Over the next five months, we are excited to take you “Behind the Scenes” by sharing with you video updates about the creative process of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. The videos will focus on different aspects of the production, from music and choreography to set design and puppetry. Our first video update focuses on the development week during early January at The Washington Ballet studios. Click

While the show’s creative team (made up of artistic leaders from both Imagination Stage and The Washington Ballet) has been working for many months to create the libretto and music, the January development week marked an important test for the material. After sitting around a table and seeing every moment of the production in our minds, we were finally able to gather the artists together in a week of intensive rehearsals to watch how the choreography, music, scenes, and puppets would all combine in order to tell the story of four children who famously find a magical world on the other side of a wardrobe.

 We had chosen to shape our version around the character of Edmund, the archetypical troubled “middle” child who cannot find his rightful place in his family. Through his journey into Narnia and his interactions with The White Witch and Aslan, Edmund confronts his demons and eventually finds peace and unity with his siblings. Edmund’s story and that of the other three children are embodied in our production by two performers for each character—a dancer and an actor/singer. We discovered during our rehearsals that this technique proves highly effective. Through costuming and gesture, we see that the audience will clearly understand that the two performers are trading off the story-telling from scene to scene in order to express the children’s inner lives and feelings, as well as what they say and do in the story.

 Another success was the work puppeteer and set designer Eric van Wyk has done with his prototype for the 8-foot-tall and 8-foot-long puppet of Aslan. Eric animates the puppet with two puppeteers inside the lion and a third positioned to one side operating his head. It took many hours of practice to create a believable walking and running gait for the puppet. But by the end of the week, our giant lion was rearing up, leaping about the stage, and performing a death scene to rival any Hamlet!

 As is always the case, the experience of seeing part of the play more fully realized and “on its feet,” inspires and clarifies the production ideas for the creative team in the next phase of the show’s creation. The set, costume, and lighting designers are now sketching out their ideas with a good sense of the practical as well as the aesthetic needs of the script in mind. We will be using Skype to bring everyone back together over the next couple of months as we hammer out the final choices for the production. Most of all, I think the benefit of this particular development week has been to demonstrate to the 14-strong performing company that they are now part of a magnificent project, one that allows them to tell an epic story with an unprecedented range of expression. We all feel as though our “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” is well on its way to being a WOW for children and families in the metro region this summer.

 Please check back next month for more updates on this exciting collaboration.

 - Janet Stanford, Artistic Director

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, June 20-August 12, 2012
Tickets and Show Schedule

Reprinted with permission by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Arts Education Department

Vice President: Sandra Bowie
Assistant Vice President: Sanaz Hojreh
Associate Director of Performance: Verushka Spirito
Writer: Arthur Wilson
Editor: Linda Fowler

P.Nokio, a hip-hop musical written and directed by Psalmayene 24 for Imagination Stage, is a clever nod to Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) and some of its original characters: the puppet of the title; Geppetto, a carpenter; the Fairy with Turquoise Hair; Fox and Cat; and the Innkeeper.

In P.Nokio, however, the boy puppet is a computer-generated figure come to life and G.Petto is a video game designer. The Graffiti Fairy’s magic is manifested by spray paint; Fox and Cat are disguised as muggers to defraud P.Nokio of his “street credits.”

P.Nokio is set in Hip-Hopia. The action begins with an audience call and response led by G.Petto to summon P.Nokio from a computer screen. (“He’ll be able to rhyme and dance … He’ll almost be real.”) When G.Petto realizes P.Nokio has jumped from the computer, his employment dilemma begins. The petulant Machine Master—G.Petto’s boss—arrives in a fanfare with his assistant, Crony, to view the design promised to bring him big cash!

Carrying a sacred “Book of Rhymes” presented to him by G.Petto, P.Nokio heads for The Old School to learn style, swagger and ways to help the community through hip-hop. In a series of comical raps, P.Nokio is pushed through a course of events that challenge his judgment, his ability to obey G.Petto, and his desire to stretch the truth. He plays hooky from The Old School and encounters a talking Fork in the road, whose alternate path tempts him toward Fun and the Land of Fools. As in the original story, when P.Nokio lies, his nose grows longer.

When G.Petto finds himself in danger of becoming Machine Master’s next profitable computer gimmick, P.Nokio learns about selflessness and forgiveness through a courageous act of sacrifice. This good deed, of a real boy, is accompanied by G.Petto’s words, “We all make mistakes … but it’s what we learn, and what we do after those mistakes, that count.”

P.Nokio: The result of rhyme and effort

As the playwright, director and actor in the title role of P.Nokio, Psalmayene 24 (a.k.a. Gregory Morrison) is a true triple-threat artist. Growing up in Brooklyn, he was immersed in hip-hop culture and was eager to combine it with his love of theater.

“Using a hip-hop aesthetic immediately makes the play relatable to the youth of today,” he says. “The rhythms and sounds of Hip-Hop reflect their pulse and energy.”

According to Psalmayene 24, there are three main lessons to P.Nokio. “A, you always have an opportunity to redeem yourself. We see this through P.Nokio’s journey in the play. B, unconditional love supports redemption. G.Petto exemplifies this as P.Nokio’s faithful father. And, C, when you are your authentic self, good things happen. When P.Nokio finally rhymes the truth in his heart, he is able to achieve transformation.”

P.Nokio is Psalmayene 24’s second premiere commissioned by Imagination Stage, a Maryland-based, nonprofit theatre arts organization that produces professional theater with an arts education focus. “My first project with Imagination Stage was Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation Myth, an adaptation of a West African trickster tale,” he relates. “That experience, from conception to production to touring, was absolutely wonderful, so we decided to do another project together.”

A prominent figure in hip-hop theater, Psalmayene 24 (pronounced sal-may-any) performed at the first Hip-Hop Theater Festival in New York City. His solo play, Free Jujube Brown! appeared in the anthology Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy: Theater from the Hip-Hop Generation (Theatre Communications Group, 2009). “Psalm” was the co-writer and co-star of The Hip-Hop Nightmares of Jujube Brown and nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for his performance. His play Undiscovered Genius of the Concrete Jungle was commissioned by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Psalmayene 24 also is founder of the folk-hop band PS24, which has opened for Erykah Badu and has performed frequently throughout the East Coast.

Two of his collaborators from Zomo are on board for P.Nokio. Musician Nick Hernandez is the composer and sound designer. Paige Hernandez, the choreographer, also plays the Graffiti Fairy. She is an advocate for hip-hop education and helps teachers understand and incorporate hip-hop culture into their curriculums. Also on the creative team are Ethan Sinnott (sets), Kendra Rai (costumes) and Andrew Griffin (lighting design).

“A brilliant person once said, ‘It takes a village to raise a play,’” says Psalmayene 24. “I couldn’t agree more.”

The real-life adventures of Pinocchio

Pinocchio’s coming of age exploits are probably best remembered by Walt Disney’s legendary animated film of 1940, Pinocchio, which uplifted audiences with an Oscar winning score (“When You Wish Upon a Star”) and a benevolent plot line. As writer Rebecca West put it, “Disney followed adaptations (of Pinocchio) much more than the original—as he modified the sadism and violence in order to bring to the screen a lovable, cuddly Pinocchio.”

In the Disney version of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), the large cast of characters is pared down to a few well-drawn protagonists and antagonists who interact in a morality tale of good triumphing over evil. Contrasting Disney with Collodi, essayist Derek White reasons that “Pinocchio is not nearly the moralistic tale that Disney paints it to be—for Collodi’s Pinocchio is far from innocent, but is more of a Huck Finn type, most of the time a mean-spirited brat … and Geppetto is not exactly the provincial model citizen but lives in poverty, on the fringes.”

This tendency to reinvent the original has solidified Pinocchio’s longevity—the character endures after more than a century of creative transformations—and the story’s substance continues to attract artists such as Hip-Hop theater’s Psalmayene 24. Adaptations of the Pinocchio tale have entertained generations of youngsters and the original book still ranks among the best-selling children’s classics.

Pinocchio has been portrayed as a comical character in the Shrek films (2001-2010), as well as on Broadway in Shrek the Musical (2008). Spanish illustrator Salvador Bartolozzi depicted him in a weekly children’s publication, Pinocchio, in 1925. In addition, The Adventures of Pinocchio has been adapted for television and made into dozens of English-language films. Countless other versions span the globe, in Italian (Roberto Benigni in the 2002 movie Pinocchio), French, Russian, German, and Japanese. Myriad philosophical and thematic differences evolved while moving this allegorical tale forward, but even in our age of quick-changing invention, a constant remains: Pinocchio’s nose grows as he stretches the truth.

P.Nokio flips the original story by dressing it in four elements of hip-hop culture: bboying (dancing), graffiti writing, MC-ing (rapping), and DJ-ing. The show abounds with these elements. Director-playwright Psalmayene 24 describes his P.Nokio as “a mischievous, hip, digitally-designed man-child with a heart of gold and a fantastic ability to rap and dance.”

To establish the puppet’s state of aliveness at the beginning of the musical, he has P.Nokio jump from the computer screen and hide from G.Petto by slapping a lampshade over his head. In comparison, Collodi’s Pinocchio assumes life even before being fully carved into a puppet and speaks as each of his extremities is whittled into shape.

Psalmayene 24 says he was attracted to the traditional story of Pinocchio because “at its core, it is a story about redemption.” He and his collaborators discarded Collodi’s tragic ending (Pinocchio is hanged), but maintain the heart of the fable about a misfit who wanders off the path, yet discovers self-awareness through education and personal sacrifice.

“Pinocchio goes astray many times before he finally matures and becomes a real boy,” says Psalmayene 24. “Redemption is the universal, timeless and ageless human impulse that runs through the story. That’s what motivated me as I wrote my adaptation.”

Arthur T. Wilson, a poet, playwright and co-publisher of Attitude magazine, has served as a residency artist at NJPAC from ground-breaking to the present. He holds master’s degrees from New York University and the University of London.

P.Nokio: a Hip-Hop Musical, February 1-March 11.
Tickets and Show Schedule.

Julia Krebs Patterson plays Amelia Mouse (left). Jasmin Danielle Johnson plays Nellie Mouse (right).

I am extremely fortunate and grateful for the experience to help create, and perform in, some of our My first Imagination Stage productions (specifically for ages 1-5).  When I was asked to write a blog about my experience as Amelia Mouse in Mouse on the Move, the first thing that came to mind was the wonderful, and often funny, things I hear from our youngest patrons on a day-to-day basis.  I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite early childhood theatre stories, some from Mouse on the Move (I can’t even believe I already have a plethora of them, seeing as how the show has only been open a week) and some from Wake Up, Brother Bear! when I played Sister Bear.  I enjoy bringing these anecdotes to my colleagues, and I am glad to share some of them with you. I will begin with one that is fresh in my mind– one of the sweetest and most endearing things I have seen in a long time.

 In Mouse on the Move, I take a short break from playing Amelia Mouse to puppeteer a southern belle of a Ladybug who has lost her babies.  During the story, her babies are blown from their house and “sneak” inside the children’s suitcases (each child receives a suitcase of props upon entering the theatre). The children must help bring the babies back to Ms. Ladybug and put them in her new nest: a glowing tree right outside the circle of the performance space.  Once we receive a baby (a little ladybug attached to a clothespin), we clip them to the tree and then encourage the children to go back to their seat. There was a little girl who, upon relinquishing her ladybug, couldn’t seem to go back to her seat.  Ms. Ladybug, in her sweet southern accent, said “Thank you for your help little mouse.  You can go back to your seat now.” The little mouse just stood and stared at the ladybug, smiling.  “Alright, little mouse; you have worked hard to give me back my baby, now it’s time to take a seat!”  Nothing; she just stood and stared.  Then, all of a sudden, she reached out and took Ms. Ladybug with both hands.  Closing her eyes, she slowly pulled Ms. Ladybug toward her and gave her a soft kiss on the nose.  Then, smiling at Ms. Ladybug, she turned and walked back to her seat.

 We like to call “play” the “work” of early childhood, and our youngest audience members take their job seriously! At one point in Mouse on the Move we match colored flowers.  The first flowers I match are two blue flowers.  I walk up to one blue flower, point at it and say, “blue.”  The child holding the flower responds “yes.”  I then take the flower, walk to the other blue flower in the theatre, point to it and say, “blue.” One day, anticipating a “yes,” I reached out to take the flower and heard, “purple.”  Purple?  I looked at the child holding the flower, and she was dressed in purple.  “Not blue?” I asked.  When the teacher coached her that the flower was blue, she opened her mouth and said, “Nope, not blue.  This flower is purple!”  A slight script change was called for on my part.  When comparing the flower colors, what came out was, “purplish blue, purplish blue. The same!”

In Wake Up, Brother Bear!, a pesky fish follows us through the seasons, taunting Brother Bear who can never seem to catch him for a delicious dinner.  At the very end of the show, the fish again appears. Brother Bear pulls him up out of the water with a fishing rod and is about to feast in celebration.  You can imagine the kinds of things we heard on a regular basis from the audience.  “Don’t eat him!” “Eat him!”  “Give it to your sister!” “He’s making it move!”  But there was one day that brought out two comments that I will always remember when I think of this show, and the spontaneity of early childhood theatre. One child shouted, “You got to cook it!”  Followed by another child, confiding in her mother, “He is not going to eat that fish raw.”

- Julia Krebs Patterson, Amelia Mouse and Early Childhood & Casting Coordinator

Tickets and a performance calendar for Mouse on the Move, can be found here.

What stood out to me the most was that the story wove together the real world and the imaginary using set. Animals in the world of Dr. Dolittle were made up of gas masks, gloves, rope, canteens and other war articles. This touch was magical and chilling. When a bird would fly across the sky, something would seem different about it. Maybe, just maybe it was a glove. When the fantastical Push Me Pull You creature was introduced, were its heads gas masks? It showed that the imaginary, jubilance still had a slight over shadowing of the ominous war lying in the background.

The characters had clear objectives which made the world so enhanced and believable. They used their bodies masterfully. Every animal had a variation that showed their transformation from human to animal. Lofting’s wife also played Polynesia. When she was human she held her hands folded together in front of her. She would have flowy , graceful, birdlike arms playing Polynesia, yet she still held her hands in the same way as the wife from time to time, showing her parallel in reality. This parallel and that of Lofting’s son show the conflict not only in the imaginary world, but in the actual world as well. A great example is that Lofting’s son and Dolittle have trouble relating as do Lofting and his son in real life. Dolittle and the boy work it through by the end of the story. This shows when Lofting and his son meet at the end of the play for a reason that you will only be able to find out if you come and see this enchanting musical show.

- Samantha Louise Noland, Student and Member of Acting Conservatory at Imagination Stage

The craziest experience that I have had thus far (and that I am currently taking part in) is running the soundboard for Dr. Dolittle! When I first came to Imagination Stage, my theatrical experiences included arts administration, acting, directing, and playwriting…but nothing technical. In fact, I was frightened of technical theatre. But on the first day of tech rehearsal for Dr. Dolittle, I bit the bullet, came ready to learn something new, and conquered my fear.

My first time at the soundboard I felt like my brain was on overload. There were so many knobs and buttons! Sound Designer Chris Baine soon calmed me down by explaining that each row of knobs is connected to one microphone, and that I should think of the soundboard in terms of the actors wearing each mic rather than viewing them as impending buttons of doom. This truly helped my non-technical brain understand my task at hand.

During each Dr. Dolittle performance I’m in the Lighting and Sound Booth—a room in between the left and right sides of the balconies in the theatre—where I sit at the soundboard and watch Dr. Dolittle from a bird’s eye view. The stage manager also sits in the booth and this is where she communicates with the soundboard operator (me!) and the deck captain (who helps out backstage during the show) via headset.  As the soundboard operator I am in charge of playing sound cues when the stage manager directs me to, and also all of the microphones that the actors wear. Every time that you hear music or the whinny of a horse in the distance, that’s me! Of course, there have been times where you might’ve heard the whinny of a horse when you were supposed to be hearing a song…that was also me. I have definitely made some mistakes along the way, but the entire cast and crew has been incredibly encouraging during my first foray into technical theatre.

I have currently seen Dr. Dolittle 30 times, and my favorite part changes with every show! There are certain musical numbers that I enjoy every time, such as “Everybody Wants to be a Pirate.” But just this morning, my favorite part ended up being the comedic bits between King Jolliginki and Melvin the guard. There are also parts that are technically challenging for me during every show, such as making sure that the actor playing the garden horse can be heard beneath his full-faced horse mask. Also, the actors are constantly taking off and putting on hats and other costume pieces that can very easily brush against their microphones, which causes a chaotic cacophony throughout the monitors. This makes me anxious, but it also keeps me on my toes during every performance!

Working on Dr. Dolittle has made me truly respect and appreciate everyone that works in technical theatre—especially the technical staff here at Imagination Stage. If I, as the soundboard operator, did not do my job, then the actors could not be heard and the audience would hear no music to accompany the story being performed on stage. And, if the other technical staff did not do their jobs, we wouldn’t have any of the wonderful performances that Imagination Stage offers. There would be no beautiful sets, costumes, or lighting effects for our audiences to enjoy.

I’m excited to see what other experiences and challenges are thrown my way during my year-long apprenticeship. But I know that Dr. Dolittle will definitely remain at the top of my list as one of the most fun and eye-opening opportunities that Imagination Stage has brought my way. I mean, it’s not every day that you can conquer a fear and have serious fun doing it at the same time!

- Katy Beth Cassell, Institutional Development Apprentice

Don’t get me wrong – the exhibit is educational, but also exceptionally fun.  While you watch a new version of “The Dating Game” that interviews the slimiest creatures on earth, those who have watched the original TV show can relate to the many slimy, or should I say swarmy, contestants in their memory while the younger set listens, learns, and then votes for the winning contestant (and YES, your vote does count!). 

The exhibit’s first big winner is a cow – who expertly releases gas from both its ends with extreme aural dexterity. The life-size, cartoon-style cow has an open side where the intrepid museum-goer gets to experience a pin-ball metaphor or the 4 stomachs that create all that wonderful gas. 

The exhibit’s ‘end’ is appropriately a presentation of the work of a dung beetle – and spectators can engage in a lovely dung ball game set into a 6 foot dung pile.  While that sounds (and is) exceptionally fun, I can guarantee that the most popular part of the exhibit is the submarine and slide (think sea slug).  I witnessed an after-school group come into the exhibit and after a peripheral spin around the room, the slide instantly filled with a line outside. Personally, my favorite exhibit was the interactive frog-spit game (who knew that some frogs spit out their eggs).  The grossest (and according to spell-check, that is indeed a word) is the owl!  It both spits and poops excrement.  I used to think owls were so chic.

Yes – you learn a lot about excrement, gas, and slime, but you also learn about life cycles, habitats, and all those things your science teacher really wants you to remember.  Planted near the exit, although perhaps too close to the distracting slide or dung beetle game, is a video screen that lets its audience play a multiple choice grossology game – if you pay attention throughout the exhibit, you will definitely win. If not, the game encourages you to go back and really investigate past the slime and the slide to see what’s really going on inside.

Overall, I recommend this for families with kids (or adults) who enjoy nature in ALL of its parts, but especially the gross and slimy ones.  Don’t forget to stop in the gift shop – the Animal Grossology books and toys have a display of their own on the far wall, and there is a fun “younger set” focused section around the corner to your left.

This blog is dedicated to my great-great-niece Layla and my friends: Korey and Garvan, man I wish you’d been there with me!

- Brett Crawford, Managing Director, Imagination Stage

I’d like to share a common theme in my conversations with Imagination Stage families, a theme which I relate to personally. I hear frequently from parents that being in an acting or dance class has had a positive impact on their child. Many parents talk of how it has brought their child out of his/her shell, helped develop empathy, provided more confidence, or even—as one parent shared—given her and her teenage daughter a common interest to talk about. When I hear these comments and watch our students grow their theatre skills, I remember how theatre has also changed my life.

Growing up in Baltimore, once upon a time and many years ago, we didn’t have access to the kinds of programs that Imagination Stage provides. There were no drama classes in my neighborhood, and I can count on one hand the number of plays I saw on school field trips. Elementary and middle school provided no outlet for a sensitive, theatrical, and arguably odd kid. But things changed when I reached high school. Within the first month, the school held auditions for a school play: Our Town. Excited for the new experience I auditioned and was cast as the choir director, Simon Stimson. Despite being a freshman and having absolutely no acting experience I got a role. I think my deep voice and height helped me land the role of this 40-something New Hampshire man. Through this role I began to discover for myself what it was to create a character, choose tactics, and how to play someone who was the opposite of who I was in nearly every way. While I had a very supportive high school director, he had a whole cast of teens vying for his coaching. I would have loved to have the more personal pedagogy and dedicated teaching staff of a place like Imagination Stage to help me understand and develop my craft.  Learning to act after you’ve been cast in your first show is a kind of trial by fire—not something I would recommend to anyone.

Since that first show, I have been in nearly 100 productions, including ones at my high school, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and a variety of community and professional plays. I feel that these numerous theatre experiences have led me to the best moments in my life. For two years I was able to tour America with a traveling Shakespeare company, many of my best friends have been made through theatre connections, and the woman of my dreams—who I married just last month—I met at a theatre benefit.

This weekend our Musical Theatre Conservatory Seniors will be presenting Into the Woods, Jr. as their final project. I think about all of the classes in acting, singing, and dance that have brought them to this special  capstone performance. They have begun to master acting and vocal techniques that it has taken me years to learn. These young performers are graduating from their conservatory this weekend, but more importantly they have found a community of friends with whom they have shared a journey of self discovery. Which, in my experience, is more important than memorizing your lines or hitting that high note.

So, for those of you already in our classes and camps, please keep your stories coming; they warm the hearts of my colleagues and myself and remind us why we come to work each day. And now, a quick plug (I do have marketing in my title after all): for those of you considering registering for class or camp, do it! Because, in our opinion, it’s not about growing up to be an actor, it’s about growing up.

- Scott McCormick, Education Marketing Manager

Into the Woods sends our beloved Grimm fairytales on a twisted, musical journey brimming with greed, bravery, and the agony of love.

How fitting that the themes for both plays selected for this year’s Conservatory Program graduation shows center around a journey, as the productions themselves mark the end of an amazing journey for all the actors involved. 

The Conservatory Program at Imagination Stage was created to provide a process where young actors could acquire a more advanced set of tools, and a vocabulary that would challenge and push their acting skills. Most theatre experiences for young people are generally individual performance opportunities: audition for a play, get cast, rehearse, and then perform. While this can certainly provide a fun experience, it doesn’t necessarily teach actors how to act. 

The craft of acting seems deceptively easy to do.  It’s just memorizing lines, right?  How difficult can that be?  As any trained actor will tell you, it involves a lot more than that, and the students who complete the Conservatory Program at Imagination Stage understand that as well.  For four semesters these students have been studying the techniques of acting and singing alongside the same group of students and instructors.  Over the course of the program they look at character development, physical strength and dexterity, vocal variation, and script analysis.  For their final semester, they are handed off to a professional director and design team to begin rehearsing their graduation production– an important opportunity to apply all the knowledge they have gained.

 Most of the students’ theatrical journeys did not begin with their first semester of Conservatory. Bronya Lechtman (8^th grade and in East of the Sun…) first took a Drama and Music class with Imagination Stage at the age of three, back when we were located at White Flint Mall, right around the same time as Michelle Schrier (9^th grader and in Into the Woods), who began when she was only two!  Most of their classmates also took a variety of classes and summer camps at Imagination Stage or their school before signing up to audition for the Conservatory Program.

So has the classroom work paid off?  I’m confident these productions will exceed your expectations of what young people can do, but what pleases me more is how the actors themselves view the difference in their work after their experience in Conservatory.  When I asked the students to compare this show to previous performances at their schools or other youth theatre companies, they almost all mentioned the degree of character building that has gone into the work. “With other shows I have been in,” says Teddy Sullivan (9^th grade and in Into the Woods), “it was all just staging, and learning dance steps.  However, with this rehearsal process, we are really developing deep characters and finding the subtext, making our show not just going through the motions, but giving us a reason to what we are saying.”  With shows that have large numbers of young actors, directors can easily get stuck in simply moving the performers around the stage.  Go there. Move that arm. Smile!!  It is a crucial element in our curriculum at Imagination Stage that we encourage our students to understand why their characters are moving around the stage.  As actors, we seek to motivate every action.  Every line we say is based on what our characters need.  Bronya loved that while her director helped guide her in the process, she was able to make her own decisions about her character and her character’s actions. She wasn’t merely a pawn being moved around the stage.

In addition to the students’ work in technique, Imagination Stage also seeks to replicate the professional experience of the production process by hiring directors who are both dedicated educators as well as working professionals in the field.  This adds another very different element to rehearsing a show here at Imagination Stage.  Annika Cowles, a 9^th grader in Into the Woods, remarks that “after each rehearsal of blocking and music learning, we had to go home and memorize it. The adults who worked with us didn’t ‘baby’ us. They told us their expectations and their vision for the show. They didn’t have time for us to not have things memorized or to be talking with our friends. We had to come in, put aside our personal problems, and be completely focused and ready to take blocking notes or stand in for someone who was practicing in another room.” 

 Being an actor requires a huge amount of vulnerability. Actors of all levels find it incredibly important to have the support of their fellow class or cast mates, and our conservatories are no different.  “I didn’t expect that I would make such amazing friends,” says Chewey Delaplaine (9^th grader, Into the Woods). “With each [Imagination Stage experience], I gain more and more great friends, I learn valuable lessons, and have so much fun.”  A sense of ensemble is such an important part of creating a piece of theatre.  The actors in a show need to have a connection with one another on stage. They need to move in sync, breath together, and trust each other.  Trust that they will have each other’s backs during the actual show, and that they will support each other in their journey to experiment and take risks with the work. While Teddy noticed the professional, business-like nature of the rehearsal process, he also has a deep appreciation for the fact that his class is like a family, “and that family-like atmosphere pushed us forward, making our performances better, and making us become better performers.”

I certainly hope you’ll come see the culminations of the two journeys these graduating Acting and Musical Theatre Conservatories have traveled!  We celebrate not just the work they have put into these specific shows, but also the work they have accomplished over the last two years; the dedication and commitment they have made to Imagination Stage, to each other, and to themselves as theatre artists.

 - Nikki Kaplan, Associate Director of Education 

East of the Sun and West of the Moon ~ Performed by the Acting Conservatory Senior Class, December 2-4

Into the Woods, JR ~ Performed by the Musical Theatre Conservatory Senior Class, December 16-18

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS 

At the Holiday Season, when most of us have the good fortune to gather as families and to count our blessings, let us also remember the extraordinary power of creativity and its special value in times of adversity.  It is the one human attribute that allows us to rise above life’s set-backs and to envision a better future. 

This season’s holiday offering at Imagination Stage, Dr. Dolittle, focuses on the creativity of Hugh Lofting, who invented his fanciful stories of high adventure and exotic beasts while mired in a muddy trench on the Western Front in 1917.  The play suggests that he rallied his men by creating a world of make believe and telling a story full of laughter, song, and puppetry.  The playwright imagines a world in which a pair of gloves is transformed into a sparrow with a guiding light, and a barbed wire fence twinkles like a Christmas tree. 

The backdrop of a World War I battlefield may seem an unlikely setting for a holiday musical, but this is not only true to the original circumstances of the author, but—we think—especially significant today with the drawdown of 40,000 American troops from Iraq happening right now, and many young service men and women returning to our communities.  Our theatrical version of Lofting’s classic novel, with its eccentric doctor who learns to talk to animals, should give parents a good way to talk to their children about military service.  For us this play honors the bravery of thousands of young American men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way over the last decade (and for hundreds of years) in defense of our democratic principles and ideals. 

Like the character of Hugh Lofting himself, in the script Imagination Stage is producing by Mark St. Germain and Randy Courts, many parents may believe that our children should be protected from all knowledge of war for as long as possible. Yet the fact remains that most of our theatre’s audience (who are between the ages of 4 and 10) was born—and has grown up in—a time of war for our country. And, their parents or grandparents may well have served in the First Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea, or World War II.  We think it’s important to let curious young minds know that in this life there are some battles that are worth fighting.  Our lives are defined, after all, by the challenges that we choose to take on and the battles we choose to fight—be they for country, for our fellow men, or for the planet. 

We cannot protect our children from all the sadness that haunts our world, but we can –and we must—inspire them to rise above it by sustaining their innate talent for creativity. Not merely to endure, but to triumph against all odds.

- Janet Stanford, Artistic Director

P.S. Check out our Family Guide for fun activities and talking points about the show! Or, view the Dr. Dolittle Show Program to read the Director’s Note and bios of the cast and crew.