Welcome to the LCSNA’s blog, where you can read regular updates about Lewis Carroll’s influence on all aspects of life. Please keep in mind that these posts are informational only; we do not endorse any link, statement or product cited below unless we specifically state that within the post. We hope you’ll visit often to review the posts and add comments.
Make sure you Subscribe to our feeds so you won’t miss anything! Just click the “All Posts” and/or “Comments” links in the upper right hand corner of this site.
To submit items for our blog, please e-mail us at FarFlungKnight@gmail.com.
Click here to follow us on
Click here to follow @AliceAmerica on
There’s a new theater piece called Alice, premiering tonight at the Theatre of Yugen, 2840 Mariposa Street in San Francisco (running September 9th through 19th), directed and “imagined” by Allison Combs. As a work of “movement theatre,” it’s about 60% interpretive dance and 40% dialogue, easily juggling different genres of theater with different types of music, and varying levels of seriousness & silliness.
Alice, in her traditional blue outfit but played by a leggy adult actor/dancer (Megan Trout), is already exhausted on the stage when the audience is allowed to enter. (“Is that Alice?” asked a young girl behind me, Alice having already silently begun her opening number while an usher noisily hobbled past her to turn off a loud fan & the audience settled in.) This Alice starts out with grown-up anxieties, obsessive-compulsively counting numbers, and reassuring herself repeatedly “okay, okay, okay.” In contrast to the wildness she’s about to encounter, we realize that her troubled state of mind at the beginning is her supposed normalcy.
Then, instead of a white rabbit, she is shaken from her routine by a single playing card falling from the sky. A tribe of five strange savages in rags starts to mess with her by taking her thru the mind-and-body-changing adventures of Wonderland, loosely inspired by the stuff that happens in Carroll’s book. (While Alice was exploring the corridor, before it really gets going, the child behind me declared “This is upsetting because it’s boring.”) Growing, shrinking, falling, mushrooms, being stuck in a house, scary forests, and all manner of psychedelic abstractions are created by the weird tribe with their flexible interlocking limbs, in extremely creative ways. Only using their bodies, a caterpillar sits on a mushroom, and when he sucks on one of their fingers, the whole mushroom inhales & exhales. It’s most fun during the wild dance numbers, with their very cool choreography; it drags a little during the dialog, which like so many Alice in Wonderland adaptations, is always a lot less clever than Carroll’s original. For some reason, their amazing Cheshire Cat, very feline & Kabuki-ish, stuck closer to Carroll’s words, and was consequently much more powerful.
After Alice has gone native, a new square-peg (named Lewis) also finds himself lost in Wonderland, and by this time Alice has already become one of the weird savages. Lewis’s unhappy anal-retention makes us realize what Wonderland is to these people: everything ‘other’ in American society. Their Wonderland is part hippie, part hipster, part Burning Man, part mushroom trip, totally gay, multi-cultural and sexy. It has games with no rules, self-examination, community, humor, and of course lots of dancing and singing. It’s also dirty. Uptight Lewis rejects it outright, and even Alice eventually wakes up. But she’s definitely dirtier than before her trip to Wonderland (“Is she dripping sweat?” asked the child behind me.)
Atmos Theatre, a volunteer-run theater company in San Francisco, has adapted Alice in Wonderland for its ninth season of “Theatre in the Woods.” It’s been happening every Saturday & Sunday in August and through September 19th in Woodside, California (a few cities south of San Francisco.) “‘Alice in Wonderland’ is performed as part of a guided hike through our redwood-filled forest property.” It sounds beautiful but, unfortunately, the entire run is completely sold out!
The original adaptation is by Brian Markley and directed by Amy Clare Tasker.
Theatre in the Woods features two stages and a variety of performance spots along our trails. Our Main Stage, nestled with a beautiful backdrop of redwood trees behind it, features natural benches made out of redwood planks and stumps. Our Amphitheatre Stage at Harrington Creek features natural amphitheatre seating carved out of the hillside. We provide blankets on the earth benches for a perfect view of the forest stage opposite the creek. And the acoustics are fantastic!
We’re tempted to chalk this one up to a bad case of Engrish mistranslation from our friends across the Pacific. It’s easy to see how “Wonderland” could have been misread as “Waterland,” and the “Mad Hatter” may have been literally interpreted as “Angry Hat.”
In any case, how we are supposed to believe that they’re pouring a cup of tea underwater? How the hell are you going to drink it? Could they have made a more disturbing Alice in Wonderland cover?
I think all LCSNA members will know the answer to that last question.
UPDATE! Matt Crandall had a post on his Disney Alice blog last year featuring Alice in Waterland, with more pictures, and included a recording:
The current issue of Smithsonian magazine includes Jenny Woolf’s succinct summary of current critical and popular thought around Mr. Dodgson, focusing on how perceptions are at last changing to a less sensationalized and more fact-based, historically appropriate view: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Lewis-Carrolls-Shifting-Reputation.html
Illustration by Francis Carruthers Gould from "The Westminster Alice"
Two more curiosities from the generous house of Evertype Publishers:
The Westminster Alice, by Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), and illustrated by Francis Carruthers Gould, New Edition 2010.
These political parody vignettes were first brought together in 1903 in the Westminster Popular, and then published again with forward and footnotes in 1927. This edition provides additional historical background and photographs of the Victorians lampooned. Amazon.com, $12.95
New Adventures of Alice, by John Rae, New Edition 2010.
John Rae, author, illustrator and portraitist from New Jersey, really wished that Lewis Carroll had written a sequel to Through the Looking-Glass, so he wrote and illustrated one himself. Published first in 1917, these new adventures see Alice visit a number of Mother Goose characters. Amazon.com, $21.95
When our cousins the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil held their first “Alice Day” in May this year, one of the main events was the live performance of a new soundtrack to the silent Alice in Wonderland (1903). The music was composed by Paulo Beto and performed by the band Frame Circus on keyboards, cello, percussion and Theremin.
Thank you to Adriana Peliano for sending us news of the event. Adriana tends Alicenations, the blog of the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil. The above video featured in her Alice Day blog post, along with another soundtrack by Frame Circus, and a video of Leon Theremin playing his own instrument.
Check out this beautiful custom chess set, featured on the website English Russia. It seems to be a work in progress but, from the description, we gather that the grand scheme is for an ornately carved table concealing a glass chessboard and ivory pieces. Turning a handle shaped like a flamingo’s head will activate a mechanism that lifts the board out of the table and ready for play.
The work of an unnamed Ukrainian master ivory carver, each piece is a highly-detailed rendering of a Tenniel illustration – white players from Through the Looking-Glass and black players from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. See the website for pictures of the man at work and a longer description of the project. Let’s hope that pictures of the finished work make it online too.
There’s a casting call up right now at Playbill.com for The Hunting of the Snark, a stage adaptation for the Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Fall Fest. The full listing gives a good feel for what the play might be like, so I’ll quote it at length:
Frontispiece to Fit the Second, from Mahendra Singh's illustrations
“The Hunting of the Snark” is a theatrical adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s poem of the same name. This production is a part of Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Fall Fest. This is a wonderful whirlwind opportunity to collaborate with several emerging artists at a theater in mid-town!
Rehearsals begin August 16th. Performances are September 16, 17, and 19. Times TBA.
Looking for 12 actors of either gender and any ethnicity from ages 25-30. A plus if you play any unique instruments, can perform simple magic tricks, are great with sound effects, or have experience with simple dance/movement.
CAST:
The Bellman – Crazy for hunting the Snark
Bonnets – A shy, clingy individual
Barrister – Victim to Snark hallucination
Broker – Fast-paced individual
Butcher – Acts like a dunce, but it is revealed he knows everything about natural history
Beaver – The Bellman’s sidekick. Knows what’s what before everyone else
Baker – The person behind the proper method of hunting the Snark
Banker – Brought on board at enormous expense
Billiards-Maker – Sly, only wants to have fun, but quickly discovers how dangerous this is. **Simple magic tricks are a plus**
Snark – Thinks that it’s in control of the show
Creatures (3) – One of the creatures on the island. They set the mood and scene for much that happens on the island. **Seeking movers/dancers, individuals who can play unique instruments, and vocalists**
Adapted by Katie Dickinson
Directed by Nathan Gregorski
Choreographed by Shannon McPhee
Thanks Mahendra Singh for the tip, and he adds: “maybe this will be our long-awaited Summer of Snark … have you gone down to Snark Island with some Boojums in your hair, etc etc.” There are also moviesand new editions in the works. (Singh’s beautiful new illustrations for the Snark are being published by Melville House this November – pre-order it on Amazon here, and see examples on his blog here!)
No need to report every time a Jabberwocky word is used somewhere, but this was a good one. Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s classical music critic (and author of the excellent musical/political history of the 20th century The Rest Is Noise), in the middle of complaining about the flood of anniversary-year Chopin recordings, describes a showy pianist’s contribution thus:
Lang Lang, the other big Chinese virtuoso, galumphs through the two piano concertos on [Deutsche Grammophon].
Whether Ross means it in the sense of moving “heavily or clumsily” (Wiktionary) or in the more Carrollian sense of triumphant galloping, is up for interpretation. LCSNA blog followers, keep watching for interesting modern uses of Carroll coinages!
