beloved classic "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" is about a bored little girl who falls asleep at the edge of a river and dreams of a fantastic country where she must use her wits and ingenuity to make her way. At the end, her sister wakes her on the riverbank and since she’s a child of Victorian England, she probably returns home for tea. Not so in the latest dramatic adaptation of the story,"Alice," now running at Wheelock Family Theatre.

Writer Andrew Barbato and composer and lyricist Lesley DeSantis have created a new work that discards Carroll’s simple frame to the story for a mashup of themes from "Peter Pan," "The Nutcracker" and Maurice Sendak’s "Where The Wild Things Are." Their "Alice" pictures a young girl on the brink of adolescence who must grow up and accept responsibility. This trade-off has its pluses and regrets in the Wheelock’s elaborate production filled with visual treats.

The new musical begins (and will end) in Alice’s room, on the morning of her 13th birthday. Alice (Maritza Bostic) is in bed with her cat, a sinuous, ever-adoring animal (Julia Talbot), when her mother (Leigh Barrett) enters and orders her to get dressed and ready for the party. "Don’t disappoint me, " Mother says, echoed by the character of Alice’s older sister (Jennifer Elizabeth Smith). And Mother never even wishes her daughter "Happy Birthday."

Mother’s demand is the cue for Alice to run away. After hearing some lovely chimes and crossing paths with a large, clothed White Rabbit in a fearful hurry, she follows him down the rabbit hole to land in a strange place filled with some vaguely familiar creatures. Her pet has morphed into the Cheshire Cat who will be her guide; her sister shows up now and then. Most significantly, her imperious Mother has become the Queen of Hearts who rules her kingdom with fear, masked by a pretended civility. We are in a post-Freudian landscape, indeed, unknown to Mr. Carroll.

Happily, Barbato and DeSantis have populated the stage with Carroll’s inventive characters. However, Barbato, who also serves as director, has made one major error in casting. Bostic as Alice is an assured actor-singer, with a winning sense of humor, but she’s a recent college graduate, too old to play the part. Barbato wisely begins the show with a chorus of well-spoken children reciting one of Carroll’s poems. The children later transform into Flower Buds in the Red Queen’s garden. Since the cast is a mix of children and adults, surely one of these charming young actors might have been entrusted with the title role.

The adults in the show portray the characters who guide Alice along the perilous pathways of her journey, leading to the garden of the Red Queen. Barrett, one of the most accomplished members of the Boston-based theater community, is nothing less than a wonder as the monarch, enriching the DeSantis score with her luscious operatic voice. She also exaggerates the Queen’s bad manners to a laugh-out-loud delight. As anchor of the production, she is one major reason to attend it. Although she is worth waiting for, the Deck of Cards as her courtiers are missing.

Other stellar performances are delivered by Robin Long as a hip swiveling, gospel-like, shouting Duchess, William Gardiner as the kindly Mouse, Aubin Wise as the White Queen, and Jenna Lea Scott, last season’s knock-out Tracy Turnblad in Wheelock’s production of "Hairspray," portraying a genial Frog Footman. Stephen Benson needed a song to cap his quivering performance of the White Rabbitt. Lisa Simpson has delivered an attractive group of costumes that echo the original drawings by Sir John Tenniel. Matthew T. Lazure built an all-purpose, wooden scaffolding to hold the action.

While Mr. Carroll doesn’t need this reviewer to defend him, it is strange that Barbato and DeSantis wrote their own lyrics rather than using the poems that dot "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel (other than "Twinkle, twinkle little bat"). How sad to not to hear "You are old, Father William," and "Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup," among the many omitted verses.

ALICE - a new musical

Edge Media 10/20/14 - Kilian Melloy

Has any children's book sparked so much interest, and so many re-interpretations across so many forms of media, as Lewis Carroll's 1965 novel "Alice in Wonderland" and its sequel, published six years later, "Through the Looking-Glass?"

The first film adaptation hit screens in 1903; since then there have been multiple Cineplex and television versions of the story, with a forthcoming follow-up to the 2010 Tim Burton big-screen version now in production.

On stage, the first musical version of "Alice in Wonderland' went up in 1886; two operas, a ballet, and a musical with song by Tom Waits (!!) all followed.

Now, Boston's own Andrew Barbato has chimed in with his own musical, titled -- as was the Tom Waits-involved project -- "Alice." The world premiere of the new "Alice" is ongoing now through Nov. 16 at the Wheelock Family Theatre. The thumbnail review is this: As with so many Wheelock productions, you can (and ought to) take the kids to this one. And you don't want to miss it.

Barbato has clearly scrutinized Carroll's books, but he's not slavish to them. There's a shift in emphasis, away from Lewis Carroll's political satire and onto the question... or problem... of time -- or, rather, a human awareness of time's passage, something that children scarcely register but that weighs ever more heavily on adults.

This Alice (played by Maritza Bostic) faces her thirteenth birthday with more than a trace of apprehension. Her mother (Leigh Barrett), a laced-up Victorian sort, experts Alice to behave as a proper young lady and entertain the guests at her party with a piano recital. Alice isn't so sure about going from child to young woman instantaneously, and as a function of the calendar; she determines to run away. Cue the white rabbit (Stephen Benson), the plunge down the rabbit hole, the Cheshire Cat (Julia Talbot), and all manner of elixirs that expand the mind, enlarge and shrink the body, and make doorways of opportunity into splendid gardens (or tragic wastelands) either possible or not.

Seen from a child's perspective, the world of adults is unfathomably arbitrary, not to mention inexplicably convoluted and obscure. Barbato holds on to that sense of things being askew, but streamlines the narrative so that the Cheshire Cat puts in more than a cameo appearance (she's actually more of a guide in this version) and Alice's goal -- to find her way into the fabulous garden of the Queen of Hearts (Barrett, doing nicely symbolic double duty), by way of the Queen's fancy party -- is more easily traced.

Familiar episodes abound, but they have been given a different twist to fit into the new thematic thrust. Tweedle Dee (Dashielle Evett) and Tweedle Dum (Noah Virgile) appear as brothers reluctantly compelled by their masculine pride to settle differences by means of combat -- even though, like Alice, they seem to want to hold on to childhood a bit longer.

A murine boatman (William Gardiner) ferries Alice around, the Caterpillar (Elbert Joseph) lounges on a staircase in an imaginatively staged manner, the Frog Footman (Jenna Lea Scott), armed with twisty logic, guards the gateway into what might be considered domesticity and motherhood, and -- of course, because this just wouldn't be Alice or Wonderland without it -- the Mad Hatter (Russell Garrrett) and March Hare (Jane Bernhard) host their tea party, narcoleptic Dormouse (Merle Perkins) their eternal guest.

But always there's the underlying sense that Alice is slowly coming to terms with impending adulthood; after all, she can run away from home, but she cannot escape the clock, and its ticking follows her at every turn.

That's not the play's only audible element. This is, after all, a musical, and Barbato proves to be a talented songwriter. He's prepared about 30 songs for this play; they fit the material as well as the script, with its carefully judged tweaks to the source material, does. In an early song, Alice and her mother both lament that they need "Another Person's Life"; while shipboard with the mouse at the helm, Mouse and Alice engage in a duet called "Sea As Our Guide," a deft shorthand evoking the act of faith that growing up is in and of itself.

When the terrifying Queen of Hearts -- lopper of heads, erratic tyrant and ultimate mother figure -- finally grants Alice entree to her garden, the two duet on "Paint the Roses Red," a paean to transformation that touches upon fertile physicality as much as on intellectual maturation.

In one way, this "Alice" is a generally faithful adaptation, despite some quite striking departures; in another, however, it's an updated re-imagining that speaks to a 21st century audience while identifying new elements of universal appeal. No need to update the character -- Alice is still a little Victorian girl, and it would have been crass to re-cast her as a contemporary American.

What's fresh and exciting is how the play understands that even plugged-in, tech-savvy modern children, their iPhones and other devices in hand, speak the timeless language of children and view the world from a stature different from that of adults -- a stature in flux, allowing the world to be in flux, also.

"Alice" Grows Up in New Musical Wonderland

Arts Fuse 10/22/2014

Andrew Barbato’s musical turns the Dormouse, the White Queen, and even the Red Queen (“Off with their heads!”) into nurturing Montessori teachers, concerned with comforting and reassuring an upset Alice.

By Lin Haire-Sargeant

There is much to enjoy in the Wheelock Family Theater’s Alice, a musical interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s high Victorian children’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872).

Talented 24-year-old playwright Andrew Barbato has imagined an entertaining coming-of-age story for Alice (ably played by Maritza Bostic). It’s the morning of her 13th birthday, and Alice dreads attending a party where she must mind her manners and play the piano for guests. Her imaginary world, Wonderland, is her only escape. As designed by Matthew T. Lazure, Wonderland’s vertical stage-filling maze of wooden trunks, platforms, ladders, and staircases contains plenty of places for Alice to hide, fall down rabbit holes, and change sizes. Beloved characters from the books (The Queen of Hearts, The White Queen, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, and many more) are arranged around the set like statues that come alive and interact with Alice. In the story that follows there are lively song-and-dance numbers; there are tears; there is laughter. As the playwright explained in a post-show discussion, each scene teaches Alice a different lesson about growing up. By the end of the play, Alice has been successfully coaxed to attend her party and to accept her impending womanhood.

But there’s a problem.

Lewis Carroll didn’t want Alice to grow up.

Alice’s adventures were told by Charles Dodgson (pen name Lewis Carroll) to 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her two sisters on a series of idyllic boat-ride picnics on the River Thames in the summer of 1862. He imagined for the children a glimmering alternative world, viewed through the golden gauze of summer afternoons. Alice’s father Henry Liddell was dean of Christ Church at Oxford University, where Dodson taught mathematics. The writer cherished his friendship with this distinguished family. Though shy and uncomfortable with grownups, in the company of little girls he blossomed. Adept at magic tricks, comic verse, and genteel, childish puns, his relationships with his numerous “child friends” were correct but intensely loving. It was not thought odd or alarming at the time that a grown man would be fixated upon little girls; indeed, all the evidence confirms that Dodgson never committed an impropriety. But he remained an unmarried bachelor all his life. Is there anyone less likely to create a story celebrating maturity, aside from J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan? Alice cannot grow up any more than Peter. Carroll’s delightful imaginative world depended on Alice NOT celebrating the birthday that would take her to womanhood.

In addition, anyone who tries to faithfully adapt the Alice stories for dramatic presentation encounters a formidable obstacle: drama depends on development. Films can count on spectacle; a few successfully reproduce the static anarchy of the Alice books, such as Disney’s cheerfully nonsensical 1951 animated Alice in Wonderland and, on a darker note, Czech Jan Svankmajer’s surrealist 1988 stop-motion Alice. But a theater production is more earthbound—it has to get somewhere. But Carroll’s books are word-art. On the page, the transformations Alice goes through can happen as quickly and as effortlessly as a child can imagine—there is no worry over emotional impact or symbolic meaning. Many of the originals for Carroll’s poetic parodies can be known only through footnotes; others, like the tail-shaped lyric “A Mouse’s Tale,” must be seen on the page to be appreciated. This kind of intimate charm is not stageable.

Barbato’s version departs from Carroll’s in other ways. Barbato’s 13-year-old heroine is emotional and vulnerable. Carroll’s Alice may be a 7-year-old upper-class Victorian female, but she is as tough as Winston Churchill in the face of danger. She is never fazed by the behavior of Wonderland’s rude and self-absorbed characters; her automatic good manners and perfect poise smooth over any encounter. In fact, it’s vital that the characters are indifferent to Alice. She has to take her own fate in hand, and she does. In contrast, Barbato’s play turns the Dormouse, the White Queen, and even the Red Queen (“Off with their heads!”) into nurturing Montessori teachers, concerned with comforting and reassuring an upset Alice. Furthermore, whereas mathematician and logician Carroll uses the rules and pieces of games (cards, croquet, and chess) to supply a firm scaffolding for his witty chaos, Barbato eschews game structure for the biological imperative: grow or die.

That said, perhaps imposing a coming-of-age plot on Alice was the best option open to playwright and adapter Barbato. It is a time-honored story format that works well on stage, with child protagonists engaging in struggles that move them from ignorance into knowledge. The Wheelock Family Theater has a strong history of producing such plays. Recent seasons have included The Miracle Worker, The Secret Garden, and Anne of Green Gables: all of these stories center on girl protagonists who overcome trauma in order to reach self-determination. Alice acquires power too, regulating her size to suit the situation and finally reaching the garden that is her goal. Barbato makes good use of these factors—in one effective scene a long skirt is unfurled from the top of the set and Alice pops up above it, suddenly 20 feet tall. At the end of the play, Alice herself creates the garden she has been desiring by imagining it—child actors’ flower bud hats suddenly sprout outsized bright flowers. “The garden is all around you,” Alice learns. “Nothing is impossible.” These are fine lessons for children, and Barbato is to be applauded for including them.

Still, it must be noted that some children like their Alice “real.” In a post-show discussion, about 20 children crowded the front rows, eager to question the playwright. The first asked, “Why did you change Alice up?” Barbato answered that he had chosen the parts he liked best from the Alice books and movies and made that into a new play. Another question followed: “Why didn’t you just make the play out of the book?” Barbato replied that it wouldn’t have been any fun for the script to tell the same story as the book. “But some plays do,” the child insisted. Other questioners asked why some things were left out of the stage adaptation, and why characters from Through the Looking-Glass were mixed in with a mostly Wonderland-inspired play. The children debated Alice’s age: “She’s ten.” “No, seven and a half!” “No, she’s about five!” and wanted to know the actors’ ages. It turns out that several of the “flower buds” (some as young as nine) were products of Wheelock’s acting programs for children. The age of the woman playing the Cheshire Cat was a big surprise. Julia Talbot’s movement and acting skills would be impressive in an adult, but she’s only 14, another Wheelock acting alum.

Other performance standouts: Jenna Lea Scott, delightfully funny as the Frog Footman; Russell Garrett, who brought the whimsical polish of the British Music Hall tradition to the role of the Mad Hatter; and Aubin Wise as the White Queen—her gospel-diva singing has no logical connection to the setting, but she’s such a pro that it is a joy to go wherever she leads. The Duchess (Robin Long) and the Cook (Alexandra Nader) convulsed the audience with housekeeping so crazy that it turns their baby into a pig! Finally, Elbert Joseph as the speaking part of the Caterpillar (four other actors played his lower segments down a spiral staircase) haughtily interrogates Alice in dialogue straight from the Carroll text. Actors, musicians, designers, and production staff bring energy and polish to this production of a new work.

Alice’s score, written by Lesley DeSantis, dutifully samples cabaret and gospel styles. The production’s performers generally deliver the tunes via the now declamatory Broadway mode: enthusiasm trumps nuance. It did not help that during the first act the voices of the singers were amplified to the point of pain. The volume was turned down in act two, which at least made listening more comfortable. Aubin Wise’s beautiful voice and expert delivery stood out, as did the antic vocal turns of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (Noah Virgile and Dashiell Evett). Pianist Robert L. Rucinski’s versatile ensemble was excellent throughout, accompanying the singers with tact and steadiness.

The production I attended drew an impassioned young audience, in the know about Alice and more than ready to be thrilled by a retelling of her story. The widespread graying of the theater-going demographic is not apparent at the WFT, where the majority of the people onstage and in the audience are, as Shakespeare would say, in their salad days. If nothing else, this Alice confirms something that we tend to forget at our peril—that theater is a special enthusiasm of the young.

Director's Notes - Andrew Barbato

Four years ago, I spent the summer locked away in the Stoneham Theatre basement with a small tribe of creatively charged young artists. We hung clip lights to the ceiling, hot glued costumes together, acquired a lovely old ladder from a sweet old man on craigslist, and thus, ALICE was born. The show has grown up quite a bit since then. ALICE had an award winning run in New York's Midtown International Theatre Festival and is now being brought to new heights by the professional artists at the Wheelock Family Theatre! But no matter how far this show sails, underneath the beautiful stage and behind the cellar door you will find that tiny tribe of young artists who spent the summer dragging a dream into reality. Nothing's Impossible.

Mad as a Hatter. Russell Garrett plays iconic role in new Wonderland at Wheelock

I have been a theatre artist for many years now and one thing that never gets tiring is seeing and feeling an audience respond to a live performance. That becomes even more exciting when I realize that many of the patrons in the audience are young people who may not have seen a lot of theatre; or perhaps the show I’m performing in may be the first live show they have ever seen.  Wheelock Family Theatre provides that for so many young people and their families.

ALICE marks my second time performing at WFT.  I previously played Uncle Archibald in THE SECRET GARDEN and although I was a small part of that show, the engagement and joy of the audience was palpable.  Here was a well-known story, primarily about children, who’s telling rested so much on the young actors’ shoulders.  The audience was spellbound, not only by the story, but the fact that they were seeing kids their own age bringing it to life right in front of their eyes.  This was further validated on days the ‘red carpet’ was rolled out in the lobby and countless children were given the opportunity to meet the actors who had moved them and have a personal moment with them.  It was joyous and a little humbling to realize how transformative theatre can be.

Though that was my only experience working with WFT (up until now) I have seen countless productions here.  The spell cast is always the same: a story that can appeal to both young and old and an approach that continues to de-mystify our perceptions of color and ability.  WFT has always held fast to their mission of non-traditional casting and has led the way here in Boston to provide wonderful opportunities for adults and children alike to not only take the stage playing roles they may not play elsewhere, but for audiences to see stories that reach beyond color and race.  The stories are about people.

Maritza Bostic is Alice in new Wonderland at Wheelock

A Reading, MA native, Maritza is a proud member of Salem State's graduating class of 2014 with a B.F.A. in Theatre Arts Performance. She was recently a finalist in KCACTF Region 1 Festival where she received the VASTA Award and Linklater Scholarship. Her recent credits include: Into the Woods (Lyric Stage Co of Boston), Hairspray (Wheelock Family Theatre), A Little Princess(Fiddlehead Theatre), Les Misérable (Reagle Music Theatre), School House Rock Live! (Boston Children's Theatre). 

As any actor I have my usual list of concerns when going in for auditions. Am I right for the part? Did I pick the right song? Do I look young/old enough for the role? Does it matter if this character is African American? Now of course, there are shows where race is essential to the telling of the story. But, as I got older, I started to differentiate those stories from the roles that just so happened to be originated by someone who was typically Caucasian. And to me that meant there was no reason for anyone to feel like they could not do a part because the character didn’t “traditionally” look like them.

After coming from being a Dynamite in WFT’s recent production of Hairspray I was ecstatic to be gifted with the iconic character of Alice from the story Alice in Wonderland. I remember not knowing whether to cry or scream while on the phone with the director. I was nervous because this would be my first major lead role in professional theatre. But ultimately, I cried because I had again been validated as who I was: an actor.

The Wheelock Family Theatre is the perfect place for someone to try something new. Wheelock is about bringing theatre to people of all types of multicultural background as well as accessibility to people with disabilities. And what enhances their ability to do that so wonderfully is by having shows filled with diverse casts. It is so great being part of a theatre company that fosters inclusion within the audience, to the people who work behind the scenes, and are seen on stage. 

Maritza Bostic with Ciera-Dawn Washington and Kerry Wilson-Ellenberger in HAIRSPRAY
Maritza Bostic with Leigh Barrett in rehearsal for ALICE.

Wondering what ALICE is up to now?

The New England Professional Premiere of ALICE by Andrew Barbato.

ALICE

October 17 – November 16, 2014

Friday nights at 7:30, Saturday & Sunday matinees at 3:00

This new musical adaptation of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” is by Andrew Barbato, a Stoneham local, with music by Lesley DeSantis, from Rockport.  “Alice” offers a fresh musical perspective on the satirical vignettes drawn up by Lewis Carroll.  Barbato, who has graced local stages as an actor, has been writing plays since he was a teen.  “Alice” first took stage with the Stoneham Young Company and was performed by Barbato’s production team “Cellar Door Stage” in 2011.  “Alice: A New Musical” made its NYC debut at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2011 and was also performed at Marymount Manhattan College in 2013.

 

“Boston is where the seeds of Alice were planted,” explained Barbato, “I am so drawn to the nostalgia, the whimsy, and the magic of Alice’s story “

 

“Alice” retains the beloved distortions, musings, and caricatures that have enchanted readers and inspired illustrators, filmmakers, playwrights, and choreographers since the book’s publication in 1865.  Barbato’s adaptation has threaded Carroll’s distinct symbolism with a story of a young girl “coming-of-age”.

 

“There have been about four incarnations of this play. And as I’ve developed this girl who is on the cusp of young adulthood; I can definitely relate.”

 

Wheelock Family Theatre has always been a home for young talent, nurturing young artists in a safe, professional environment.  And “Alice” asks a question many young people struggle with;  must you relinquish the dreams of your childhood when embracing the responsibilities of adulthood?

 

“WFT has been an instrumental force in my artistic development and I feel lucky to have been mentored by founding members Jane Staab and Susan Kosoff”, says Andrew Barbato.  “Places like WFT replenish my soul and remind me that the journey is much richer than the destination.”

And under the leadership team of Wendy Lement and Shelley Bolman, Wheelock Family Theatre will present the New England professional premiere of Barbato’s “Alice”.

 

Wendy Lement states, “I want Wheelock to present new work that brings beloved stories to life in fresh and dynamic ways.  The stories we tell must awaken our senses, alter our perceptions, promote empathy, and encourage dialogue.  I am thrilled to put this new work by Andrew front and center as our season opener.  Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole will send us on a fantastical coming of age adventure.”

 

Featuring Leigh Barrett* as the Queen of Hearts, Stephen Benson* as the White Rabbit, Jane Bernhard as the March Hare, Maritza Bostic as Alice, Dash Evett as Tweedledee, William Gardiner* as the Mouse, Russell Garrett* as the Mad Hatter, Elbert Joseph as the Caterpillar, Robin Long* as the Duchess, Alexandra Nader* as the Cook, Merle Perkins* as the Dormouse, Jenna Lea Scott* as the Frog Footman, Jennifer Elizabeth Smith as Sister, Julia Talbot as the Cheshire Cat, Noah Virgile as Tweedledum, and Aubin Wise as the White Queen.                               *Members of AEA

 

Wheelock Family Theatre is a professional, non-profit theatre associated with Actor’s Equity, the union of professional actors and stage managers. Located on the campus of Wheelock College, Wheelock Family Theatre seeks to improve the lives of children and families through the shared experience of live theatre.

For additional information please call 617-879-2300.