| As a director
looking for work, I had the good fortune to wander into an experimental
Black Box project funded by the British Counsel. The Black Box wanted a
bilingual play, in English and Czech, to play for students learning English
in Zakladni Skoly (grade schools) around Prague. The play would have to
be simple enough for students to follow, yet exciting enough to generate
enthusiasm for learning English. The result was an original bilingual
adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through
the Looking Glass, called Alenka In Wonderland (a word-play
combining the English and Czech titles of Carroll's work). This production
featured an international cast of 11, including 4 Brits, 1German, 3 Czechs
and 3 Americans. In addition to touring ten schools, we played for adults
in two Prague theatres.
The concept for the show was this:
Czech Alenka falls asleep while doing her (boring) English homework one
day and wakes up in the English speaking world of Alice and Wonderland.
Because she can't understand things, she relies on the the audience to
translate for her. To do this, we used a bifurcated Alice character (Alice/Alenka),
with a Czech actor playing Alenka, and a British actor playing Alice. Alice
existed only in the Wonderland world, and Alenka floated through each scene
unseen by all of the Wonderland characters except Alice. Thus, Alenka could
act as narrator/translator/mediator between the Czech-speaking audience
and the English language parts of the play.
Each performance of Alenka was different.
The show had 11 possible scenes, 5 of which would be performed in a short
version of the show. (We played all 11 scenes in the two Prague theatres.)
A typical short version show would look like this, with the titles in green
being the scenes played, and the titles in red the scenes not played:
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| Pig and Pepper |
Queen's Croquet |
Mad Tea Party |
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| Humpty Dumpty |
Tweedle Dee and Dum |
White Knight |
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Which scenes were to be played was
determined by a random audience member, who would translate a line from
the next scene. We did this thusly: At the end of each scene the action
would stop, and the actors would freeze in two or three tableaux, each
tableau holding up a placard with a line from that scene, ex. "It was the
best butter"(Mad Tea Party). Alenka would, in Czech, plead with the audience
to help her translate one of the cards. When an audience member would translate
a line from a scene, that scene was played, and the translator was rewarded
with a bar of chocolate. (Mars was one of our sponsors!) We found
that the first time this translation game occurred, we had one or two tentative
hands being raised, but by the final translation almost every hand was
in the air with the hopes of getting that Mars Bar! An aside: in
one of our performances in the Roxy Theatre, we had to hold the show for
two actors who were sick in the bathroom, having overdosed on chocolate
bars.
The final scene of the play was
the only one in which Alenka "broke through" into Wonderland and interacted
with the other characters. If the play ended with The Trial, Alenka would
be spotted by the King mid-way through the scene, and then put on trial
for not speaking English. If Queen Alenka was the final scene, Alenka would
pass a very silly English test given by the Red and White Queens and be
rewarded by being made Queen Alenka.
This production was by far one of
the more challenging directing experiences of my life, mainly because of
the logistics of working with eleven cast members, all of which were working
odd hours, and none of which spoke a common language. We conducted rehearsals
in Czech and English, with my assistant director, who also played Alenka,
serving as translator. Alex Gammie of the Black Box did an incredible job
of scheduling and moving the production from venue to venue amidst the
chaos of post-communist Prague. I commemorated my strength at having survived
directing Alenka in Wonderland, by having a Czech star permanently
inscribed on my arm; i.e., I got a tattoo in a bar.
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